News
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Western Australian Minister for the South West, Mark McGowan, yesterday presented a cheque for $2.5 million to Bunbury Bishop Gerard Holohan for the rebuilding of the city's tornado-devastated Cathedral precinct.
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Saying that Australia's democracy took centuries to overcome racism and civil war, Suva Archbishop Petero Mataca says that criticism by Fiji's neighbours of the recent coup is "condescending and a throwback to colonial times".
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31-Jan-2008
Rowdy supporters of a Vatican-backed football tournament have been
asked to keep down their raucous cheering following complaints from
neighbours.
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Often feeling pent up in his papal apartment, John Paul II secretly skipped town for over 100 skiing trips in the Italian mountains but - dressed in jacket, beret and sunglasses - was rarely recognised, according to new revelations by his former secretary.
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Pope Benedict has slammed violent or sexually explicit video games and films targetting young children, a day after he offered support to an Italian project which aims to take toy guns out of children's hands.
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Pope John Paul II's former secretary has revealed that the late pontiff seriously contemplated resigning because of ill health as news emerges that that three miracles credited to his intercession are on the verge of being accredited.
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A Vatican soccer dream team to be selected from the best players in a 16 team soccer league made up of seminarians, clergy and lay men studying in Rome to debut next month may play against top Italian football clubs.
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Following a high level meeting on China, the Vatican has called for dialogue to restore ties with Beijing severed 60 years ago, announcing that Pope Benedict is to write a special letter to Chinese Catholics.
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The Australian Catholic University has announced plans to present Vatican Secretary of Catholic Education, Archbishop J Michael Miller, with an honorary doctorate in recognition of his services in the field.
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Newly released figures show that the Vatican's justice department dealt with 827 civil and criminal cases during 2006, resulting in the tiny papal state having the world's worst per capita crime statistics, a German magazine says.
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The NSW Government has announced the appointment of a transport expert, Roy Wakelin-King, as coordinator of the World Youth Day Authority, which will have traffic management powers similar to those at the 2000 Olympics.
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Withdrawing welfare payments was not the way to help people into jobs, Catholic Social Services director, Francis Quinlan, said after reports emerged of a four-months pregnant unemployed woman whose welfare payments were cut off for eight weeks for breaching Centrelink requirements.
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Marist brothers are "dreaming" of a Marist International Festival on the theme "Pilgrimage of the Heart" that the community plans to hold in Sydney in the lead up to World Youth Day.
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Welcoming news that charges against Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks may be downgraded, Australian Catholic Social Justice Council chief, Bishop Christopher Saunders says that respect for natural justice should lead prosecutors to drop all charges against him.
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Catholic Social Services has welcomed news that Centacare agencies will be involved in ten new Family Relationship Centres but Greens Senator Rachel Siewert says she is "concerned" at the Government's award of 25 contracts to "faith-based organisations".
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The British Church's adoption services may be forced to close down if new gay rights laws required Catholic agencies to provide services that contradict Church teaching, Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor told the British Government.
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An Italian historian claims to have definitively identified the grave of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa on the basis of information contained in a 16th century "Book of the Dead" newly discovered in a Florence church archive.
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Because of the role of women in Islam, a German Catholic diocese is advising Catholic women who marry Muslims to draw up a new kind of pre-nuptial legal agreement, specifying among other things that marriage is permanent.
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Former Milan Cardinal Carlo Martini has weighed in on the Italian euthanasia debate in favour of a right to refuse treatment following the case of a man who was denied a Church funeral because he had asked to be removed from a life-saving respirator.
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France's equivalent of Mother Teresa, a priest known as Abbe Pierre who was a member of the French Resistance during World War II and who became famous for his campaign against homelessness, will be buried with national honours after his death yesterday at 94.
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Leaders of the Chinese government-recognised and unofficial Catholic communities have welcomed initiatives announced by the Holy See over the weekend including the formation of a permanent Vatican commission on China.
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Days after the Holy See launched a new bid to reconcile a longstanding dispute with China's government, Nguyen Tan Dung will tomorrow make the first visit by a Vietnamese Prime Minister to the Vatican.
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A senior Pakistani government official has indicated that the country's harsh blasphemy laws, which Christians and rights groups say are used by Muslims to oppress minorities, will be modified after the forthcoming national elections.
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Christian lay leaders cannot work separately from mainstream justice lobby groups, says a Bangladeshi Catholic youth leader, explaining why so many Catholics are involved in the massive World Social Forum gathering of civil groups being held this week in Nairobi, Kenya.
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A former Christian brother yesterday pleaded guilty to five counts of abuse involving three boys at a Perth Catholic college more than 20 years ago, while denying charges involving a fourth boy.
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Regulars
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In 1949, the future Pope was a misspelled name in the reports sent to the secret police by a turncoat priest in the Krakow curia. But they would get to know him very well over the next forty years, until the death of the regime, while his life was bugged, filmed, followed, and analysed "24/7". "Zagielowski", who wrote a report in which "Wojdyla" was pointed out as someone to keep an eye on, was recruited in 1948 and would be active until his death in 1967 - Gigi Riva
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The news from China in recent weeks confirms a rift between the official Church created by the authorities in opposition to Rome, and the one that is united with the Pope and not officially recognised by the state. But the same news shows the divisions and developments even within the official Church. Bishops of the official Church are tending to withdraw increasingly from the submission to the communist regime. The Pope and Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen are encouraging them: "Enough with the compromises" - Sandro Magister
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In my view, our private schools are examples of state-sponsored segregation and state-sponsored separatism. We are seeing in these private schools the increasing segregation by race, ethnicity, class, and religion. It was interesting that after the London bombings a year or so ago, when the media talked about "home-grown" terrorists, Australians started asking, "Why is the government funding Muslim schools?" You can't distinguish on the basis of a Muslim school versus a Catholic school versus a Greek Orthodox school - Angelo Gavrielatos (interview)
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Vocations to female contemplative orders in Italy are booming, according to the Italian bishops' conference. The Vatican's Cardinal Franc Rode believes convents offer what is lacking in much of modern, secular society. In a general sense, he said, it "shows what young generations are looking for today: a space for silence, where they can enter into this silence, recollect, and therefore find - themselves, and find God." Today's young religious sisters give a variety of reasons for joining a contemplative order - Edward Pentin
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In the Middle Ages, the Christian calendar began to mention a Saint "Josaphat" or "Iodasaph." Historians now acknowledge that these references in Latin documents are garbled forms of "Bodhisattva" - that is, Gautama the Buddha. The story of how the Buddha became a Catholic saint is, for interreligious dialogue, a curious but felicitous one. I wonder if my mother - a church-fearing, twice-a-day churchgoer raised to believe that no one except Catholics can be saved - had an intuitive inkling of all this when she was praying to the Buddha while visiting Vietnam a few years ago - Fr Peter C Pham
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John Howard's Australia Day message to Catch the Fire Ministries is a perfect example of sub-text at work. Howard's recorded video message will be tame, I am sure, when played to the group on Australia Day. But Howard also knows that Catch the Fire is a controversial group known for its crusades against Islam and Victoria's anti-religious vilification law. Howard is not primarily associating himself with the Christian religion by participating in its meeting. Rather, he is associating himself with the cause of hostility towards the Islamic religion - Paul Gray
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In Europe, the Christian stories of the Fall and Apocalypse no longer have the impact they once did. Environmentalism now fulfils for many people the widespread longing for simple, all-encompassing narratives. Environmentalism offers an alternative account of the natural world to the religious and an alternative anti-capitalist account of the political world to the Marxist. It embraces a myth of the Fall: the loss of harmony between man and nature caused by our materialistic society. Now it has found a persuasive Apocalypse myth: global warming - John Kay
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Because Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini is in charge of "the pope's backyard," his actions carry an emblematic weight that few others can rival. His comments at this week's meeting of the Permanent Council of the Italian Bishops' Conference are thus worth noting. The Permanent Council meets three times a year, and Ruini's major address has become a routine staple of front-page coverage in the Italian press. Ruini's message this time boils down to a resounding "no" on several hotly contested moral issues, most notably euthanasia - John L Allen
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