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The Holy Cross Hospital and an affiliated nursing school in Leogane, Haiti, have been approved to receive a $200,000 grant from the Louisville-based Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. The hospital was described as destroyed in news reports, but the nursing school began operating as a makeshift hospital quickly after the January 12 earthquake struck. The hospital and school are ministries of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti but have been a major focus of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission in Haiti.

Representatives of Middle Eastern Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed churches have voted unanimously in favor of the ordination of women as pastors. “This is historic,” said Jerusalem Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan after the January 12 decision of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches meeting in Harissa, Lebanon.

Younan, the fellowship’s outgoing president, said the decision by the 29 voting delegates, including two women, at the group’s general assembly meant its 16 member churches were urged to open the door to the ordination of women pastors.