NEWS

OTTAWA - Dan McTeague, one of about a dozen staunchly pro-life Liberals who lost their seats in the May 2011 federal election, looks forward to the revitalization of the once powerful Liberal Party.

As one of more than 3,100 delegates at the Liberal Biennial Convention here Jan. 13-15, McTeague said he hoped the party will be able to reach out to all Canadians, including the Catholic and ethnic voters who were the former pillars of party support.

Political scientists have credited the Liberal defeats in 2006 and 2008 to a growing collapse of Catholic and ethnic voter support. Last May, the Liberals were demoted to third party status behind the NDP and the governing Conservatives. The Liberals elected only 34 MPs, though their numbers have grown by one with the recent defection of a Quebec NDP MP to the Liberal ranks.

OXFORD, England - Belgium's Catholic bishops pledged a "culture of vigilance" against future sexual abuse by priests and said guilty clergy must compensate their victims even if their crimes are no longer punishable by law.

"We cannot repair the past, but we can take moral responsibility by recognizing sufferings and helping victims recover," Bishops Guy Harpigny of Torunai and Johan Bonny of Antwerp, the church's delegates for abuse, told a Brussels news conference Jan. 12.

"Above all, we ask forgiveness for the suffering we weren't able to prevent, and we commit to treat this problem differently in future."

WASHINGTON - Picking up from efforts to stem sex trafficking at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, 11 women's religious orders from Indiana and Michigan are working to stop sex trafficking at this year's Super Bowl.

The orders are members of the Coalition for Corporate Responsibility for Indiana and Michigan, established in the early 1990s. The coalition is a member of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, which spearheaded the anti-sex trafficking efforts two years ago in South Africa.

The nuns aren't always the biggest football fans, but they've picked up some of the terminology.

Canadian religious leaders and interfaith coalitions banded together before the Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 United Nations climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, to urge Ottawa to take substantial steps toward a new international agreement to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocols. Almost alone among Canada’s major church and faith bodies, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops refused to sign the “Canadian Interfaith Call for Leadership and Action on Climate Change.”

The Congregation of St. Joseph signed, along with many other Catholic religious orders and a broad swath of Canada’s Christian bodies. Major Muslim, Hindu and interfaith coalitions also signed onto the two-page statement.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Climate change-induced drought that has afflicted the Horn of Africa presents the opportunity for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia to work more closely with the government to address food shortages and development concerns, said an official of the country's bishops' conference.

Recalling when Ethiopian regimes in the 1970s and 1980s either did not have the capacity or the political will to face a series of famines, Father Hailegebriel Meleku, deputy secretary general of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, said the country is now better poised to address its humanitarian problems, in part because church bodies have been mobilized during recent crises.

VATICAN CITY - In 2011, for the first time, the number of visitors to the Vatican Museums topped 5 million.

Antonio Paolucci, director of the museums, said breaking the 5-million threshold poses serious problems as well as challenges in the areas of access and education.

"Five million visitors means 10 million hands that touch or can touch and 10 million feet that, day after day, wear out the multicolored stone (floors) and the most famous archaeological mosaics in the world," he said.

LAGOS, Nigeria - The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria called on the Nigerian government and organized labor to negotiate a settlement to a crippling nationwide strike.

The bishops expressed concern Jan. 12 that "things seem to be deteriorating by the day" as the country endured the fifth day of a work stoppage that at times erupted into violence.

A union representing 20,000 oil and gas workers threatened to shut down all production starting Jan. 15 to join the strike.

The strike began Jan. 9, a week after the government ended a fuel subsidy. Pump prices shot up by as much as 300 percent overnight, leading to higher prices for consumer goods and services.

A meeting between Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and leaders of the Nigerian Labor Congress and the Trade Union Congress late Jan. 11 failed to resolve the impasse. Another meeting was scheduled for Jan. 13.

Archbishop Felix Alaba Job of Ibadan, conference president, signed the statement, which called for the parties to use restraint and to take steps to return the country to normal activities.

"All parties claim that they have the welfare of the poor in mind, but as we can see, it is actually the poor who are caught in the crossfire," the bishops said.

The bishops condemned the violence that erupted during the strike. They said they were concerned that the strike had been "hijacked by rogues, hoodlums and persons that have other interests apart from the nation's in mind."

"What started out as an expression of our democratic right and the opportunity for ordinary people to make inputs into policy affecting them has unfortunately turned rather ugly and is looking like the dialogue of the deaf," the statement said.

While the bishops said they support removal of the fuel subsidy, they suggested that it might be reinstated in part and then implemented in stages to lessen the impact on average Nigerians.

The bishops also commended the move by Jonathan to cut salaries of elected officers and political appointees by 25 percent. "But we think it is not enough," they said.

"We think this is the time Mr. President can cut corruption from the roots by ordering massive cuts in the fringe benefits that are even above the salaries -- sitting, travel, hospitality and all forms of allowances that make politicians and government officials financial overlords on the poor citizens," the statement said.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican human rights groups and the migration ministry of the Mexican bishops' conference have expressed outrage at the attorney general's office for pursuing anonymous criminal complaints against a priest who provided material and spiritual support to a group of displaced Guatemalans.

The groups also took issue with Mexican immigration officials forcibly removing some of the Guatemalans, who had been residing in a camp they established in Tabasco state near the Mexico-Guatemala border since August after fleeing a violent displacement in their country.

VATICAN CITY - In the Catholic Church, it's true that everything old can be new again, and the Vatican wants one of those things to be the art of "apologetics" — dusted off and updated to respond to new challenges, including those posed by militant atheists.

The term "apologetics" literally means "to answer, account for or defend," and through the 1950s even Catholic high school students were given specific training in responding to questions about Catholicism and challenges to Church teaching.

At least in Northern Europe and North America, the effort mainly was a response to Protestantism. Today, while sects and fundamentalist groups challenge Catholics in many parts of the world, almost all Catholics face objections to the idea of belief in general, said Legionary of Christ Father Thomas Williams, a professor at Rome's Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University.

WASHINGTON - Mormons in the United States might be getting more attention these days, but they have mixed views on what this attention means.

According to a new Pew Forum poll, most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints feel that Americans don't know enough about their religion, but they also think the public perception of them is becoming more positive.

The study, "Mormons in America: Certain in Their Beliefs, Uncertain of Their Place in Society" was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and released Jan. 12. It was inspired by recent articles about the religion being in the spotlight dubbed the "Mormon moment."