{mosimage}ROCHESTER, N.Y. - When Hippolyt Pul was a young boy, farmers in his home country of Ghana often referred to the feast of the Ascension as “the feast of the bean leaf.”

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might, according to the director of the Vatican Observatory.

Science is and should be seen as “completely neutral" on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results, said Fr. George V. Coyne, S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory, while noting that “science and religion are totally separate pursuits."

When Marlene West faced her family to tell them about her plans regarding her death she got a surprise — tears and grasping for words that just wouldn’t come.

A team of health and climate scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the World Health Organization has recently compiled compelling data that confirms countries in Africa and coastal countries along the Pacific and Indian Ocean are the most vulnerable to the lethal effects of global climate change.

Where do all the pharmaceutical drugs, cosmetics and toiletry chemicals go after we've ingested them, fed them to our livestock or rinsed them off our bodies?

I was very concerned to read Dorothy Cummings’ critique on Heather Eaton’s book, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, published in your Dec. 11 issue. Not only did Cummings gravely err in her assessment of this important book about ecofeminism but she disparages a fine writer and a crucial new focus in theology.

OTTAWA - As a Canadian federal agency authorized the use of  unfrozen human embryos for stem cell research, a highly placed Vatican official warned that Catholics involved in any aspect of the destruction of human embryos could face excommunication.

In an interview published in an Italian magazine June 28, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo said, "destroying human life is equivalent to abortion."

The Canadian Catholic Bioethics Centre (CCBI) has added its voice to the growing chorus of those opposed to federal Bill C-407, which would make euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide legal in Canada.

September is upon us and with it the important responsibility of getting our young brood back to school to learn their ABCs. But what about our own responsibility for continued learning?

{mosimage}Slytherin-type publishers beware. Harry Potter's back and this time with an eco-friendly spell that has muggles by the millions buying only ancient forest-friendly versions of J.K. Rowling's latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Scholastic, the world's largest Potter publisher with its 11 million print-run of the Harry Potter book (a record in the publishing industry), has earned its Slytherin reputation (Slytherin having a sinister connotation in Harry Potter's world) and become the target of a coalition of environmental groups for not openly committing to printing with 100-per-cent ancient forest-friendly paper.