News/International

NEW DELHI - Church leaders in Kerala state have expressed shock and outrage over the killing of Sr. Valsa John, who campaigned for tribal rights in eastern India.

Sr. John, 53, a member of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, was hacked to death at her home in a remote area of the east Indian state of Jharkhand. Earlier reports had said the nun had been shot dead.

The Asian Church news agency UCA News cited unspecified reports that a mob of around 50 people gathered outside Sr. John's home early Nov. 16, shortly before her death.

VATICAN CITY - The unusual and somewhat mysterious gestation process of Vatican documents came into the spotlight recently, thanks to a controversial white paper on economic justice.

In essence, critics of the document -- which called for a global authority to curb the excesses of financial markets -- speculated that its authorspo had done an "end run" to avoid the pre-publication scrutiny of top Vatican officials.

That turned out not to be true, but the episode illustrated that the editing and approval procedures at the Vatican are less than transparent and far from uniform.

VATICAN CITY - A Catholic movement based in France has acknowledged with "humility and repentance" that acts of sexual abuse were committed by its founder and other important members of the organization.

The Community of the Beatitudes, in a statement posted on its French website Nov. 16, said that under the oversight of a commissioner appointed last year by the Vatican, it was undergoing a process of "purification, restructuring and re-founding."

The detailed statement came two weeks ahead of the scheduled start of a criminal trial of Brother Pierre-Etienne Albert, a top member of the community, who has been accused of dozens of acts of sexual abuse of minors over a period of 15 years.

BALTIMORE - The scandal rocking Penn State University shows both the scope of the sex abuse problem and the value of safe environment training, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said at a Nov. 14 news conference.

Responding to a question following the first session of the USCCB fall general assembly in Baltimore, Archbishop Timothy Dolan said the news that has led to the indictment of several Penn State officials and the firing of the university’s president and longtime football coach Joe Paterno “has reopened a wound in the Church as well.”

VIENNA - Austria’s Catholic bishops have rejected a call by dissident Church members for laypeople to begin celebrating Mass in parishes with no priests.

The bishops said that some demands connected to “this call for disobedience at the initiative of priests and laity are simply unsustainable” and breach “the central truth of our Catholic faith.”

“As bishops, we are all naturally concerned about our Church’s real and serious problems — Austrian dioceses are facing up to the situation and taking opportunities to innovate,” said a statement issued at the end of the Nov. 7-10 meeting.

BALTIMORE - At the start of their annual three-day fall assembly in Baltimore, the U.S. bishops were urged to restore the luster, credibility and beauty of the Catholic Church in the hearts of its members.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York called on his fellow bishops Nov. 14 to communicate to the world that the sinfulness of the church's members is not "a reason to dismiss the church or her eternal truths, but to embrace her all the more."

In his first presidential address since election as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last November, he opened and closed with the words: "Love for Jesus and his church must be the passion of our lives."

VATICAN CITY - To protect innocent civilians from the harmful effects of weapons of war, "international humanitarian law remains an essential safety measure not to be weakened," a Vatican official said.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, focused on the responsibility to protect civilian populations from harmful weapons in an address Nov. 14 to a conference reviewing the international Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

"The responsibility of the CCW to protect civilian populations rests on its ability to comply with the provisions of international humanitarian law and even in strengthening them," he said.

VATICAN CITY - In rejecting research using embryonic stem cells, the Catholic Church is not trying to impede science or delay treatment that can save lives, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The church's opposition to the use and destruction of embryos flows from the conviction that all human life is sacred and that destroying the most defenseless will never lead to a true benefit for humanity, the Pope said Nov. 12 to participants in a Vatican-sponsored conference on research using adult stem cells.

"When the end in view is so eminently desirable as the discovery of a cure for degenerative illnesses, it is tempting for scientists and policy-makers to brush aside ethical objections and to press ahead with whatever research seems to offer the prospect of a breakthrough," the Pope said.

VATICAN CITY - With a tap on an iPad, Pope Benedict XVI will light the world's largest electronic Christmas tree in the Italian town of Gubbio without having to leave his home in Vatican City.

The City of Gubbio and the Diocese of Gubbio announced at a news conference Nov. 12 that the Pope would light the tree via a video link set up by the Vatican Television Center. The tree-lighting ceremony takes place on the evening of Dec. 7, the eve of the Immaculate Conception.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Belmont Abbey College is suing the federal government over a new regulation that requires employer health insurance plans to provide free coverage of contraceptives and sterilization, even if it may be contrary to their religious beliefs.

The civil lawsuit was filed Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court in Washington by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington-based nonprofit, public-interest law firm that is representing the Catholic liberal arts college in Belmont.