The Dicastery of the Causes of Saints has promulgated a decree recognizing that five Spanish Franciscans were killed “in odium fidei” (“in hatred of the faith”) in 1597 — specifically for defending ...

Today, July 1, is the feast day of St. Junípero Serra, the 18th-century Spanish Franciscan priest who brought Catholicism to California. Lending his name and patronage to countless churches, streets, ...

On Saturday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with ...

The five Spanish Franciscans, known as the Georgia martyrs, are seen in a painting featured in a video from the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. The friars were martyred between Sept. 14 and Sept. 17, ...

On Juneteenth this year, people in the San Francisco Bay Area took to the streets to mark the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in Texas learned they were free. That evening, protestors ...

The Americas has been one of the principal journals of Latin American history since its founding in 1944. It publishes articles and reviews in history and ethnohistory about all geographical regions ...

San Gabriel, California, residents Lucille Aguirre and her son, Dan, look mournfully at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, which was severely damaged by a fire July 11. The Aguirres have deep family ...

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis on Saturday named a Spanish Franciscan to be the No. 2 at the Vatican’s office for religious orders, his first appointment to the Vatican bureaucracy badly in need of ...

AMARILLO, Texas — He's the first Catholic martyr in what is now the United States — and hardly anybody knows who he is. But now Franciscan Father Juan de Padilla, who joined the Spanish exploration ...

According to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Amarillo, the first evidence of a catholic presence on the High Plains was in the ...