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VATICAN CITY – Although the Global Positioning System has made meridians obsolete in mapmaking, a group of geographers used the GPS to mark the exact spot where the old prime meridian of Italy passed through the Vatican. Standing at the end of a technologically guaranteed straight line of flower pots, the geographers and Vatican officials dedicated a plaque marking the spot in the Vatican Gardens Feb. 23.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI will canonize a Brazilian Franciscan during his May trip to Brazil and will declare four other new saints in June. During a prayer service in the Apostolic Palace Feb. 23, the pope set May 11 as the date for the canonization of Blessed Antonio Galvao, an 18th-century Franciscan and founder of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Conception of Divine Providence.

OXFORD, England – Pope Benedict XVI expressed support for an archbishop who resigned because of links to communist-era secret police. “I would like, above all, to offer words of encouragement, inviting you to stride forward with confidence and peace in your heart,” Pope Benedict said in a letter to former Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus. “I express the wish that Your Excellency renew your activity in Christ’s service in every way possible, so your immense and deep knowledge will bear fruit, as well as your priestly devotion for the good of the beloved church in Poland.”

NAIROBI, Kenya – Three FBI representatives are expected to testify in early March at an inquest into the death of Mill Hill Father John Kaiser, a U.S. missionary who died in Kenya in August 2000. Mbuthi Gathenji, a lawyer representing the Catholic Church and Father Kaiser’s family, said Feb. 21 that the officials were expected to begin their testimony early March 5. He named the three as Tom Neer, a specialist in behavioral analysis; Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a forensics specialist; and Bill Corbett, who has worked in counterterrorism.

For months, school children, fellow parents, school and parish staff and parishioners of St. Joseph, Fullerton, have been diligently rooting for the Pirozzi family, specifically Xavia Pirozzi, a St. Joseph fifth grader who received a heart transplant Jan. 6. Through fundraisers, personal assistance, and an online hospital “care page,” love, encouragement, and support have poured in from concerned individuals. The St. Joseph community has pooled together their resources to help the family face their share of the medical costs – $600,000.

VATICAN CITY – Continuing an 80-year-old papal tradition, Pope Benedict XVI is canceling regular audiences and clearing his calendar to make a weeklong Lenten retreat. The spiritual exercises not only shut down the normal business of his pontificate, but also place the pope in the unusual position of doing all the listening and none of the talking. Judging from his own remarks in recent years, Pope Benedict doesn’t mind giving up center stage and reflecting on someone else’s insights.

VATICAN CITY – During a 90-minute question-and-answer session with pastors from the Diocese of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the priests to face challenges with trust that God’s love will have the last word. The pope’s remarks were punctuated by applause and laughter, including his own, as he responded Feb. 22 to questions about youth ministry, prayer, eucharistic adoration, religious art, Scripture, theology and the activities of new church movements. The laughter and applause came not only when the pope pointed out that several of the questions were really minispeeches, but also when he confessed that he, too, found it difficult to fulfill the biblical call to work during the day and pray at night.

ST. LOUIS – The need for states to help inmates turn their lives around was a central but undisputed part of a case before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis Feb. 13. But the question before the judges, including retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, was whether it violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution to use a faith-based approach to facilitating prisoners’ turnaround. Americans United for Separation of Church and State had sued Prison Fellowship Ministries and the state of Iowa, charging that the ministries’ InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a faith-based prisoner rehabilitation program, violated the separation of church and state.

WASHINGTON – At the end of a Feb. 15-19 meeting in Tanzania, the primates of the world Anglican Communion warned of “fracture” in the U.S. Episcopal Church and urged it to abide by a 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution that defines marriage as heterosexual and rejects the blessing of same-sex unions. They asked the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to “make an unequivocal common covenant” that they will not authorize blessings of same-sex unions in their dioceses. They also asked the bishops to affirm that any candidate for bishop who is living in a same-sex relationship “shall not receive the necessary consent (for ordination) unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the communion.”

St. Ignatius, Baltimore, will celebrate its 150th Novena of Grace beginning March 4, with the traditional nine days of prayer to the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier. Daily novena services will be held at the 7:25 a.m. and 12:10 p.m. Masses at the historic Calvert Street church. Missionary Francis Xavier – who was born 501 years ago – labored in India and Japan during the 16th Century.