News Briefs

On June 15 Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to U.N. organizations in Geneva, called for a U.N. human rights investigation into the case of Farah Hatim, a 24-year-old Pakistani Christian woman who had been kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and marry. • The Rev. Alois Andritzki, a German priest who was killed by lethal injection at Dachau, was beatified on June 13 in a service at Dresden Cathedral. • The Mennonite-affiliated Goshen College of Indiana has again prohibited the national anthem at sporting events, reversing a decision last year to allow it, as some Mennonites consider its lyrics too militaristic for their pacifist tradition. • Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, England, said on June 11 that traditional marriage was a “public good,” vitally important for the “whole of society” to support at a time when more British couples than ever were choosing to live and have children together outside of marriage. • The Vatican confirmed that the planned illicit ordination of the Rev. Joseph Shen Guoan as bishop of Hankou was postponed indefinitely, adding that it hoped the decision marks the end to all ordinations without papal approval in China.