News/International

WARSAW, Poland - Russia's Catholic Church criticized the demolition of a hospice complex run by the Missionaries of Charity after a Moscow court ruled it was used illegally for charity work.

In late September, Moscow city officials were preparing to bulldoze a second building operated by the order, founded by Blessed Mother Teresa. The first was destroyed Sept. 16 after a 2010 court ruling that claimed the sisters had legally rebuilt the complex but failed to register its "entry into use" two decades earlier.

"Nothing like this has happened to these sisters before anywhere in the world — it sets an unfortunate precedent," said Fr. Igor Kovalevsky, secretary-general of the Russian bishops' conference.

VATICAN CITY - Addressing the United Nations, a Vatican representative called for "courageous decisions" toward the two-state solution for the Holy Land after Palestinian leaders requested full U.N. membership for the Palestinian state.

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's top foreign affairs official, did not say whether the Vatican explicitly supported the Palestinians' U.N. initiative. But he said the Vatican viewed the Palestinian bid "in the perspective of efforts to find a definitive solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian question -- an issue addressed by a U.N. resolution of 1947 that foresaw the creation of two states.

"One of them has already been created, while the other has not yet been established, although nearly 64 years have passed. The Holy See is convinced that if we want peace, it is necessary to adopt courageous decisions," he said Sept. 27.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI will make his second trip as pope to Africa, visiting Benin Nov. 18-20 to sign and distribute a letter reflecting on the 2009 special Synod of Bishops for Africa.

The synod focused on "the church in Africa in service to reconciliation, justice and peace."

At the end of the synod, the bishops gave the pope 57 proposals for action on the part of church leaders and the faithful, including a call for a new spirituality to counter bad government, ethnic tensions, disease, exploitation by multinational companies and the cultural agenda of foreign aid organizations.

VATICAN CITY - U.S. Cardinal Bernard F. Law helped finalize plans for the first ever meeting of a president of communist Vietnam with a pope, according to a U.S. government cable appearing on the WikiLeaks web site.

Law visited Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, in 2009 to meet with government officials and discuss bilateral relations between the Vatican and Vietnam, the cable said. “It took a visit to Vietnam last week by American Cardinal Bernard Law to finalize arrangements to allow the visit (of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet) to go forward,” said the cable dated Dec. 4, 2009, released on the WikiLeaks web site Aug. 30.

During a meeting with a top-level staff member of the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican, Law said the Vietnamese “expressed little interest in formal diplomatic relations, but considerable interest in ensuring the already announced visit would go forward.” 

Law had been involved in Vietnamese issues for decades. In 1991, he led the first high-level U.S. Catholic Church group to visit Vietnam at the invitation of the Vietnamese government since 1975.

Zambia’s first elected Catholic president told members of his parish he will base his rule on the Ten Commandments.

President Michael Sata, 57, elected Sept. 20, also commended the Catholic Church for the role it played in ensuring that the nation held peaceful elections.

Sata, a member of St. Ignatius parish in central Lusaka, told fellow parishioners Sept. 25 his government will embrace the fight against corruption because the Seventh Commandment states, “Thou shall not steal.” He said his government will prosecute anyone who steals despite his or her socio-economic status or party affiliation.

FREIBURG, Germany - On a four-day visit to Germany, Pope Benedict XVI warned that godlessness and religious indifference were undermining the moral foundations of society and leaving its weakest members exposed to new risks.

He repeatedly mentioned the duty to protect the unborn, and proposed this as an area where Catholics and non-Catholics can witness together and help resist ethical erosion.

The Pope said after arriving in his homeland Sept. 22 that he had come “to meet people and to speak about God.” He took that message to the country’s political leaders, to the Church’s ecumenical partners, to the Catholic faithful and, through the mass media, to the German people.

BERLIN - Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass in Berlin's Olympic Stadium and appealed for a better understanding of the church, one that goes beyond current controversies and the failings of its members.

The evening liturgy Sept. 22 was the religious high point of the pope's busy first day in the German capital, where he also met with government leaders, Jewish representatives and addressed the parliament.

About 70,000 Catholics gave the 84-year-old pontiff a rousing welcome when he rode in a popemobile through the stadium, which was built by the Nazi regime to host the 1936 Olympic Games. The pope paused to kiss several babies as young people waved scarves imprinted with the theme of the papal visit, "Where there is God, there is a future."

WASHINGTON - Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, told President Barack Obama in a Sept. 20 letter that his administration's fight against the Defense of Marriage Act will undermine marriage and create a serious breach of church-state relations.

The law, known as DOMA, defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

"It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your administration insists on doing," the archbishop said.

BERLIN - The Nazi "reign of terror" clearly demonstrated the depths of evil that men are capable of when they deny God and the dignity of all people he created, Pope Benedict XVI told leaders of Germany's Jewish community.

Speaking Sept. 22 with the Jewish representatives in a meeting room in the Reichstag, which houses the German parliament, the pope spoke about the need to continue remembering the horror of the Shoah, the importance of continuing Catholic-Jewish dialogue and the need for all believers in God to work together to bring moral values to society.

The Reichstag is a place of "appalling remembrance," the pope said, because it was in the parliament building that "the Shoah, the annihilation of our Jewish fellow citizens in Europe, was planned and organized."

BERLIN - Arriving in Germany for a four-day visit, Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended the church's voice in public affairs and said that to dismiss religious values as irrelevant would "dismember our culture."

In a major address to the German parliament Sept. 22, the pope said belief in God was the foundation for Western progress in law and social justice through the centuries.

"The conviction that there is a creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people's responsibility for their actions," he said.