VATICAN CITY – Israel postponed a major negotiating session with Vatican officials on questions regarding the church’s legal and financial status in the Holy Land. The Vatican expressed disappointment at yet another delay in the on-again, off-again talks, which began 15 years ago. The meeting of the joint commission on church-state issues had been scheduled...Read More
WASHINGTON – As they help Haitians rebuild destroyed homes and mourn lost relatives, Catholic Church workers in Haiti are grieving for members of their own “families” killed or severely injured in the magnitude 7 earthquake Jan. 12.Read More
DETROIT – Father Anton Kcira first began to notice the absence of more and more of his regular parishioners at St. Paul (Albanian) Church in suburban Rochester Hills back in 2005, and the loss due to deportations has escalated since then. “Last year we lost about 200 families, and Our Lady of Albanians lost 120,”...Read More
ROME – As religious orders mobilized to help the suffering people of Haiti, many of them had people sitting by computer terminals in Rome waiting to hear news about their youngest members.Read More
VATICAN CITY – Church leaders, along with the World Health Organization, have expressed concern over the increased rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide. Pope Benedict XVI, speaking at his general audience March 21, said the latest reports show that more work is still needed to effectively treat those who suffer from the disease. World Tuberculosis Day,...Read More
ARLINGTON, Va. – Harold Brown Jr., one of seven CIA agents killed in a bombing in Afghanistan Dec. 30, was a loving and involved husband and father, said a fellow parishioner at Brown’s Virginia Catholic parish.Read More
ALLENDALE, N.J. – A New Jersey health care initiative has reached its goal of getting Catholic hospitals in the state to donate umbilical-cord and placenta blood for adult stem-cell research. During a March 9 press conference at the Elie Katz Umbilical Cord Blood Program facility in Allendale, Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark and Father...Read More
WASHINGTON – As the world’s population grows and the amount and sources of potable water shrink, the number of conflicts over water access and usage is likely to increase, said members of a panel on water rights that convened Jan. 6 in Washington.Read More
WARSAW, Poland – A Polish archbishop has said there is no need to tighten anti-abortion laws by amending the Polish Constitution. “I’m convinced our constitution protects life decisively enough at this moment,” said Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski of Gdansk. “The stable situation now created should prompt us not to take actions which could dramatize or complicate...Read More
As Larry M. Beck and the leadership of Good Samaritan Hospital searched for a chief operating officer in 2006, their charge went beyond landing someone who knew his way around a ledger.Read More
Members of Baltimore’s Hispanic community will honor the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of San Salvador in El Salvador with a procession and Mass in Fells Point March 24 on the 27th anniversary of his assassination. An outspoken critic of human rights abuses by the Salvadoran military who was murdered while celebrating Mass, Archbishop Romero...Read More
Father Raymond L. Harris is eager to return to his hometown, a move made possible by his assignment as pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans.Read More