NEWS

WASHINGTON - Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of young adults, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl encouraged them to pray and stand up for religious freedom.

Such freedom is being threatened, he said, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' mandate that would force Catholic institutions to provide employee health insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, all of which are morally opposed by the Catholic Church.

DUBLIN - A new analysis of allegations of abuse made against 98 priests over a 70-year period shows that the alleged abuse peaked in the 1980s.

Fresh data released by the Dublin Archdiocese May 24 showed that 34 percent of complainants alleged their abuse happened in the 1980s. Just 1 percent of claims relate to alleged abuse in the period from 2000 to 2010.

TORONTO - The mentally ill occupy the streets of Toronto. They sleep there. They beg. They buy drugs. They rave, cry out in pain and frighten people. They pass through drop-ins, shelters, jails and the emergency wards but somehow almost always wind up back on the same little patch of urban territory.

Seeds of Hope Foundation executive director Kimberly Curry thought there must be something we can do for homeless, schizophrenic women. Sr. Susan Moran, co-founder of Out of the Cold program almost 25 years ago, had the same thought. She never thought giving people a mattress in a church basement one night a week fulfilled our Christian duty.

ROME - Increasing numbers of women are migrating alone, a situation that makes them vulnerable to violence and exploitation, but one that often shows their courage and commitment to making a better life for their families, said speakers at a conference in Rome.

About 214 million people live outside their country of origin, and half of all migrants are women, said Miguel Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, which sponsored a panel discussion about migration and women May 24.

HOHHOT, China - Catholics in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have called on fellow believers to pray for them May 24, the World Day of Prayer for the Church in China, during what they say is their most difficult time in recent decades.

The Asian church news agency UCA News reported that church sources told them the Catholic community in the region has faced a series of suppressive acts by authorities aimed at forcing clergy from the clandestine, or underground, Catholic community to join the government-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association.

KINGSTON, ONT. - A simple yet dignified ceremony held May 19 on the waterfront of this southeastern Ontario city marked a tragic local anniversary: The death of more than 1,400 Irish immigrants fleeing the 19th-century potato famine.

Ireland’s Ambassador to Canada, Ray Bassett, laid a wreath on behalf of the Irish government in commemoration of the estimated 50,000 Irish immigrants who came through the area in 1847 fleeing Án Gorta Mór, “The Great Hunger.” Of those, an estimated 4,300 arrived in Kingston after contracting typhus on crowded “coffin” ships, with 1,400 dying after coming ashore to what was then a town of only 10,000 residents.

VATICAN CITY - The Italian bishops' conference released its first ever set of guidelines for handling accusations of clerical sexual abuse, urging bishops to cooperate with civil authorities, but also making it clear that bishops in Italy have no legal obligation to report suspected cases to police.

Bishop Mariano Crociata, general secretary of the bishops' conference, presented the guidelines to reporters May 22 and told them that 135 cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors had been reported between 2000 and 2012.

OTTAWA - Consumers should ensure products they buy are not produced by modern-day slaves, said the American Ambassador-at-large who monitors and combats human trafficking.

“It takes a cultural shift,” Ambassador Luis CdeBaca told a gathering of MPs, senators, diplomats and NGOs on May 17.

CdeBaca, who works under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said consumers must ask themselves: “Where did the shrimp come from that I’m eating? Where did the chocolate come from that I’m eating?”

OTTAWA - The Catholic Organization of Life and Family (COLF) has called the status quo on abortion “intolerable” and calls not only for “legislative reform” but also a “great cultural renewal.”

In its latest publication, “The Unborn Child: a gift, a treasure and a promise,” COLF describes respect for life as a “gauge of civilization” and warns that when the right to life is not fully protected “other rights are sooner or later mocked.”

It points out that in Canada there is no legal protection for the unborn child.

WASHINGTON - Forty-three Catholic dioceses, schools, hospitals, social service agencies and other institutions filed suit in federal court May 21 to stop three government agencies from implementing a mandate that would require them to cover contraceptives and sterilization in their health plans.

“Through this lawsuit, plaintiffs do not seek to impose their religious beliefs on others,” said one of the suits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana by the diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, diocesan Catholic Charities, St. Anne Home and Retirement Community, Franciscan Alliance, University of St. Francis and Our Sunday Visitor.