Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

World News in Brief

New Roman Missal launched in U.S. in 2011

Catholics in the United States will begin using the long-awaited English translation of the Roman Missal on the first Sunday of Advent in 2011, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said Aug. 20.

The cardinal's announcement as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops marks the formal beginning of a more than 15-month period of education and training leading to the first use of the "third typical edition" of the Roman Missal at English-language Masses in the U.S.

The missal, announced by Pope John Paul II in 2000 and first published in Latin in 2002, has undergone a lengthy and rigorous translation process through the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, followed by sometimes heated discussions over particular wording at USCCB general assemblies during much of the past decade.

The USCCB said April 30 that the Vatican has given its recognitio, or confirmation, of the new English translation of the missal, but final editing by Vatican officials was continuing at that time.

As of Nov. 27, 2011, no other edition of the Roman Missal may be used in U.S. dioceses.

Canada's bishops have yet to decide when the new translation will be implemented here.

Alaskans say parents must be told of child's abortion

Alaskans passed a ballot initiative Aug. 24 that requires abortionists to notify a parent before performing an abortion on a minor girl in Alaska. "I was happy to see that common sense prevailed," Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz told archdiocesan newspaper. "Parents, no matter where they are on the abortion issue, understood: to be parent is to be a parent. You have responsibility for your children and therefore you should be able to know what they're doing, and not have other people take away the right to know."

Easy access to drugs trivializes abortion - official

Promoting easy access to RU-486 and other drugs that induce abortion risks trivializing the termination of a pregnancy, said the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Commercializing abortion medication can turn "an unwanted pregnancy into being almost like an annoying cold to be gotten ridden of with a pill," Msgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula told the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, in an interview. The Spanish monsignor, who is also a medical doctor, recalled working in Armenia after the 1998 earthquake. He said many of the women patients he worked with had already had more than 20 abortions. "For them abortion had become like having a coffee." Such a blasé attitude "is a serious phenomenon" that could easily spread to other parts of Europe, he said.

Catholic paper becomes Poland's top-selling weekly

A national Catholic newspaper has become Poland's top-selling weekly, outstripping its secular competitors. Gosc Niedzielny (Sunday Guest), a 92-page tabloid owned by the Archdiocese of Katowice, was confirmed Aug. 23 as the country's highest-circulation weekly with more than 144,000 copies. Father Tomasz Jaklewicz, deputy editor, told Catholic News Service Aug. 26 that the paper had benefited from a vigorous chief editor and youthful editorial team, as well as from support by Catholic parishes nationwide. He said the staff had made sure the paper is "contemporary and up-to-date in form and content and addresses the issues most preoccupying people here in an open, approachable way."

Pope Benedict

German journalist talks to pope for new book

Just as he did twice before being elected to the papacy, Pope Benedict sat down for a series of conversations with German journalist Peter Seewald. The results of the first conversations were the book-length interviews Salt of the Earth (1996) and God and the World (2002). The books covered a wide variety of subjects, including Pope Benedict's youth, teaching career and work as the Vatican's top doctrinal official. Seewald and the pope got together again July 26-31 at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo. Publication of the new book in German and in Italian is expected before the end of the year. .

CCCB gears up for annual collection

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) hopes the faithful will generously support its work as the annual collection approaches the weekend of Sept. 26. "The primary purpose of the collection is to help the dioceses in Canada meet their annual per capital contribution to the CCCB," said CCCB president Saint-Jerome Bishop Pierre Morissette in an Aug. 9 letter.

"This is the conference's main source of financing." Each diocese is assessed on a per capita basis for its contribution to the running of the CCCB secretariat of 40 staff members and the work the bishops do in common, whether it is government relations, those with other episcopal conferences or the Holy See.

Pope says Mother Teresa modelled 'Christian virtue'

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is "an exemplary model of Christian virtue" who showed the world that an authentic love for others opens the door to knowing and being with God, Pope Benedict said. Marking the 100th anniversary of her birth Aug. 26, the pope sent a message to Sister Mary Prema, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation Mother Teresa founded in 1950. In his message, the pope spoke of "the inestimable gift that Mother Teresa was in her lifetime."

Anti-Christian bias dogs Pakistan aid dispersal

Christians and other minorities affected by severe flooding in Pakistan are being discriminated against in government-run rescue and aid programs, said the director of pontifical missionary societies in Pakistan. Father Mario Rodrigues said, "While Caritas and the pontifical mission societies are working on providing humanitarian relief to displaced persons without discrimination of origin, race or religion, in other areas, the Christian refugees, even in the midst of this tragedy, are being treated as second-class citizens." The priest also told Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples: "They often receive little assistance or are excluded altogether." The severe flooding that began in Pakistan in late July has left at least four million Pakistanis homeless and without food or clean drinking water.

CNS photo | Frank Methe A casket is carried down the steps of the federal courthouse in New Orleans Aug. 12 after monks filed a lawsuit to challenge a Louisiana law that allows only funeral home operators to sell caskets to the public.

Benedictines sue for right to sell caskets they make

Standing behind a simple, cypress casket handcrafted by the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Benedict, La., Benedictine Abbot Justin Brown asked a federal court in New Orleans to bury a Louisiana law allowing only licensed funeral homes to sell caskets to the public. At stake, Brown said, is the monks' ability to engage in free enterprise through the sale of the caskets, which range in price from $1,500 to $2,000, considerably less expensive than many caskets sold to bereaved families by funeral home operators. The simplicity of the caskets reflects the sacred Christian theology that at the end of life, the body is returned to the earth but the soul lives on, Brown said. The Benedictines have made the caskets for decades to bury their brother monks, but public interest in the caskets began in the early 1990s and has grown. In 2007 the Benedictines began selling caskets to the public.

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