News Briefs

An activist on behalf of indigenous communities on Mindanao in the Philippines, the Rev. Fausto Tentorio, 59, was killed by gunfire on Oct. 17. • Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services objected to a Pentagon memo allowing military chaplains to officiate at same-sex marriages, arguing that unions are prohibited by the federal Defense of Marriage Act. • Pope Benedict has invited nonbelievers for the first time to an ecumenical religious peace gathering in Assisi, Italy, on Oct. 27. • Two Spanish relief workers with Doctors Without Borders were kidnapped by Shabab gunmen at a Somali refugee camp on Oct. 13. • The U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities welcomed House passage of the Protect Life Act on Oct. 13, which applies federal policies on abortion funding and conscience rights to health reform legislation passed last year. • Pope Benedict XVI declared 2012-13 a “year of faith” on Oct. 16, to give new impetus to the church’s mission to lead people “out of the desert…to the place of life, of friendship with Christ.” • Dean Brackley, 65, an American Jesuit who joined the faculty of the University of Central America in El Salvador after six of his fellow Jesuits were murdered in 1989, died there of pancreatic and liver cancer on Oct. 16.