News Briefs

Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee plans to veto legislation meant to force Vanderbilt University to exempt student religious groups from its nondiscrimination policy. • The Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., are facing lawsuits from Catholic schoolteachers fired for pursuing in vitro fertilization treatments. • On May 2 Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland said he will not resign despite questions raised in a BBC documentary about his role in a canonical inquiry into a pedophile priest in 1975. • Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago on April 25 presided over the burial of some of the 120 fetuses stored at a medical examiner’s office. • The Obama administration has issued guidelines for federally funded faith-based groups, ranging from explanations of the term “explicitly religious” activity to ways to preserve religious identities while using federal funds. • As the May 27 deadline approaches for a new constitution in Nepal, Bishop Anthony Sharma, S.J., apostolic vicar to that country, said on May 3, “We want a secular state, which protects freedoms and individual rights and recognizes all religious communities...that gives women equal rights, equal opportunity, finally overcoming the caste system.”