News/International

DUBLIN - Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley reportedly will tell Pope Benedict XVI that the Catholic Church in Ireland is “on the edge” of collapse due to the fallout from clerical abuse scandals.

O’Malley is one of several senior prelates — including Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins and Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J. — charged by Pope Benedict with carrying out an apostolic visitation of the Irish Catholic Church following a series of highly critical judicial reports that revealed abuse by priests and a widespread culture of cover-up for decades among Church leaders.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Two priests with strong ties to Egypt fear young Egyptian Catholics will turn away from the Church because it did not back the protests that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

"If we lose the youth in the Church, then we are done," said Fr. Makarios Isaac, an Egyptian-born priest of the archdiocese of Toronto and an associate of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers who is currently based in Kenya.

Isaac, originally ordained for the Coptic Catholic diocese of Minya, Egypt, and the former diocesan development director there, said the main Muslim and Orthodox leaders forbade participation in the protests. He said the Coptic Catholic patriarch of Alexandria, Cardinal Antonios Naguib, told protesters to go home.

ROME - The diocese of Rome launched a new web site dedicated to the beatification and canonization of Pope John Paul II.

Published in seven languages, the site www.karol-wojtyla.org offers news updates and background information on the late pope and his sainthood cause, as well as a live webcam of his tomb in the grotto of St. Peter's Basilica.

The web site also announced that the beatification ceremony in St. Peter's Square May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, will be open to the public and no tickets will be required to attend. The evening before the ceremony, April 30, there will be a prayer vigil at Rome's ancient Circus Maximus racetrack, it said.

As Catholics and Anglicans sit down again for official theological dialogue this spring, they face the challenge of adding to some of the most substantial and carefully reasoned theological documents written in the last 35 years.

“It’s been some of the best theology of the 20th century, and we’re into the 21st century now. It’s excellent theology,” said Margaret O’Gara, a former Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) member and professor at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

A new stage of ARCIC discussions opens May 17 to 27 at the Monastery of Bose in northern Italy. The international dialogue group has been asked by the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI to examine “the Church as communion — local and universal” and “how in  communion the local and universal Church comes to discern right ethical teaching.”

LAHORE, Pakistan - The head of the Catholic Church in Pakistan expressed outrage at the government’s decision to withdraw a private member’s bill proposing changes in the country’s blasphemy law, calling it “an act of surrender.”

“It’s a mistake giving in to pressure by Islamic parties,” Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, president of Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, told the Asian church news agency UCA News. “The government has totally caved in and there seems no prospect of changes in the controversial legislation in the near future.”

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the National Assembly Feb. 2 that the government never intended to change the law and had disbanded the committee reviewing it. The blasphemy law makes insulting the Quran punishable by life imprisonment, and calls for the death penalty for insulting Mohammed.

ALLOUEZ, Wis. - If the Super Bowl is anything like the National Football Conference championship game, Norbertine Father Jim Baraniak said he expected an overflow crowd.

The Packers' Catholic chaplain wasn't referring to the attendance at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, but rather the Mass to be celebrated before the big game Feb. 6.

In Chicago, before the Packers beat the Bears Jan. 23, "everybody showed up. We maxed out the room," said Baraniak.

"It was just unbelievable,. The Mass was full of energy. I felt nervous during the homily."

ROME - Police and military officials will not be able to stop demonstrators in Egypt or other countries of North Africa, said the former rector of Rome's Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies.

"Ordinary people cannot tolerate any more the appalling conditions of human degradation in which they live. They say, 'Enough is enough' and believe that they have nothing to lose," the former rector, Fr. Justo Lacunza Balda, said in an e-mail to Catholic News Service in Rome.

"Therefore, neither the police nor the army will stop people in the Arab countries from demanding freedom and human dignity," he wrote Jan. 28 as massive protests intensified in Egypt.

The demonstrations began Jan. 25 as people took to the streets to protest unemployment, corruption and rising prices.

PARIS — The French Senate has rejected legislation that would have permitted any adult to request a "quick and painless death."

Under the draft Bioethics Law amendment, French citizens would have been entitled to seek medical help to die when "in a terminal state, or with a serious and incurable illness causing physical or psychological pain." The right would have applied when the pain "cannot be alleviated or is considered unbearable," enabling doctors to bring about the patient's death "as the outcome of a deliberate act."

During the Senate's Jan. 26 debate on the amendment, Catholic pro-life groups conducted a vigil and protest, during which about 700 people pretended to be dead.

MEXICO CITY - Retired Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, known as the champion of the poor and indigenous in southern Mexico, died Jan. 24 of complications from long-standing illnesses. He was 86.

The bishop headed the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas from 1960 to 2000, and from 1994 to 1998 mediated a commission looking for an end to the conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas state.

For his work with the state’s indigenous population he received death threats and, in 2002, was the recipient of the Niwano Peace Prize for his work “raising the social standing of the indigenous communities of Mexico” and for his work toward “the reclamation and preservation of their native cultures.”

Bishop Ruiz had suffered from arterial hypertension and diabetes for a decade and had obstructed arteries, some cerebral damage and difficulty moving his body. The severity of his illness led to his transfer Jan. 12 to a Mexico City hospital from one in the state of Queretaro.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI approved a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II's intercession, clearing the way for the late pope's beatification on May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday.

Pope Benedict's action Jan. 14 followed more than five years of investigation into the life and writings of the Polish pontiff, who died in April 2005 after more than 26 years as pope.

The Vatican said it took special care with verification of the miracle, the spontaneous cure of a French nun from Parkinson's disease — the same illness that afflicted Pope John Paul in his final years. Three separate Vatican panels approved the miracle, including medical and theological experts, before Pope Benedict signed the official decree.