NEWS

Canada’s Salt+Light Television has been selected as an official broadcaster of the 50th Eucharistic Congress and will provide live daily coverage from Dublin.

Hosted by Fr. Thomas Rosica, coverage will begin at 8 a.m. EDT on June 10 with the opening ceremonies and Mass celebrated by Canadian Cardinal Marc Oullet, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops.

The eight days of coverage, with programming in English, French and Cantonese, will focus on catechesis, personal testimonies and liturgies from a long list of Church leaders, including Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller on June 13.

THUNDER BAY, ONT. - St. Peter’s parish, in the city’s east end, has become an around-the-clock emergency help centre for hundreds of local residents affected by flooding in this northern Ontario city.

“We have one of the only dry basements in this area,” said Fr. Terry Sawchuk, pastor of the parish. “We are providing help 24/7, and we will provide it for as long as it’s necessary.”

LAGOS, Nigeria - Cardinal Anthony Okogie of Lagos consoled the families of the victims of the crashed Dana Air plane and urged them to draw strength from God.

"My heart goes out to all those who lost their loved ones, friends and well-wishers. I condole with them and indeed all Nigerians," the cardinal said in a statement June 4, the day after the crash.

VATICAN CITY - Paolo Gabriele, the papal assistant, has been accused of aggravated theft, a crime that under Vatican laws is punishable with a prison term of 1 to 6 years, a Vatican judge said.

Paolo Papanti-Pelletier, the judge, said under the terms of the Vatican's 1929 treaty with Italy, a person found guilty and sentenced to jail time by a Vatican court would serve his term in an Italian prison.

The judge also said that while Gabriele remains detained in a 12-foot-by-12-foot room in the Vatican police station, he was allowed to attend Mass June 3 in an unspecified "Vatican church." Two gendarmes accompanied Gabriele to the church, but he was not required to wear handcuffs, the judge said.

BEIRUT - Warning that Lebanon is going through a critical juncture, Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai called for national dialogue to address the security and political situation in the country.

During his June 3 homily at Bkerke, just north of Beirut, the patriarch condemned the previous day's clashes in the northern coastal city of Tripoli between Sunni groups opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad and Alawites who support the Syrian leader. At least 14 people died and more than 50 were wounded.

WASHINGTON - Knowing that American Catholics stand in solidarity with the Haitian Catholic Church opens new opportunities for people of both countries to learn from each other and begin to shape a unified future together, a group of Haitian bishops said.

In Washington for the One Table, Many Partners National Solidarity Conference June 1-3, the prelates said during a visit to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops they see U.S.-Haiti solidarity strengthening, leading to a more self-sufficient Haitian church as long as there is a mutual exchange of ideas.

WASHINGTON - With observances of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council being conducted around the world, one church historian cautioned that the council's documents should be studied comprehensively, lest they be misunderstood or their reforms dismantled piece-by-piece.

Jesuit Father John W. O'Malley, a professor in the theology department at Georgetown University who is renowned for his work in church history, said the documents should be considered as one body of work, not as unrelated parts.

He was asked to speak to the Catholic Common Ground Initiative about the significance of just one of the council's 16 documents, "Gaudium et Spes," the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

An estimated 600 people packed a downtown Toronto square on May 31 before marching to Queen's Park to protest the Ontario Liberal government's Bill 13.

"We are here to make a very public statement against the absolutely totalitarian legislation called Bill 13," said Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Catholics. "Dalton McGuinty has set before us a choice between liberty and tyranny. It's requiring the Catholic Church to violate its religious beliefs in many respects."

VATICAN CITY - With Pope Benedict XVI in Milan for three days under the watchful eyes of Vatican and Italian police, members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard set down their halberds and headed off to do some volunteer work in earthquake-stricken Northern Italy.

Lt. Col. Christoph Graf, vice commander of the Swiss Guards, told L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, that it was "a spontaneous act of charity and solidarity."

Twenty members of the 100-strong corps left their Vatican barracks early June 2 and headed to Emilia Romagna, struck by earthquakes May 20 and 29. The death toll from the second quake reached 17 June 4 when a corpse was pulled from the rubble of a factory.

WASHINGTON - The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned June 4 that Mercy Sister Margaret Farley's 2006 book, "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," contains "erroneous propositions" on homosexual acts, same-sex marriage, masturbation and remarriage after divorce that could cause confusion and "grave harm to the faithful."

In a notification signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada and approved March 16 by Pope Benedict XVI, the congregation said the book "is not in conformity with the teaching of the church" and "cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue."