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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 for March 29 at the Vatican and would have been the first plenary session of the commission since 2002.

LONDON – A British cardinal has said that by sponsoring legislation for gay rights, the government is “legislating for intolerance.” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster also questioned “whether the threads holding together democracy have begun to unravel.” “My fear is that, under the guise of legislating for what is said to be tolerance, we are legislating for intolerance,” he said during a March 28 lecture in London a week after the government forced through new gay rights legislation with minimal debate in the House of Commons.

As more than 800 catechumens and candidates from the Archdiocese of Baltimore prepare to enter the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil, April 7, Holy Saturday morning will provide an opportunity for prayer and reflection.
The elect, whose February ceremonies were cancelled because of snow, will make one final preparation at 10 a.m. during Preparation Rites, which will be held at three sites across the archdiocese on April 7.

VATICAN CITY – Supporting legislation that gives legal rights to gay or heterosexual couples who are not married is a position that is not consistent with the Catholic faith, said members of the permanent council of the Italian bishops’ conference. “The faithful Christian is obliged to form his conscience” in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church, the bishops said in a statement released March 28 as Italian politicians continued to debate legislative proposals recognizing unions formed by unmarried couples, including homosexuals. The bishops’ statement quoted the 2002 statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on “The Participation of Catholics in Political Life.”

VATICAN CITY – The teaching of the bishops and unity with the pope guarantee that one’s faith truly is the faith taught by Jesus to his apostles, Pope Benedict XVI said. “The true Gospel is that imparted by the bishops, who have received it in an uninterrupted chain from the apostles,” the pope said March 28 at his weekly general audience. The pope’s audience talk focused on the ministry and writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who died in the very first years of the third century.

Baltimore artist Paul DeRemigis Jr. will be signing his newest original painting, a rendering of the restored Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Baltimore, April 12.

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Even though the average age of religious-order priests, sisters and brothers serving in the United States is increasing and their numbers are declining, don’t conclude religious communities are dying out, a well-known scholar said during a recent national meeting in Menlo Park. Instead, think of consecrated life as an “ongoing history” being written by the Holy Spirit, advised Oblate Father Frank Morrisey, adding that the divine author’s last chapter is “yet to come.”

The sainthood cause for Father Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, a former pastor of St. Joseph in Taneytown and St. Patrick in Cumberland, has been opened by the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Penn. Father Gallitzin, a Russian prince who was the second priest ordained in the United States and the first to receive all his holy orders in this country, was the son of Prince Demetrius Alexeivich Gallitzin, the ambassador of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia to the Netherlands.