News/International

VATICAN CITY - Muslims and Christians throughout North Africa and the Middle East recognize that "building a democracy is more difficult than destroying a dictatorship," but they are committed to realizing their dream, said one of the leaders of change in Tunisia.

Rashid Ghannushi, known as the intellectual leader of Tunisia's Ennahda Movement, now the key party in the coalition governing Tunisia, was one of the speakers at a conference in Rome Feb. 29 on the Arab Spring movement.

MANCHESTER, England - A Scottish court ruled that two senior Catholic midwives have no right to conscientiously object to overseeing staff involved in late-term abortions in a state-run hospital.

The Court of Session, Scotland's supreme civil court, ruled that Mary Doogan, 57, and Concepta Wood, 51, could not invoke the conscience clause of the 1967 Abortion Act to opt out of their duties at Glasgow's Southern General Hospital because they were not directly involved in performing the abortions.

CHARDON, Ohio - The Catholic community "shares the grief of the families and friends of the five victims" of a school shooting Feb. 27 in Chardon, said Bishop Richard G. Lennon of Cleveland.

"We continue to struggle in disbelief with the horrifying nature of the incident and we look to God to bring us peace and comfort," he said in a statement.

VATICAN CITY - The government of Vietnam has agreed to allow the pope's special envoy to have greater freedom to visit Catholics in the communist country, the Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, said Vatican-Vietnamese relations continue to take "gradual steps forward," including an agreement reached in late February "to facilitate the work" of Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, the pope's non-resident envoy to the Vietnam, by making it easier for him to visit Catholic leaders and communities.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja challenged Nigerians to do everything possible keep their nation united and to resist any attempts to divide it along narrow religious lines.

"We live in a nation where everyone is supposed to be free to profess whatever faith he or she decides to follow," Archbishop Onaiyekan said in his homily at the opening Mass of the Nigerian bishops' plenary Feb. 26.

VATICAN CITY - An almost exclusive reliance on technology and a focus on financial profit seem to dominate the field of medical responses to infertility, Pope Benedict XVI said.

However, what couples need and deserve, he said, is "a correct diagnostic evaluation and a therapy that corrects the causes of infertility."

Pope Benedict spoke Feb. 25 to members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which had just held a daylong workshop at the Vatican on diagnosing and treating infertility.

BELLEVILLE, Ill. - Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville said he did not "fire" a priest from his pastorate for using his own wording in some parts of the Mass but was obligated to correct the situation as shepherd of the diocese.

The bishop accepted the resignation of Father William Rowe, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Mount Carmel for the past 17 years, after several meetings with the 72-year-old priest over the last five years failed to resolve the bishop's concerns about how Father Rowe celebrated the Mass, especially after the implementation of the new Roman Missal in late November.

VATICAN CITY - For perhaps the first time ever, Anglican hymns, chants and prayers reverberated off the marble walls of St. Peter's Basilica as some members of the world's first ordinariate for former Anglicans celebrated their coming into the Catholic Church.

"Wonderful is not a strong enough word to express how we feel to be here," where the apostle Peter gave his life "and where his successors guarded the faith for generations," said Father Len Black in his homily.

VATICAN CITY - The majority of the world's fertility specialists have spent so much time and effort trying to promote and perfect in vitro fertilization that they have wasted resources and time that could have been used to find ways to prevent and treat infertility, a U.S. physician told a Vatican audience.

"Infertility is a symptom of an underlying condition," and too many physicians do not even attempt to find the cause and treat it; they simply recommend in vitro fertilization, said Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and director of the Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Neb.

WARSAW, Poland - The spokesman for the Polish bishops' conference defended its handling of sexual abuse accusations against Catholic clergy as the bishops prepared to adopt guidelines on the issue.

"The church is the only institution in Poland systematically dealing with this -- no one else is," said Father Jozef Kloch, conference spokesman. "Although we're being used as a whipping boy, we know from data there's a much lower incidence of pedophilia among Catholic priests than clergy from other denominations, as well as teachers, home care employees, sports coaches and, unfortunately, parents and relatives."