News Briefs

Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, of Mosul, Iraq (right), will be honored posthumously with the 2009 Path to Peace Award in New York on June 9. Archbishop Rahho pushed for tolerance among Iraqis following the start of the Iraq War. He was kidnapped and killed after a prayer service in 2008. • Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun called the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre martyrs who died to promote democracy and a clean government in China. More than 600 Catholics attended a May 29 Mass celebrated by Cardinal Zen, retired bishop of Hong Kong to mark the 20th anniversary of the uprising. • Officials in the Diocese of Regensburg, Germany, have said plans by the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X to ordain new priests without Vatican consent at a local seminary will lead to their excommunication. "This will be uncanonical, since they have no entitlement to conduct their own ordinations," said diocese spokesman Jakub Schotz. • Haitian Father Gerard Jean-Juste, an often controversial advocate for the poor and impoverished in Haiti and for Haitian refugees in the United States, died in a Miami hospital May 27 of complications from a stroke and a lung problem. He was 62.