News/International

HAVANA - The Cuban bishops announced that 2012 would be a Marian jubilee year and that Pope Benedict XVI would come to Cuba as a "pilgrim of La Caridad," the popular name for the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the country's patroness.

In a Dec. 8 pastoral letter, they declared a jubilee year from Jan. 7, 2012, through Jan. 6, 2013, and said Cubans need the joy of faith, the strength of Christian love and the light of hope that can come from "a reunion with our Christian roots" and with the "enthusiastic reception of the teachings of Jesus Christ."

WASHINGTON - The U.S. bishops' pro-life spokeswoman said she was relieved that the Obama administration has decided not to allow the Plan B One-Step "morning-after pill" to be sold without a prescription to those under 17.

"Luckily, things did not go from bad to even worse," Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications at the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, told Catholic News Service Dec. 8. "We're pleased that they did not expand access to this very powerful drug."

McQuade said Plan B One-Step, known generically as levonorgestrel, "is 40 times more potent than comparable progestin-only birth control pills for which a prescription is required" even for adult women.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI tapped a tablet computer and successfully lit the world's largest electronic Christmas "tree" located in the Italian town of Gubbio.

Before turning on the tree with a tap on the Sony S Tablet, the pope addressed the citizens of Gubbio via a video link from his apartment in Vatican City Dec. 7, calling on Christians to serve as a light in the lives of others.

In his talk, the pope said that just as the tree design in Gubbio was made up of tiny individual lights, each person needs to bring light to the people and places in their lives, to their family, workplace, neighborhood, town or city.

DURBAN, South Africa - Excessive focus on money is destroying the environment and dehumanizing people, said Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, president of Caritas Internationalis.

Religious communities have a duty to call attention to the importance of the human person, who is “at the centre of creation,” he said while international leaders were debating the extension of legal limits on the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Officials from nearly 200 countries were in Durban Nov. 28-Dec. 9 for United Nations-sponsored climate change talks.

VATICAN CITY - A Vatican official deplored the growing violence in Syria, and called on political leaders there to enact "real reforms."

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi made the remarks Dec. 2 to a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, which was discussing the Syrian crackdown on regime opponents that has left an estimated 4,000 people dead in recent months.

Archbishop Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N. and other agencies in Geneva, said the Vatican was following "with great concern the dramatic and growing episodes of violence in Syria, which have caused many victims and grave suffering."

KARACHI, Pakistan - The Catholic Church's justice and peace commission organized a protest condemning a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The Asian church news agency UCA News said that, holding pro-army banners and national flags, more than 50 protesters from several Catholic institutions gathered outside the press club in Karachi Dec. 2. They shouted slogans, prayed and lit candles for the "faithful martyrs."

The protesters -- including two priests and 10 friars -- expressed outrage at what they called an attack on their country's sovereignty and demanded justice for the affected families.

WASHINGTON - A White House spokesman said the Obama administration is working to "strike the right balance between expanding coverage of preventive services and respecting religious beliefs" as it decides on a religious exemption to the mandate that all U.S. health plans cover contraceptives and sterilizations by Jan. 1, 2013.

"This decision has not yet been made," said Jay Carney, press secretary, in response to a question at the Nov. 29 White House press briefing.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced an interim final rule Aug. 1 that would require all health plans to cover contraceptives — including some that can cause abortions — and sterilizations free of charge.

VATICAN CITY - The deaths each year of more than a million people from AIDS, the suffering of their families and the new infections of hundreds of thousands of infants are unacceptable when the medicines needed to prevent them exist, a Vatican official said.

Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said World AIDS Day must be a time "to promote universal access to therapies for those who are infected, the prevention of transmission from mother to child, and education" in responsible sexuality.

DUBLIN - Audits of six Irish Catholic dioceses reveal "a marked improvement" in how the church is handling clerical abuse allegations.

However, the reviews, carried out by the independent National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and released Nov. 30, also show that, in the past, too much emphasis was put on the rights of accused priests and protecting the reputation of the church. Each review found evidence that insufficient attention was paid to the suffering of victims and the long-term consequences of abuse.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI greeted with a smile the news that a German citizen had filed a complaint against him for not wearing a seat belt in his popemobile.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Nov. 30 that the complaint was not being taken seriously at the Vatican.

"It continues to provoke curiosity and smiles of amusements, beginning with the Pope himself," Father Lombardi said.