News Briefs

In a world where profit reigns over human dignity, solidarity has become a “dirty word” and risks being removed from the dictionary, Pope Francis said in a video message aired on Nov. 21 during the third Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church in Verona, Italy. • Alec Reid, the 82-year-old Redemptorist priest praised for his role in ending the decades-long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, died on Nov. 22 in a Dublin hospital. • “This is perhaps the sign of the joining of two extremes, remote antiquity and modernity,” said Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi on Nov. 19, at a news conference in Rome heralding the debut of the Catacombs of Priscilla on Google’s Street View feature. • During a debate in London on Nov. 20, all three houses of the Church of England General Synod—bishops, clergy and laity—voted 378 to 8, with 25 abstentions, in favor of the ordination of women bishops. • A little more than a week after the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the World Jewish Congress on Nov. 19 honored Elie and Marion Wiesel with its Theodor Herzl Award in New York City