Sri Lankan Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has mandated that girls are not permitted to serve as altar servers in parishes within the Archdiocese of Colombo. “No girls should be invited to serve at the altar ...

ATLANTA — 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

To many boys in many parishes, serving at the altar has become a “girl thing.” There’s no better time to encourage boys to change their thinking than the Jan. 31 feast of St. John Bosco, “Father and ...

Kyra Pence receives her medallion from Bishop Richard Malone during the 48th annual Catholic Bishop’s Altar Server awards recently at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo. Submitted photo BUFFALO — Kyra ...

David Kim, a Catholic altar server, stands for a portrait before a Mass at the Princeton University chapel in Princeton, N.J., on Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Luis Andres Henao) David Kim, a ...

Twelve-year-old Katie spills out of the car, all 4-foot-7 of her, and walks to the side entrance of the imposing Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in north Baltimore. She passes under the “Maria Immaculata” ...