News
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29-Jul-2012
L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See’s official daily newspaper, has taken up arms against Bill Gates and Nestlé. In an editorial that attacks the two, titled “The risks of philanthropy”, the article defines Melinda Gates (pictured) as being “slightly off the mark and confused” as well as “misinformed”, reports Vatican Insider.
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26-Jul-2012
The Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle says he would support a public inquiry into sexual assaults. His statement follows the disappearance of an abuse victim last weekend, reports the ABC and Newcastle Herald.
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31-Jul-2012
The Vatican is concerned about the degenerating situation in the country and fears an internal implosion, reports Vatican Insider.
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30-Jul-2012
Although technically on vacation, Pope Benedict XVI has hosted a top-level meeting of Vatican officials involved in investigating and responding to the leak of Vatican documents, reports the Catholic News Service in a story published by NCR Online.
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30-Jul-2012
Off the beaten track, near Goulburn in the NSW Southern Highlands, the historic former monastery of St Clements will be the toast of a growing Irish-Australian gathering which begins on Thursday, reports The Canberra Times.
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01-Aug-2012
The US Embassy in Hanoi said it was “deeply concerned” at the self-immolation of a 63-year-old woman protesting against the detention of her daughter, a Christian blogger, reports Ucanews.
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29-Jul-2012
The Vatican has ordered the former Archbishop of Ljubljana to leave Slovenia over rumours that he fathered two children, now adults, neither of whom he recognises as his, reports Vatican Insider.
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02-Aug-2012
The St Vincent de Paul Society faces the challenge of a decreasing membership over the next 10 years if it does not recruit new members and volunteers in order to have long-term sustainability, said newly re-elected Vinnies NSW State Council president Ray Reynolds, reports The Catholic Weekly.
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01-Aug-2012
Refugees from Syria are in "complete darkness" about their future, said an official with Caritas Lebanon, the Catholic News Service reports.
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01-Aug-2012
Father Paul Bird CSsR has been appointed Bishop of Ballarat, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has announced in a media statement.
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31-Jul-2012
Caritas has negotiated with Sri Lankan authorities to allow villagers to return to their homes after six years of forced displacement, reports Ucanews.
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29-Jul-2012
A blind Mohawk woman who forsook her village and an arranged marriage and went to live in a Jesuit convent in what is now Canada is set to become America's first native saint, according to a report by The Times published in The Australian.
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26-Jul-2012
There can be no "middle ground" on matters of faith and morals, the bishop who conducted the Vatican-ordered doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious said in an interview on American public radio, reports the Catholic News Service.
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02-Aug-2012
A bipartisan group of six former US ambassadors to the Holy See has joined together to support presidential candidate Mitt Romney and is calling on other Catholics to do the same, reports the Catholic News Agency.
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02-Aug-2012
Catholics have been urged to “make their voices heard” as debates on same-sex marriage in the House of Representatives and the Senate recommence in Parliament on August 14, reports The Catholic Weekly.
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01-Aug-2012
The O'Farrell government will wait for the outcomes of a Victorian inquiry into the handling of child abuse by clergy before considering any action in NSW, reports the Newcastle Herald.
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31-Jul-2012
A program to bring overseas priests into the Maitland-Newcastle diocese has been heavily criticised in a report commissioned by the diocese, reports The Tablet.
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31-Jul-2012
While a new report from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uses strong rhetoric to back religious liberty, a former diplomat says more action needs to be taken to turn those words into reality, reports the Catholic News Agency.
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30-Jul-2012
NSW police will give prosecutors evidence that three senior members of the Catholic Church allegedly concealed the sexual assault of young girls in the Hunter Valley, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
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29-Jul-2012
Chinese government officials have forced seven priests who resisted the illicit episcopal ordination of Father Joseph Yue Fusheng of Harbin to leave their parishes, local Catholic Church sources said, according to a Catholic News Service report in NCR Online.
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29-Jul-2012
Cardinal George Pell has issued a statement condemning child sex abuse, following the apparent suicide of a 45-year-old man who was repeatedly abused as a teenager by a priest, reports The Australian. But Cardinal Pell rejected the need for a judicial inquiry into abuse.
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01-Aug-2012
Catholic law professor Robert George of Princeton University is discouraging pornography use in hotel rooms by calling on hotel CEOs to consider the harm that it causes, reports the Catholic News Agency.
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31-Jul-2012
Victorian Catholic schools will be thrown into chaos next month with teachers expected to join their colleagues from the government system in the biggest school strike in the state's history, reports The Age.
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31-Jul-2012
Students from Catholic schools have taken to the streets again in Goulburn, south of Sydney, as the 50th anniversary was marked of an event that many believe helped change the face of education in Australia, reports the Canberra-Goulburn diocese newsletter.
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30-Jul-2012
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will host the first Australian Catholic Youth Festival in December 2013, the ACBC announced in a media statement.
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30-Jul-2012
A professor at the troubled University of Peru needs has called for a temporary rector to reopen dialogue between the Catholic Church and the “rebel” university which has been stripped of the titles “Pontifical” and “Catholic”, reports Vatican Insider.
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02-Aug-2012
Australia’s 75 Catholic hospitals could provide a medical training solution to the expected shortfall in medical internships next year, according to Catholic Health Australia’s CEO Martin Laverty, reports The Catholic Weekly.
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01-Aug-2012
Representatives from both the Brisbane Catholic Archdiocese and the Anglican Cathedral are among Church figures who have spoken out against the State Government's decision to refuse National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) trials in Queensland, the Catholic Leader reports.
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29-Jul-2012
The chief executive of Catholic Health Australia, Martin Laverty, said the federal government's proposal to create a new concept for the not-for-profit sector must not undermine ''public trust and confidence,'' reports The Age.
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30-Jul-2012
The question of who is the funniest Catholic in the Western world - New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan (pictured) or comedian Stephen Colbert? - will be answered in September when the two take part in a comedy slam at Fordham University in New York, reports Vatican Insider.
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Regulars
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02-Aug-2012
The decision to make priests available inside the Vatican Museums to offer spiritual comfort to visitors has been generally welcomed by tourists in Rome, reports the Catholic News Agency.
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01-Aug-2012
A few weeks ago Rupert Murdoch launched a bitter crusade against the Church of Scientology. Initially this was interpreted as being a long-held grudge against the cult’s alleged attempt to seduce his son, Lachlan, with overtures from its highest-profile member, Tom Cruise. However, Murdoch’s comments on religion drew attention to his long personal history of religious affiliations, writes Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, in The Catholic Herald.
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31-Jul-2012
Polish film director, Agnieszka Holland, the daughter of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, has made a new film, the Oscar-nominated In Darkness, which details the true story of a sewer worker in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov who sheltered a group of Jews in the sewers during the Holocaust, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
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30-Jul-2012
To acknowledge World Tourism Day, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples issued a statement calling for eco-friendly, sustainable tourism, reports the Independent Catholic News.
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29-Jul-2012
More than 20,000 people descended on the US capital last week for the XIX International AIDS Conference, and Msgr Robert Vitillo felt right at home, reports the Catholic News Service.
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02-Aug-2012
This website has all the details of the new iphone application that makes confession easier. With password protected profiles and a step-by-step guide to the Sacrament, the site invites Catholics to prepare for the Rite of Penance.
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01-Aug-2012
Religion News Blog (RNB) provides busy religion professionals, academics, reporters and others with a daily round-up of religion news. It has a particular focus on issues dealing with ‘cults,’ ‘sects,’ ‘abusive churches,’ and related issues - including religious persecution and human rights.
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31-Jul-2012
Online Catholic news service Ucanews has just relaunched its Indian edition, with a fresh design and home page. The site has a robust news coverage of events and trends in the subcontinent and Asian region, along with anlaysis and opinion.
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30-Jul-2012
The Jesuit Post is a new website designed as a meeting place for Jesuits who want to blog and share ideas. It is lively, attractively designed and full of stimulating reading.
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29-Jul-2012
Prayer Online carries a daily prayer in the classroom, one suitable for primary/infants and one for secondary schools.
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01-Aug-2012
This is a documentary about and featuring children, and, as guessed by the title, they are 11. This is the age that the writer-director says was her favourite age, still an age of childhood (where many say they would love to stay) but an age on the verge of serious transition into adolescence.
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31-Jul-2012
This is a movie about male strippers. It is based loosely on the real-life experiences of Channing Tatum, who worked as a male stripper for eight months when he was younger, and it is his life that partially motivated the director Steven Soderbergh to make the movie.
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30-Jul-2012
Rolf de Heer, celebrated writer and director for several decades now (Bad Boy Bubby, The Quiet Room, Tracker, Ten Canoes), must have experienced some traumatic neighbours – or has been able to imagine what might happen if you had very loud and violent neighbours. Here they are.
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29-Jul-2012
Watching the second episode of The Shire was a necessary burden. I already knew I loathed it – but I had to give it a chance, either to redeem itself or to confirm my first opinion. I have to say that there are two possibilities: either I’m wrongheaded and stubborn in not wanting to persist with it further, or a whole lot of otherwise intelligent and reliable TV commentators have been hypnotised.
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02-Aug-2012
The news that Aurora accused James Holmes had sought psychiatric help may broaden the Australian discussion of the secrecy of confession, writes Andrew Hamilton in Eureka Street. This debate has generally focused on whether priests can be exempted on religious grounds from the duty of disclosing to the authorities crimes revealed in confession. The inclusion of psychiatrists raises a larger question.
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01-Aug-2012
The Pope's upcoming visit to Lebanon seems unlikely to outline a bold new vision for the Arab world, nor to strike a sharply defined stance on Syria. Instead, the trip shapes up as an experiment in whether Benedict's basically "apolitical" vision of the Christian future in the Middle East has legs, writes John Allen in NCR Online.
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31-Jul-2012
The Church is desperately in need of a long-term collective, coordinated and global response to clerical sex abuse. Something of similar scope and dedication as the recent translation of the Roman Missal: an intensely focused institutional endeavour that demands the attention, energy, and gifts of hundreds of church leaders throughout the world, writes Fr Peter Day in Eureka Street.
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30-Jul-2012
The petty politics over asylum seekers must stop and give way to working constructively towards building the regional partnerships necessary for an effective plan to respond to the complexities of refugee protection and movement across borders, writes Paul Power, CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, in The Good Oil.
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29-Jul-2012
Over the next two weeks we will hear a lot about the Olympic Spirit, but rather less about the man responsible for the growth of ‘Olympism’ in the modern age. Tim Byron SJ explores the roots of Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s thinking in his Catholic educational experience, and tracks the rise of the Olympic movement alongside de Coubertin’s relationship with the Catholic Church, in Thinking Faith.
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02-Aug-2012
Campion College in Sydney will hold a three-day colloquium later this month on The Christian View of History and the Revival of the Liberal Arts. The program will feature a broad array of prominent speakers covering everything from ethics to theology and history
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