Ever since starting to serve in 5th grade, altar serving has always held such a special place in my heart. Being up at the altar is something I believe very few people know the true specialness of. By ...

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 ...

As soon as she was old enough, third-grader Ellen Clarke joined the first wave of girl altar servers, helping break up a club reserved for Roman Catholic boys for centuries. Seven years later, the ...

When I signed up last year to be an altar server at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Vienna, it was easy. But two years ago, that would have been impossible for any girl. One day when I was 6 years ...

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 ...

Pope Francis greets altar servers during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 25. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) FATIMA, Portugal (CNS) — Being an altar server should be a ...

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 ...

Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church law to make explicit that laywomen can act as readers and altar servers in liturgical celebrations, effectively removing a previous option for individual ...

ARLINGTON, Va. — America ’s second-to-last bastion of male-only altar servers has fallen. Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde has announced that women and girls will be allowed to serve at all Masses, ...