News/International

WARSAW, Poland  - Poland’s Catholic primate has urged fellow citizens to see the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in a weekend air disaster as a “dramatic challenge” to build “a fuller community” at the national level and with neighbouring states.

“We are all asking ourselves the same painful question — how was this possible?” Archbishop Henryk Muszynski of Gniezno said at an April 11 Mass in his archdiocese.

OTTAWA - Unprecedented momentum is building towards a nuclear weapon-free world and the opportunity must not be lost, says Douglas Roche.

“This is certainly the most opportune moment that I have experienced in my lifetime for real concrete movement towards the elimination of nuclear weapons,” former senator Roche told journalists after an April 9 meeting with Stephen Harper.

Early on Holy Saturday morning, Pietro Molla, husband of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, died in his family home in Mesero, near Milan in Italy, surrounded by his daughters Gianna Emanuela and Laura, and son Pierluigi. He was 97 years old and had been in failing health for several years.

I have been good friends with the Molla family since 1999 and St. Gianna is the patron saint of Salt + Light Catholic Television Network. I was blessed to accompany the Molla family in the years leading up to the 2004 canonization of St. Gianna, a great contemporary woman, saint, wife, mother, medical doctor and lover of life.

{mosimage}DAMASCUS, Syria - On Passion Sunday, no matter where we are, we witness a struggle between the human and what we would like to call the inhuman.

In Damascus among the Iraqi Christians, it’s hard to think of that drama as far away in time or geography. The refugees — afraid and often wounded in body and mind by their experience — are painfully and obviously human. The violence they have fled and their lives of waiting and hoping as they grow poorer in Damascus are exactly what we mean when we call anything inhuman.

Jesus is fully and completely human — human as God intended humanity to be. The forces lined up to hang Him on the cross are the ones that rob us of our humanity in every age.

{mosimage}In a harsh indictment of The New York Times, the former Judicial Vicar for the archdiocese of Milwaukee has accused the newspaper of using “sloppy and inaccurate reporting” to wrongly link Pope Benedict XVI to the scandal of priest abuser Fr. Lawrence Murphy.

Fr. Thomas Brundage, who presided over the canonical proceeding against Murphy in the 1990s, released a letter March 29 in which he states The Times never contacted him for comment and that documents allegedly authored by him and quoted in newspaper articles were not his.

“The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting,” wrote Brundage. “The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - The Vatican defended a decision not to laicize a Wisconsin priest who sexually abused deaf children, despite the recommendation of his bishop that he be removed from the priesthood.

In a statement responding to a report in the New York Times, the Vatican said that by the time it learned of the case in the late 1990s, the priest was elderly and in poor health. The Vatican eventually suggested that the priest continue to be restricted in ministry instead of laicized, and he died four months later, the Vatican said.

{mosimage}WASHINGTON - In a quiet ceremony before more than a dozen members of Congress, mostly Catholics, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order stipulating that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions under the new health reform law.

The ceremony was closed to the media and the president delivered no remarks about the order, which was promised to a group of pro-life House Democrats in exchange for their votes in favour of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The legislation passed by a 219-212 vote late March 21.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican defended a decision not to laicize a Wisconsin priest who sexually abused deaf children, despite the recommendation of his bishop that he be removed from the priesthood.

In a statement responding to a report in the New York Times, the Vatican said that by the time it learned of the case in the late 1990s, the priest was elderly and in poor health. The Vatican eventually suggested that the priest continue to be restricted in ministry instead of laicized, and he died four months later, the Vatican said.

{mosimage}WASHINGTON  - As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops quietly expressed disappointment, some Catholic groups reacted with enthusiasm to the passage of health reform legislation in Congress and the pending presidential executive order on taxpayer-funded abortion.

The House approved the Senate-passed health reform bill by a 219-212 vote late March 21, then voted 220-211 in favour of a package of legislative fixes which had to go to the Senate for approval.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - In a letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI personally apologized to victims of priestly sexual abuse and announced new steps to heal the wounds of the scandal, including a Vatican investigation and a year of penitential reparation.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated," he told victims in his letter, released March 20 at the Vatican.