News/International

{mosimage}ASSISI, Italy - Brown-, gray- and black-hooded robes rustled, knotted white cords swung rhythmically and sandaled feet crunched gravel.

The soft sounds of laboured breathing could also be heard as several hundred Franciscan friars from all over the world wound their way up steep hills, passing wheat fields and olive groves while on a two-hour penitential procession to the tomb of their founder, St. Francis of Assisi.

The processing friars were just some of the 1,800 Friars Minor, Conventual Franciscans, Capuchins and Third Order Regular Franciscans attending an April 15-18 gathering celebrating the 800th anniversary of papal approval of the Franciscan rule. It was the first time that many representatives of the four main Franciscan branches had come together in Assisi.

{mosimage}JERUSALEM - Pope Benedict XVI will encounter a Holy Land that has changed greatly since Pope John Paul II visited in 2000.

Pope John Paul arrived in Israel and the Palestinian territories when, despite stumbling blocks in the peace process, the jubilee year celebrations seemed to buoy the Holy Land with a booming tourism industry.

But Pope Benedict will visit amid continued Israeli-Palestinian tensions — months after a controversial Israeli invasion of Gaza and during continuing Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israeli towns.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Christ's resurrection is not a myth or fairy tale; it is the one and only event that has destroyed the root of evil and can fill the emptiness in people's hearts, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Easter message.

But Christ still wants humanity to help affirm his victory by using His weapons of justice, truth, mercy and love to end the suffering in Africa, build peace in the Holy Land and combat hunger and poverty worldwide, he said April 12 in his message "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world).

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - They brought flowers and messages to his grave. They sang songs evoking his memory. And they prayed for his beatification.

The fourth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II April 2 was marked by a sense of anticipation following reports that the late pontiff would be beatified on the fifth anniversary next year.

{mosimage}WASHINGTON- Telephone polling of Catholics and non-Catholics over three years shows the degree of difference between the two groups on abortion, the death penalty and other moral issues about which the Catholic Church has spoken.

According to figures released March 30 by the Gallup Organization in Princeton, N.J., only on the abortion issue did a minority of Catholics overall find it acceptable — 40 per cent compared to 41 per cent for non-Catholics.

{mosimage}HAMILTON, Ont. - He’s a Catholic bishop who has had his life threatened several times, seen his flock forcibly displaced, endured the bombing of his churches and the ransacking of sacred objects in his diocese.

Yet none of this has deterred Bishop Franjo Komarica (pronounced Franyo Komaritza) from his spiritual vocation and recent mission — insisting that the international community help Catholics who were expelled during the 1990s war in Bosnia-Hercegovina be permitted to return to their homes

{mosimage}A leading HIV researcher says Pope Benedict XVI was unfairly criticized for his comments against condoms as an effective AIDS prevention strategy in Africa.

“Abstinence is the best message for young people, particularly if they are reached before they are sexually active,” Edward C. Green, director of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project , told The Catholic Register. “For Africa, (promoting condoms) may be exacerbating the problem.”

{mosimage}WASHINGTON - University of Notre Dame officials were standing firm on their choice of U.S. President Barack Obama as commencement speaker at the institution’s May 17 graduation, in spite of a large number of Catholics calling on them to rescind the invitation.

The Indiana university, run by the Congregation of Holy Cross, and the White House announced March 20 that Obama would be Notre Dame’s 2009 commencement speaker and confirmed he will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at the graduation.

{mosimage}LUANDA, Angola - Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended women's rights and praised the many "silent heroines" of Africa who are holding families and society together.

African women in particular are working under adverse conditions that are often caused by the "behaviour and attitudes of men," the Pope said in Angola March 22.

"History records almost exclusively the accomplishments of men, when in fact much of it is due to the determined, unrelenting and charitable action of women," he said.