CEDAR RAPIDS - Kara Jackson's pilgrimage to help serve Mass at churches in all 50 states brought her Friday to Iowa - more specifically, to St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids, chosen partly ...

As I sit and wait, thousands of thoughts are running through my mind. Where is everyone? What if I have to do this all by myself? Will I remember my cues? That was how I felt on my first day of altar ...

It is a Sunday morning in 1992, and I am 10 years old and visiting relatives in the Midwest. We head to church, pile into a pew, sit, stand and then sing the entrance hymn at Mass. I happen to look up ...

Blame it on those San Francisco values. That’s what the Rev. Joseph Illo believes is driving the uproar around his decision not to train girls to be altar servers at Star of the Sea Catholic Church.

It is a Sunday morning in 1992, and I am ten years old and visiting relatives in the midwest. We head to church, pile into a pew, sit, stand and then sing the entrance hymn at Mass. I happen to look ...

From left, Thea Rossi Barron, Emily Zickel and Michael Piehler join a Nov. 20 vigil to protest the exclusion of girl altar servers in many parishes of the Arlington, Va., diocese. (Ted Majdosz) ...

The Holy Father spent much time before and after the liturgy to greet and bless the tens of thousands of pilgrims from his popemobile. Pope Francis greets tens of thousands of altar servers packed in ...

to her friends — is serving on the altar at St. Mary’s Church of the Immaculate Conception in Wilkes-Barre. Her reasons for becoming an acolyte are simple. “I feel safe here,” the Wilkes-Barre ...

When I was a young girl attending Mass with my family at St. Mary's Catholic Church in the 1960s and '70s, I don't ever remember wanting to be an altar server. So the fact that I ended up becoming one ...

A Catholic priest, new to San Francisco and no stranger to controversy, has banned girls from acting as altar servers at Mass, a decision that sets his parish apart from all others in the archdiocese.