On Monday a judicial review of the suspension of Lucan Battison by St John’s College Hasting took place in the in the High Court at Wellington. Battison, a pupil at the College, has refused to get a haircut, after being told to do so by the school. The lawyer representing the St John’s College Hastings Read more
Pope Francis has refused to meet with a group of migrants who have been sheltering in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. About 120 migrants were evicted from a squat outside Rome about two weeks ago. The group, mostly from Eastern Europe and North Africa, have asked the Pope to grant them asylum Read more
New Zealand is a destination country for foreign men and women subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, a US State Department report has claimed. The department’s 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report has also labelled New Zealand as a source country for children subjected to sex trafficking within the country. “A small number of girls Read more
Catholic media pioneer Archbishop Fulton Sheen is a step closer to being a saint after a miracle attributed to his intercession was recognised. A theological commission advising the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has recognised the miraculous recovery of a stillborn baby. The child’s mother and father had prayed to Archbishop Sheen to heal Read more
The Archbishop of Wellington will decide if the condemned St Peter Chanel Catholic Church in Ward is completely demolished or partially salvaged. The decision is expected next month ahead of the first anniversary of the Grassmere earthquake. The small red-brick church, built in 1923, was damaged in the 6.6 earthquake which caused cracks in its Read more
A biblical scholar and an expert on Catholic-Jewish dialogue have been awarded the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in theology. French biblical scholar Professor Anne-Marie Pelletier and Polish Professor Waldemar Chrostowski have been awarded the Ratzinger Prize for theology. Professor Pelletier is a scholar of hermeneutics and biblical exegesis, who has written two books on Read more
A multimillion-dollar secondary boarding school for Muslim boys is to go ahead in South Dunedin, the Al-Noor Charitable Trust has confirmed. It will be based at the former St Patrick’s Primary School in Melbourne St, in Dunedin, New Zealand, which the trust plans to develop. Trust chairman Dr Mohammad Alayan said the $8 million An-Nur Read more
Pope Francis has said divisions between Christian churches are a scandal caused by disagreement and human ambition. In an audience with the Church of England’s Archbishop Justin Welby in Rome on June 16, the Pope said: “The goal of full unity may seem distant indeed, yet it remains the aim which should direct our every Read more
Children at an Auckland primary school have won a promise from four political parties to let children help to run the country. The Grey Lynn School children grilled National, Labour, Green and Internet Party politicians and independent MP Brendan Horan at the launch of a “tick4kids” campaign to bring children’s issues to the fore in Read more
A priest was shot and killed with a gun owned by a fellow priest during a robbery in downtown Phoenix, in the United States. Gary Michael Moran, 54, who had only been out of jail for six weeks, has been arrested following the shooting of Fr Kenneth Walker, FSSP, and the beating of Fr Joseph Read more