The Christian Century

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Ireland's prime minister said Catholic priests could be jailed for failing to report child sex abuse crimes they hear during the sacrament of confession, regardless of the confidentiality imposed by church law.

Christian missionaries should re­nounce all "deception and coercive means" of winning converts, according to a final document from a co­alition of evangelicals, the World Council of Churches and the Vatican that is unprecedented in its breadth.

(RNS) In a conciliatory gesture regarding one of the most sensitive points of Jewish-Catholic relations, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican praised the controversial wartime Pope Pius XII for his "actions to save the Jews" during the Holocaust.

For seven centuries, eucharistic adoration—praying before an exposed consecrated communion host—was one of the most popular forms of devotion in the Roman Catholic Church, the focus of beloved prayers and hymns and a distinctive symbol of Catholic identity.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican will use online education and other methods to help the world's Catholic bishops and the heads of religious orders deal with clerical sex abuse of minors.

Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University will host a Vatican-sponsored symposium on pedophilia next February, the Italian news agency ANSA reported on Monday (June 13).

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Prosecutors in Rome on Wednesday (June 1) released $33 million (23 million euros) in Vatican funds that had been frozen last September pending an investigation for possible money laundering.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The morality and effectiveness of using condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS will be on the agenda at a Vatican conference this weekend (May 27-28), six months after comments by Pope Benedict XVI again touched off worldwide controversy.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The world's Catholic bishops have one year to set national policies on clerical sex abuse of minors, the Vatican said on Monday (May 16), but such policies may vary significantly in each country, and will not be binding on individual bishops.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The late Pope John Paul II, who elevated unprecedented numbers of Catholic saints and blesseds during his 26-year reign, joined those ranks himself on Sunday (May 1), when he was beatified before a crowd of more than a million pilgrims.