News
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27-Aug-2007
The Vatican's semi-official newspaper has condemned a botched double abortion that took place recently in Milan.
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27-Aug-2007
NSW Premier Morris Iemma has ruled out moving the World Youth Day closing mass venue from Randwick racecourse.
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27-Aug-2007
The NSW Greens have joined the racing industry in calling for World Youth Day celebrations to be moved from Randwick Racecourse.
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27-Aug-2007
World Youth Day may be shut out of Randwick Racecourse. Yesterday angry
horse trainers vowed that they would stay put and block critical works.
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27-Aug-2007
World Youth Day organisers have issued a call for nearly 2000 young
volunteers to lead catechesis animating teams during next July's event.
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27-Aug-2007
Saying "not a sod has been turned at Randwick racecourse in preparation
for the WYD closing Mass with Pope Benedict", Cups winner Bart Cummings
has again urged that the event be moved to another venue.
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27-Aug-2007
A British priest will hear "eco-confessions" at a Greenpeace fair at
the weekend in a bid to raise awareness of the need for an examination
of conscience on environmental issues.
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27-Aug-2007
An unnamed Marist brother is facing 21 sex offence charges dating back
to the early 1970s when he taught in a Sydney Catholic primary school.
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27-Aug-2007
Retired Sydney Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has challenged compulsory priestly celibacy in a new book.
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27-Aug-2007
After it adopted a policy of backing limited abortion rights, Amnesty
International has been accused of "duping" Catholic rock singers
including Avril Lavigne and Christina Aguilera who both contributed to
an Amnesty CD to raise money for survivors of Darfur atrocities.
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27-Aug-2007
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has promised more money for Notre Dame University's teaching, medicine and nursing faculties.
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27-Aug-2007
Labor Health spokesperson Nicola Roxon says the Opposition will consider a voucher scheme proposed by Catholic Health Australia
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27-Aug-2007
Labor Health spokesperson Nicola Roxon says the Opposition will consider a voucher scheme proposed by Catholic Health Australia
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27-Aug-2007
Labor Health spokesperson Nicola Roxon says the Opposition will consider a voucher scheme proposed by Catholic Health Australia
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27-Aug-2007
In a pre-election policy push, Catholic Health Australia has called for
a new "MediLink" system to provide vouchers of up to $1,000 for medical
services for chronically ill patients who have been discharged from
hospital.
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27-Aug-2007
Controversy has broken out over an entry in the Blake Religious Art Prize depicting Our Lady dressed in a burqa.
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27-Aug-2007
An Indigenous artist from northern WA has won this year's for the
$15,000 Blake Prize for Religious Art with a traditional ochre painting
of the Stations of the Cross.
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News - National
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27-Aug-2007
The Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund has decided to modify its international equities weighting in favour of emerging markets.
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27-Aug-2007
Police assisted by local aboriginal trackers have found the body of Sr Bernadette O'Connor.
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27-Aug-2007
Police are investigating a possible link between a recent fire at an
ACT Catholic school and a blaze last year in church at nearby
Adaminaby.
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News - International
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27-Aug-2007
Pope Benedict has said that the gate may be narrow, but anybody can can
get to heaven. However a passport is required, and it must be stamped
with the virtues of humility, mercy and truth.
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27-Aug-2007
Fire has damaged a significant painting at Rome's Purgatory Museum.
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27-Aug-2007
A British Catholic school has reserved a desk, coat peg, and locker for Madeleine McCann.
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27-Aug-2007
Philippine church officials have called for government intervention
after villagers were injured in protests against an Australian owned
mine.
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27-Aug-2007
In a bid to boost Holy Land visitor numbers, Israel's Ministry of
Tourism is partnering with the Holy See's new charter flight service
for pilgrims.
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27-Aug-2007
Catholic organisations are mobilising to request clemency for a 17 year old Sri Lankan Muslim maid.
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Religion
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27-Aug-2007
Airport officials in France have refused to allow Catholic pilgrims to bring Lourdes holy water on board an aircraft.
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27-Aug-2007
Blessed Mother Teresa suffered from a deep crisis of faith for the last
40 years of her life, it has been revealed, but this will not
jeopardise her eventual canonisation, Vatican sources say.
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27-Aug-2007
Organisers of an online petition calling for married clergy have said
current trends point to the availability of only one priest for every
three parishes.
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27-Aug-2007
Cult leader William Kamm has been sentenced to an extra four year in prison for the rape of another of his young followers.
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Regulars
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27-Aug-2007
No Roman summer would be complete without a Catholic soap opera, and
this year it has been provided by Fr Sante Sguotti, a priest of the
Monterosso diocese near Padua. Sguotti has acknowledged falling in love
with a 40-year-old local woman, separated from her husband, and helping
her name her one-year-old child. He has made conflicting statements,
however, about whether he is the child's father. Sguotti said he
intends to become a "chaste fiance" of the woman and plans to stay
within the limits on priests imposed by the Code of Canon Law - John L Allen
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27-Aug-2007
I feel blessed for many reasons. It is a blessing to be born in
Bethlehem from a Christian family. My father hails from a
Lebanese-Syrian Maronite (Eastern Catholic) family. Living as part of a
Christian minority in a predominately Middle Eastern Muslim society was
not any easier. This double bind spelt doom for 400,000 other
Palestinian Christians and has forced 80 per cent of them to leave the
land of their ancestors in the past 40 years. Most of their ancestors
had lived in the Holy Land - their home land - since the times of Jesus
- Abe Ata
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27-Aug-2007
Nearly two decades on from events that led, under John Paul II, to the
downfall of Communism, the Catholic Church in Poland is again set to
play a significant role in the politics of Europe. This time, however,
it is not a Pope, nor even the Polish bishops, but a clerical media
mogul who is the leading player in this drama, and in ways that appear
potentially damaging to the Church's reputation - John Cornwell
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27-Aug-2007
According to my sampling of Asian laity-clergy opinions, priests are
often viewed distantly, as little more than Sacrament-dispensing
zombies. Most survey participants said priests get drained physically
and spiritually in the anonymity of today's ecclesial supermarkets.
Some laypeople said that when priests get trapped between cynical laity
and unsympathetic superiors, commitment wanes into careerism.
Unsurprisingly, both lay and priest respondents regard personal
holiness as central for the life and witness of those who "left
everything and followed" Jesus - Hector Welgampola
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27-Aug-2007
A Sunday morning Mass this month at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Immokalee,
Florida, Church began with a hymn called "City of God." Ten minutes
from Our Lady of Guadalupe's, the new residents of Ave Maria town
gathered for a Mass of their own. Surrounded by a 300-acre university,
quaint storefronts and high-end condominiums, Mass will be celebrated
in English and Latin. At Our Lady of Guadalupe, surrounded by a car
wash, wrought iron fence and cracked parking lot, Mass is celebrated in
English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to accommodate the migrant worker
community - Liam Dillon
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27-Aug-2007
Some may feel the Catholic Church is a generation behind everyone else
in attitudes to abortion. I believe the church is a generation in front
of popular opinion on protecting human life from womb to tomb. The
crucial question is: When does life begin? Catholics believe that the
life process begins at the time of conception. Medical science seems to
be pushing certainty about this matter back earlier and earlier than in
times past. The Catholic Church stands unashamedly alongside this
"silent" humanity. We want to become a voice for the voiceless. Even
one abortion is too many - Archbishop Denis Hart
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27-Aug-2007
Some may feel the Catholic Church is a generation behind everyone else
in attitudes to abortion. I believe the church is a generation in front
of popular opinion on protecting human life from womb to tomb. The
crucial question is: When does life begin? Catholics believe that the
life process begins at the time of conception. Medical science seems to
be pushing certainty about this matter back earlier and earlier than in
times past. The Catholic Church stands unashamedly alongside this
"silent" humanity. We want to become a voice for the voiceless. Even
one abortion is too many - Archbishop Denis Hart
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27-Aug-2007
Sexual abuse has been called the biggest crisis for the Catholic Church
since the 16th-century Reformation. But according to retired Sydney
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, the church is still mostly tinkering around
the edges in its response to the problem. Robinson's book Confronting
Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, which went on sale yesterday, is
extremely impressive: thoughtful, open and constructive. It will surely
get worldwide attention among Catholics, though the probable response
from the Vatican will be silence. That's because it can't do much: he
is retired and the book is on the shelves - Barney Zwartz
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27-Aug-2007
Over the years I have done a lot of talking at bioethics conferences.
Commonly, I am approached after my lecture by someone, especially a
young doctor or a nurse. They will have a hard question which is
troubling them. It will be something like: "I would never do an
abortion. But I am part of a team or an institution that mostly does
good work, but that sometimes does unethical things like abortion. How
involved can I be before I am really part of the problem?" When should
I co-operate with someone who is doing something wrong? The simplest
answer would be: never - Bishop Anthony Fisher
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27-Aug-2007
I moved to Peru with my family in 1966 when I was 5 years old. Three
months after our arrival, Peru was shocked by one of its historic
earthquakes. Four years later, when I was 9, Peru suffered one of its
most devastating quakes in May 1970, which killed some 15,000 people in
the Northern Andes. With more than 15 earthquakes on my record, I
though I was accustomed to all types of them - until 15 August when a
magnitude-8 earthquake struck the western coast. There are now people
who ask "Why, God?" - Alejandro Bermudez
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27-Aug-2007
Within the Catholic Church the power of the rock, the pope, has held
the Church together. Its weakness, however, is that all the divisions
do not go away, but are contained within the Church. Outsiders
frequently have the idea of a monolithic Church, with everyone meekly
obeying the pope, and they can fail completely to understand just how
diverse the Church is and how fierce are the divisions and the
struggles for power within the Church. I believe that the major
division is between the proclaimers of certainties and the seekers
after truth - Bishop Geoffrey Robinson
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