News Briefs

The highest court in Britain has ordered a clarification of the law on assisted suicide after hearing a plea from a multiple sclerosis sufferer who wanted to know if her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her to travel to a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. More than 100 British citizens have killed themselves in the clinic. • Seven Catholics who were detained after a violent police raid at a disputed Vietnamese church site will face criminal charges, a Vietnamese official announced July 28. The group was taken into custody on July 20 after trying to erect a cross at the ruins of a parish church that had been destroyed by U.S. bombers during the Vietnam War. The bishop’s office of the Vinh Diocese immediately denounced the decision. • The Mexican Catholic bishops’ conference has criticized federal police for bursting into a Mass in Mexico’s western Michoacan State to apprehend an alleged drug-cartel lieutenant. “We make an energetic protest against the lack of respect and the violence,” the bishops said on Aug. 3. • Despite a personal request from Pope Benedict XVI and repeated requests by Christian leaders in Turkey, the Turkish government has decided that the only church in Tarsus, the city of St. Paul’s birth, will remain a government museum. The Church of St. Paul, built as a Catholic church in the 1800s, was confiscated by the government in 1943.