A Catholic priest in the United Kingdom, Fr Martin Newell, has been sentenced to a jail term for not paying fines arising from his many anti-war protests. Fr Newell, a Passionist priest, cited the non-violent example of Jesus as the basis for his actions. Continue reading
The attorney-general in Massachusetts says a Catholic diocese illegally discriminated against a married gay couple by refusing to sell them a property. The Diocese of Worcester believed the men would use the property to host same-sex weddings. The issue is the subject of a law suit. Continue reading
There are many new or relatively new catholic school principals this year; four in secondary schools and 20 in primary schools. The secondary schools with new principals are St Peter’s College Gore, Carmel College Auckland, St Mary’s College Auckland and Sacred Heart Girls’ College Hamilton. Continue reading
The Archbishop of Rabaul in PNG says local community leaders on Manus had been left in the dark over the details for Australia’s offshore processing centre for asylum seekers. Archbishop Francesco Panfilo says he was surprised to discover when he visited Manus last year that community leaders had not seen any of the official documentation Read more
As part of the New Zealand festival last Saturday’s third Embassy session was a public conversation between Diarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University and the award-winning author of A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, and Peter Biggs, the chair of the New Zealand Book Council, “Having Faith in 21 Century. In his review Listener columnist Read more
United States Catholics can eat alligator on Fridays in Lent say their bishops. This was confirmed in a letter from Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans to a concerned parishioner. Continue reading
A German cardinal has called on national churches to speak up more courageously in their dialogues with the Vatican. Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz said a lack of courage from national churches has made Rome “over-powerful”. Continue reading
The number of Catholics in Iceland has doubled in the last 10 years. According to L’Osservatore Romano, 11,000 Catholics in the north Atlantic nation are served by eight priests and 40 religious, many of whom are young. Continue reading
Parliament’s health select committee has recommended that sex education in schools should include more than a narrow focus on the physical mechanics of sex and reproduction. A Herald-DigiPoll survey shows the there is support for this recommendation. Three-quarters believed that high-school pupils needed to be taught more than the mechanics of sex. The Prime Minister, Read more
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, is in Papua New Guinea assessing the newly imposed death penalty. Death by lethal injection has been legislated as the preferred method for judicial killings in PNG. Previously, hanging was the only option for capital punishment but it’s now considered barbaric and Read more