Catholic News Service (CNS) is an American news agency owned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that reports on the Catholic Church.
The service is set to shut down in 2022, but its distribution and platform will be acquired by Our Sunday Visitor and used to launch a new OSV news service.[1]
CNS was established in 1920 as the National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC) Press Department.[2] In the 1960s it became the National Catholic News Service, and dropped "National" from its name in 1986 to indicate its intention to provide worldwide coverage.[3][4]
It is now owned by the USCCB, the successor to the NCWC.
From 2004 to 2016, Tony Spence led CNS as its director and editor-in-chief. He was removed in April 2016 after a number of Catholics criticized his posts on Twitter that favored LGBT rights.[5][6]
Catholic News Service announced on May 4, 2022 that it would cease its operations in the United States effective December 31, 2022.[7]
CNS describes itself as the primary source of national and global news that the US Catholic press reports. It is editorially independent and a financially self-sustaining division of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. It is based in Washington, DC, United States.[8][9]
The documentary service of CNS, Origins, "publishes texts from the Vatican, [P]ope, bishops, Congress, Senate, Supreme Court and church leaders around the world".[10][11]
