Daily News Feed Column

By UCA News

BANGKOK -- A Catholic relief agency already working in Myanmar when Cyclone Nargis struck May 3 is grappling with travel restrictions as it tries to assess the situation and help survivors in the Irrawaddy River delta region.

Malteser International, formally the Order of Malta Worldwide Relief, has been working in Myanmar since 2001 on several humanitarian projects including health care and safe drinking water.

By Jeff Diamant
Religion News Service

NEWARK, N.J. -- A top U.S. archbishop, recently named to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said the panel of cardinals and bishops could help resolve a key issue in the clergy sex abuse scandal: how to remove priests from ministry who abused children decades ago.

Under the church's Code of Canon Law, the statute of limitation for clergy sex abuse of minors expires 10 years after the victim's 18th birthday. In older cases, a bishop can ask the Vatican to bypass that rule, but Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, N.J., said he wants to explore ways for bishops to act in such matters without asking Rome.

By JONATHAN RUBIN
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- Israel turns 60 today (May 8). American's Jewish community looks at the Jewish homeland in a variety of ways, from celebration to caution, and through eyes both secular and religious.

Six prominent American Jews weigh in on Israel's milestone, and what the world's only Jewish state can expect in the 21st century. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON -- The news media gave Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States in April more coverage that week than any topic except the 2008 election campaign, according to an analysis of reporting by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The analysis released May 6 found that coverage of the pope's April 15-20 visit took up 16 percent of the week's "news hole."

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Seeking to stop Mormons from posthumously baptizing Catholic ancestors, the Vatican has instructed bishops around the world not to share parish registers with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy issued the directive in a letter to national bishops' conferences in early April, according to Catholic News Service. The letter referred to "grave reservations" expressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church's highest doctrinal body.

By JONATHAN TILOVE
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, until now, has benefited from a strong undercurrent of black nationalism among African-American voters, a racial pride and solidarity that have swelled support and muffled criticism.

But his repudiation this week of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., may unleash a more open debate in the black community, where even some who back Obama worry that he is vague or evasive in his approach to race matters.

By Jonathan Luxmoore
Catholic News Service

OXFORD, England -- Taking inspiration from sports references in St. Paul’s letters, Catholic church leaders in Austria and Switzerland plan an evangelization drive for the Euro 2008 soccer championship in June.

The churches’ program, “On the Ball for 2008 Years,” would help make the tournament an opportunity for building understanding among young Europeans, organizers said.

By NCR STAFF

Tim Unsworth, a longtime columnist for NCR known for his wit and keen observation of how ordinary Catholics lived their faith in the pews and the streets, died April 30 after a long illness. He was 78.

In 1982, soon after Joseph Bernardin was named archbishop of Chicago, Unsworth wrote a letter to Bernardin, advising him to eat his lunches in a deli and ride a bus or walk to work. “An archbishop on a Chicago Transit Authority bus would convert half the bus population,” Unsworth wrote.

By KEVIN ECKSTROM

Cardinal Edward Egan of New York says he wants to meet with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after Giuliani broke their “understanding” and took Communion at a papal Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Egan said Monday (April 28) that he had a tacit agreement with Giuliani that “he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion.”

By TOM ROBERTS

The case of Fr. Marciel Maciel Degollado, founder of the controversial order of priests known as the Legionaries of Christ, occupies a sadly distinctive place in the long history of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church. A new documentary by Jason Berry, “Vows of Silence,” details the arduous path victims faced in bringing Maciel’s abuse to the Vatican’s attention.