The director of Caritas in Congo was shot and killed by an armed militant group while approaching a roadblock, Caritas Internationalis announced.

Following a multimillion dollar fraud case at Luxembourg's Caritas, the church's aid organization has been forced to stop its international aid projects. Dozens of them will be halted in the most vulnerable regions of the world.

Catholics in Slovenia are rallying emergency aid and turning to prayer as record floods have ravaged that nation, killing at least six and leaving hundreds homeless.

With a new president in place, Caritas Internationalis is out of the VaticanöÏÓãÊÓƵapp penalty box and back on the ice. And for Development and Peace-Caritas Canada executive director Carl Hétu, the relaunch of the worldöÏÓãÊÓƵapp second largest humanitarian aid networköÏÓãÊÓƵapp central co-ordinating office in Rome is good news.

Caritas Internationalis, the global Catholic charity network, elected Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo to be its new president following a Vatican-mandated overhaul of its leadership.

A dramatic shutdown of the Caritas Internationalis offices in Rome by papal decree was a surprise, and not a surprise, to the leaders of the 162 Catholic agencies that belong to the worldöÏÓãÊÓƵapp second largest humanitarian network after the Red Cross.

Pope Francis has suspended the secretary-general and other top officers of Caritas Internationalis, appointing a temporary administrator to oversee improved management policies and to prepare for the election of new officers in May.

The capsizing of a small boat overloaded with passengers trying to illegally leave Lebanon is "the biggest proof of the terrible crisis" that the country is enduring as it continues to sink economically, said Carmelite Father Michel Abboud, president of Caritas Lebanon.

öÏÓãÊÓƵapp forces in Ukraine attacked a Caritas office in Mariupol and a Catholic seminary in a small village north of Kyiv, prompting renewed calls for an end to the war and to the targeting of innocent civilians.

Whether or not Russia invades, Caritas Ukraine is already at work getting people in Eastern Ukraine through all the small crises, the human-scale disasters of a war thatöÏÓãÊÓƵapp dragged on for eight years.