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When Ss. Philip & James, Homewood, parishioner Mary Fetsch read a recent church bulletin, she was shocked to see a copy of her parish’s Baltimore Gas & Electric bill inside. The document revealed the April utility charges for the church to be more than $4,600, with an additional $1,373.41 for the rectory. The bill was included to impress upon parishioners the basic costs of running the church and the need for generous tithing, said Father William A. Au, pastor.

MURINGOOR, India – Police have filed criminal charges against 10 top officials of a popular Catholic retreat center in southern India. The accused include two Vincentian priests and a nun. The charges against the Divine Retreat Center officials were filed April 30 at the direction of Kerala state’s High Court, which ordered a probe of the center more than a year ago, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency. The charges come under Indian Penal Code sections dealing with criminal conspiracy, wrongful confinement, voluntarily causing harm with dangerous weapons, poisoning and tampering with evidence, said a police official who did not want to be identified.

LONDON –The Catholic Church must do more to dispel “mistaken prejudices” about its attitudes to people with HIV/AIDS, said a Scottish archbishop. “It needs to be said again and again that the Catholic Church is committed to those works of mercy in the field of HIV/AIDS,” said Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, Scotland. The archbishop spoke in Kiev, Ukraine, in late April to a Caritas-sponsored conference on HIV/AIDS in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. An archdiocesan official provided Catholic News Service in London with a copy of the text.

WARSAW, Poland – Catholics in Estonia remain “shaken and afraid” by repeated riots in the capital, Tallinn, after a government decision to dismantle a Soviet war memorial sparked angry reactions from ethnic Russians. “People aren’t accustomed to such violence here,” said Father Alfonso Di Giovanni, the Italian rector of Tallinn’s Sts. Peter and Paul Parish.

‘I didn’t think the church cared or God cared about me.’ – Alison ‘I know my abortion has caused much self-hatred that was expressed in my eating disorder and many other problems.’ – Anonymous For many women and men, involvement with abortion has left a painful and lasting wound. Society tells them, “Get over it. It was nothing. Move on with your life.” Yet the loss of a child, even through abortion, is the loss of a child. A grieving parent’s heart needs to know hope, healing and forgiveness.

BEIJING (CNS) — Catholic scholars and sociologists sometimes refer to the current religious revival in China as the country’s fifth evangelization. They consider the first evangelization when an Assyrian monk, Alopen, brought Christianity across the Silk Road to what is now Xi’an, China, in the seventh century. The period was commemorated with the erection of the Nestorian Stone, a 10-foot-high tablet that describes Christian doctrine and ceremonies, the development of Christianity in China and the support Christianity was given by some emperors of the Tang Dynasty. The stone contains doctrinal, historical and eulogistic contents that most scholars say could be accepted by all Christians today. The stone is preserved in the Provincial Museum of Shaanxi, in Xi’an.

BEIJING (CNS) — Studying abroad can help Chinese priests and nuns understand the universal church, but it also can cause a culture shock when they return to their country. Sister Pauline Yu Chunjing was 34 years old and still had one year of study left at New York’s Fordham University when the Sisters of Our Lady of All Holy Souls elected her their superior. Sister Pauline, who already had earned a master’s degree in pastoral theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., traveled back to China for about 10 days, then returned to Fordham to complete a master’s degree in spiritual direction. She said that when she returned to China again early in 2006 she had to readjust to the culture.

BEIJING (CNS) — He’s known as “the black pope of China” — a play on the “black pope” title given to the powerful head of the Jesuits — and whether or not people like his methods, they all agree that he is one of the most powerful laymen in China’s Catholic Church. Anthony Liu Bainian, 73, an ex-seminarian from Shangdong province, currently serves as vice president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. To some he is a man trying to ingratiate himself to government authorities; to others he is the man with power to sway government decisions about the church.

BEIJING (CNS) — China’s one-child policy, begun nearly 30 years ago, still provides pastoral challenges and is taking a toll on vocations, said some Chinese church leaders. Auxiliary Bishop Paul Pei Junmin of Liaoning said that, in the past, the diocese used to have 20 young men and women enter the seminary and convent each year, but that has changed because of the one-child policy and “the influence of materialism.” “Here the church in China is very traditional, conservative,” said Bishop Pei. “It’s very difficult to reconcile with the government regulations and church teachings,” especially when people can lose their jobs for having a second child.

BEIJING (CNS) — As Chinese Catholic seminaries and religious communities work to train a new generation of priests and nuns, many religious leaders say their greatest need is for people to learn religious formation — how to accompany a candidate in religious life. “We still have a great need for formation work,” said Auxiliary Bishop Paul Pei Junmin of Shenyang, in northeastern China’s Liaoning province. “We really do not have enough people for spiritual direction.” Sister Mary Pan Xiufang, a member of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary who works in the Shanghai Diocese, said that when priests and nuns do not have good training it becomes a big circle — the new people, in turn, do not train the others well.

SHENYANG, China (CNS) — For World AIDS Day, the nuns leafleted the train stations in Liaoning province, and members of parish youth groups handed out information at parishes. But while many agencies offer AIDS awareness programs for World AIDS Day each Dec. 1, the Diocese of Liaoning offers such programs year-round, said Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Fabian Han Fungxia, head of the HIV/AIDS program at the diocesan Catholic Social Service Center.