WASHINGTON (CNS) — Though Giving USA Foundation reported U.S. charitable giving was down overall last year, the organization’s data showed an increase in church offerings. With charitable donations reaching an estimated $307.65 billion in 2008, the Giving USA 2009 report — released June 10 — confirmed a 2 percent drop from 2007 giving, which totaled […]
Continue readingLAHORE, Pakistan (CNS) — A Catholic Church center in Pakistan’s cosmopolitan eastern city of Lahore has been threatened with a suicide bomb attack, one of a series of intimidating messages given to Christians as the country’s security crisis worsens. The threat was delivered June 10 to a Christian woman who lives next to Rabita Manzil, […]
Continue readingVATICAN CITY (CNS) — More decent, productive employment and more credit for small- and medium-sized businesses are the best strategies for recovering from the global economic crisis, said the chief Vatican representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva. There are real “fears that the coming years will be characterized by ‘labor intensive restructuring’ and a ‘jobless […]
Continue readingNEW ORLEANS (CNS) — Fifteen years in the Amazon rain forest and a stint on the “Wild Kingdom” television show ultimately brought Stan Brock to a different sort of adventure: providing medical, dental, vision and even veterinary care to hundreds of thousands of people and animals who need it. The Welsh-born Brock is founder and […]
Continue readingTECUN UMAN, Guatemala (CNS) — Bishops from the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Central America called on their governments to convene a regional summit to assess the causes of migration and to work out a regional plan for cooperation on migration and development. “We are at a pivotal moment in the history of migration in this […]
Continue readingNEW ORLEANS (CNS) — Gwen Smith keeps an envelope full of her important papers in the trunk of her car, along with bottles of water and Army rations. She and her husband, Leroy, don’t ever want to be caught unprepared, as they were in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home and the lives they […]
Continue readingVATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican has condemned the latest round of nuclear testing and missile launching by North Korea, warning that these acts of aggression threaten “the very survival” of the country’s own people by exacerbating its isolation. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a front-page news story May 27 along with an editorial […]
Continue readingVATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the continuing debate over stem-cell research, the ideologues are those who claim it is necessary to use embryonic stem cells, an Italian research physician wrote in the Vatican newspaper. A growing body of research has proven that a variety of somatic stem cells — usually referred to as adult stem […]
Continue readingROME (CNS) — Laypeople are called not simply to help their priests run their parishes, but to share fully in the responsibility of building up the church, Pope Benedict XVI told delegates to the annual convention of the Diocese of Rome. “This will require a change of mentality, especially regarding laypeople — to move from […]
Continue readingWASHINGTON (CNS) — Public television stations may be confronted by a hard choice later this year: drop their religious programming or risk losing their affiliation with the Public Broadcasting Service. The PBS board of directors will meet June 16 to consider stricter enforcement of a 1985 policy directing PBS member stations to air “noncommercial, nonpolitical […]
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