News/International

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Meeting for the first time, Pope Benedict XVI and U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about the precarious situation of Christians in Iraq and a wide range of other foreign policy and moral issues.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY – A 27-year-old German man was forced to undergo immediate psychiatric treatment June 6 after he jumped over a barrier in St. Peter’s Square and reached the back of the open jeep in which Pope Benedict XVI was riding.

{mosimage}MARKHAM, Ont. - Cardinal Joseph Zen isn’t asking for much from Beijing.

“Our hope is normalization of the situation. That’s our purpose,” the 75-year-old archbishop of Hong Kong told The Catholic Register May 21 while visiting St. Agnes Kouying Church in Markham, north of Toronto. Zen has been Rome’s point man in an effort to establish diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Vatican.

JERUSALEM - Exploding violence in the Gaza Strip has left the people weeping and trapped in a war zone, said a local parish priest.

{mosimage}APARECIDA, Brazil - On a five-day visit to Latin America, Pope Benedict XVI identified a host of social and religious challenges and said the church should respond by focusing more clearly on the person of Jesus Christ.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - They are not pushy or pesky; rather, the Pope’s own paparazzi are the epitome of discretion and class.

{mosimage}BEIJING - He’s known as “the black pope of China” — a play on the “black pope” title given to the powerful head of the Jesuits — and whether or not people like his methods, they all agree that he is one of the most powerful laymen in China’s Catholic Church.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - After several years of study, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven.

{mosimage}NAZARETH, Israel - The Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Israel, the Bishop of Nazareth, is very clear in his desires for his local church in the midst of conflict and a declining Catholic population.

LONDON - The head of Great Britain’s military diocese has come under fire from politicians, military leaders and the media after he welcomed Iran’s release of 15 sailors and marines as religiously motivated “good deeds.”