News Briefs

Supreme Court justices in Brazil voted on April 12 to legalize the abortion of fetuses with out brains or those with malformed brains. • About 75 Occupy San Francisco activists were arrested on April 2 when police officers removed them from a building owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco. • Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut has pledged to sign a bill approved by the state legislature in April that will make Connecticut the 17th state to abolish the death penalty. • On March 30 Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass., rescinded its invitation to Victoria Kennedy, widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, to speak during spring commencement ceremonies after Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worchester said he found her an “objectionable” choice. • Members of the Sisters of the Presentation in Pakistan’s Swat Valley on April 11 celebrated as “a sign of resurrection” the reopening of a girls’ school that had been destroyed by the Taliban in 2008. • During Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Benedict XVI criticized dissent from church teachings and disobedience of God’s will as illegitimate pathways toward reform and renewal and cautioned against calls for women’s ordination.• Anglican parishes in Philadelphia and Indianapolis were received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in early April, and two Anglican bishops in Canada were slated to lead their clergy and congregants into the church later in the month.