News
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May 27, 2013
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ghana has appealed to the nation’s doctors to return to work and save lives, after nearly a month-long strike. Members of the Ghana Medical Association withdrew outpatient services and suspended emergency services on April 8 over issues related to salaries and pensions. “While we want our doctors to receive adequate remuneration for their work, we do not want human lives to be lost as a result of this strike.
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May 27, 2013
School-choice initiatives were given a big boost in late March when the Indiana Supreme Court upheld one of the country’s most comprehensive school-choice programs. The state court backed a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that because school vouchers primarily benefit families, they could not be viewed as an unconstitutional state support for religion.
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May 27, 2013
The annual audit of diocesan compliance with the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” found “the fewest allegations and victims reported since the data collection for the annual reports began in 2004.” StoneBridge Business Partners, which conducts the audits under the direction of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People, said law enforcement found six credible cases among 34 allegations of...
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May 27, 2013
U.S. bishops are objecting to Israel’s decision to build a separation barrier along a route that will nearly surround a convent and its primary school and confiscate most of their land on the outskirts of a Palestinian West Bank community. Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, protested the Israeli plan to build the barrier near Beit Jalla in a letter...
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May 27, 2013
A bomb attack on May 5 at a church in Arusha, Tanzania, killed two people and wounded a dozen more. The Vatican nuncio, Archbishop Francisco Padilla, escaped unharmed. • A degeneration of religion is how the Vatican’s culture minister, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, on May 8 described Mexico’s “Santa Muerte,” worshipped both by drug dealers and everyday Mexicans terrorized by drug violence.
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May 20, 2013
The Rev. Scott Deeley, assistant chancellor of the Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, said that while the church “won’t be telling people how to vote” in the fall 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, “some bishops have indicated unofficially they’d have no problem with independence.” • Foreign Policy magazine included Pope Francis and Carolyn Woo, president and chief executive officer of Catholic Relief Services, among the 500 most...
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May 20, 2013
Nearly 2.5 million refugees are now scattered in camps in states bordering Syria, a crisis that threatens to overwhelm underfunded U.N. capacity and upset regional political order. Jordan warned the U.N. Security Council on April 30 that the swelling refugee population was a threat to its stability. Around 1,600 Syrians crossed into Jordan on May 1, raising the total number of refugees that week alone to over 12,000, according to the Jordan Armed Forces.
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May 20, 2013
The Food and Drug Administration “acted irresponsibly” with its decision to lower the age limit from 17 to 15 for purchasing an over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, said an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “No public health consideration justifies the unsupervised sale of such drugs to young teens,” said Deirdre McQuade, spokeswoman for the U.S.C.C.B.’s Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
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May 20, 2013
The median age of men ordained to the priesthood in 2013 is 32; two-thirds are Caucasian; and 26 percent carry educational debt. These figures stand out in “The Class of 2013: Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood,” the annual national survey of men being ordained priests for U.S. dioceses and religious communities. The study, conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown University-based research center, received responses from 366 of 497 potential ordinands...
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May 20, 2013
The need for improved relationships and a rebuilding of trust in the church is the message that emerged from a meeting of the International Union of Superiors General, which opened in Rome on May 3. The conference brought together 800 leaders of women’s religious communities worldwide.