Newsbriefs

Paulist Father Lawrence Boadt, a leading Catholic biblical scholar and former CEO and president of Paulist Press, died at his residence in Mahwah, N.J., July 24 after a long battle with cancer. He was 67. ♦ In the wake of an undercover video and news report documenting priests in Rome engaged in homosexual acts, the Rome Diocese has called for priests engaged in "unworthy" behavior to leave the priesthood and stop sullying the reputation of the vast majority of honorable ministers. ♦ Pope Benedict XVI has given his new papal delegate, Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, broad powers of authority over the Legionaries of Christ as part of a major Vatican-led reform of the order. ♦ On July 22, Sudan's bishops called upon Sudanese officials to ensure that the Jan. 9, 2011 referendum for Southern Sudan—and a separate one for Abyei—which will decide the future of the war-torn nation take place "on time, in a free and fair manner, and that the outcomes are recognized and respected.” ♦ In the wake of a series of clerical child abuse scandals, Ireland’s newest prelate, Bishop Liam S. MacDaid of Clogher, called on the people of his diocese to join him in "a repentant return to the well of salvation." Speaking at his consecration at St. Macartan's Cathedral, Monaghan, July 25, Bishop MacDaid said: "Society has forced us in the Irish church to look into the mirror, and what we saw were weakness and failure, victims and abuse. The surgeon's knife has been painful but necessary.” ♦ Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor in the University of Illinois' religious studies department barred from teaching courses on Catholicism after he defended in class the church's teaching on homosexual behavior, was reinstated July 29.