Two Italian bishops have banned any unvaccinated priests from distributing Holy Communion at Mass in their respective dioceses in an effort to get all priests inoculated against the coronavirus.

Archbishop Andrea Bellandi of the Salerno archdiocese and Bishop Giacomo Cirulli of the diocese of Teano issued separate decrees this month imposing the policy.

“I expressly demand that the Eucharist not be distributed during Mass by unvaccinated priests, deacons, or extraordinary ministers,” Bellandi wrote. “In case of absolute necessity, I authorise that, for distribution, a trusted vaccinated person (religious or catechist) be chosen.”

The 70-year-old Bishop Cirulli issued similar directives for the priests of his diocese in a letter addressed to all the faithful.

“I forbid the distribution of the Eucharist by unvaccinated priests, deacons, religious and lay people,” he wrote, citing a “constantly and seriously worsening COVID-19 pandemic situation.”

The letter declared that during Mass “the hosts on the altar must be kept strictly covered in the their proper sacred vessels.”

Bishop Cirulli also ordered the suspension of “all in-person pastoral, catechetical, and formative activities” until further notice.

In December 2020, the Vatican’s doctrinal office (CDF) released a document affirming that vaccination is not, as a general rule, a moral obligation and therefore “must be voluntary.”

China’s population growth rate has fallen to its lowest level in six decades, barely outnumbering deaths in 2021 despite major government efforts to increase population growth and stave off a demographic crisis.

The number of births also dropped for the fifth consecutive year in 2021, data released on Monday showed. Birth rates in many countries have fallen ever further since the pandemic began.

The birthrate is at its lowest since 1949, the year the Communists took power, while the rate of population growth is the lowest since 1960 when the country was in the midst of a devastating man-made famine.

China’s overall population increased by about 480,000 people – to 1.4126 billion in 2021, from 1.412 billion a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) confirmed. The population includes China’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, as well as servicemen, but excludes foreigners. It does not include Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.

Chinese mothers gave birth to 10.62 million babies last year, an 11.5 per cent drop from 12 million in 2020, the NBS confirmed. The national birth rate fell to a record low of 7.52 births for every 1,000 people in 2021, from 8.52 in 2020.

The national death rate was 7.18 per thousand last year, putting the national growth rate at 0.34 per thousand.

“The most shocking part of the data release today is that the natural growth of the population has dropped to 0.34 per thousand, the first time below 1.0 since data become available,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. “The demographic challenge is well known, but the speed of population ageing is clearly faster than expected.

“This suggests China’s total population may have reached its peak in 2021. It also indicates China’s potential growth is likely slowing faster than expected.”

There is a “void” of proper education around sex and consent in secondary school that needs to be addressed, according to one academic who spoke in the aftermath of the Ashling Murphy killing.

Elaine Healy Byrnes, an NUI Galway academic who has written a PhD on consent, says the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum needs to be brought into “the 21st century” and long-awaited RSE reform should include requirements to teach pupils about consent and respect in relationships.

Part of the problem, she told the Irish Times, lies with the slow pace of the Catholic Church divestment of school patronage, leaving religious ethos to often clash with more “modern” approaches to teaching students about sex and relationships.

Meanwhile, Colm O’Connor, principal of Cork Educate Together secondary school, says the majority of secondary schools should be mixed, rather than single-sex.

“I’ve worked in single-sex and co-ed schools for a decade each, and there is no comparison in terms of gender relations,” Mr O’Connor says. “In co-ed schools empathy is easier to build as male, female and trans students learn about each other’s lives and challenges together,” he says.

A judge changed a Christian’s life prison term under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws into the death sentence last week, while the Pakistan Supreme Court granted historic bail to another Christian held on similar charges.

Zafar Bhatti, 56, who has languished in jail since 2012 after being accused of sending blasphemous text messages, received the death sentence on January 3 from Rawalpindi Additional Sessions Judge Sahibzada Naqeeb, when Bhatti’s new lawyer contested the conviction.

In another case, the Supreme Court on Thursday (January 6) for the first time granted bail to a blasphemy suspect, in this case a Christian, Nadeem Samson, accused of posting blasphemous content on Facebook in 2017.

Bail has been granted to blasphemy suspects by a lower court, but Samson’s lawyer, Saif Ul Malook, told Morning Star News that it was the first time the top court had granted bail in such a case.

A Japanese woman is giving up her child to the State and suing her sperm donor after he lied about his ethnicity and educational background.

The woman, in her thirties, who lives in Tokyo with her husband and first-born child, had sex with the sperm donor ten times due to conceive a second child, after it came to light her husband had a hereditary disease, according to the Tokyo Shimbun.

The donor told her he was Japanese, single, and a graduate of Kyoto University, one of the best universities in Japan.

The woman, who has remained nameless in Japanese news reports, become pregnant in June 2019.

However, during her pregnancy, she learned that the donor was, in fact, Chinese, went to a different university and was married.

As a result, she decided she no longer wanted the child she had conceived with this man, but it was too late to terminate the pregnancy.

After giving birth, she gave the child up to the state and last month filed a 330 million yen ($2.86 million) lawsuit against the sperm donor for emotional distress.

Tokyo Shimbun reports that the woman said he tricked her for the sake of sexual gratification.

Prosecutors in the UK are proposing to soften their stance on so-called ‘mercy killings’ so that people involved with them are less likely to face criminal charges.

In cases where a suspect is “wholly motivated by compassion” or where the person had reached a “voluntary, settled and informed decision to end their life”, prosecutors will be told that the case may not be in the public interest. The same will be the case when someone has tried to take their own life as part of a suicide pact.

By contrast, existing advice from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says that, where there is enough evidence, “a prosecution is almost certainly required, even in cases such as the ‘mercy killing’ of a sick relative”.

Under the proposals, prosecution would not “automatically follow” even where there is enough evidence to bring charges.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said the proposals “could cause great harm to individuals and society” and that they would “weaken the protection the law provides for human life”.

Senior prosecutors highlighted that the proposed guidance “specifically states that it is not intended to decriminalise murder, manslaughter or attempted murder”.

Potentially thousands of people who were the subject of illegal adoptions will have rights of inheritance from both their birth parents and the people incorrectly listed as their parents on their birth certificates under Government plans.

As part of the process of bringing in the Birth Information and Tracing Bill the Government is also seeking to resolve issues relating to succession law that arise following revelations about illegal adoptions.

Lawful adoption orders have the effect of severing parental rights and responsibilities with one set of parents and creating them with another. This includes inheritance rights under the Succession Act.

But for unlawful adoptions, Mr O’Gorman is working with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee on proposals to address the issue of succession for people affected by illegal birth registration.

An Interdepartmental Group on Incorrect Birth Registrations recommended that an amendment be made to the Succession Act.

This amendment would mean that a person affected by incorrect birth registration should – in addition to their existing right of succession in relation to their birth parents – have succession rights in relation to their social parents, those whose name is on the birth certificate.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/thousands-of-illegally-adopted-people-to-have-inheritance-rights-from-two-sets-of-parents-1.4775954

A person to chair the review of the operation of Ireland’s liberal abortion law will be appointed before the end of the month, the Irish Times has reported.

A public consultation is already underway for organisations, stakeholders, members of the public and advocacy groups working in the area to give their views on the operation of the legislation.

Separately, a request for tender for a chair to carry out research into the views of service providers was published last December. The chair will provide conclusions and recommendations on the legislation to the Minister by the summer or autumn.

While the review will not be given prescriptive questions around issues like the three-day waiting period for women to access abortion, the review will examine whatever issues are raised by stakeholders. This means changes to the law could be made if the review recommends them and if the Government accepts those recommendations.

It is likely that the final report from the chair of the review will be at first given to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, who will then bring the recommendations to his Cabinet colleagues.

Mr Donnelly may then decide to refer the report to an Oireachtas committee and make seek the view of the wider Oireachtas before proceeding with any recommendations, although no final decision has been made on this yet.

Free Legal Advice Centres (Flac) helplines have seen a “significant increase” in calls about marriage breakdown and divorce since Christmas with most coming from women.

Family law queries accounted for 35.5 per cent of all calls to Flac last week and have now overtaken employment law as the largest category.

Divorce and separation is “by far the biggest category” within family law, at 41 per cent, according to Erin Brogan, helpline manager. Non-marital family breakdown is also an issue.

“Over Christmas I would have expected more calls about breaches of access, or maintenance orders queries, but by far the main are relationship breakdown.

“There was a woman I was dealing with a lot before Christmas and her whole self-confidence was completely on the floor. She believed she was going to be kicked out the door because they weren’t married and she was in an awful state.”

Asked what was driving the increase in calls about relationship breakdown, she mentioned the ongoing Covid restrictions.

“Covid has amplified problems whether that’s addiction, financial issues, emotional issues. Then, releases like going out to work, going to visit parents for emotional support that would have helped with and masked those issues, they have been removed for many”.

Adopted people will be given the right to see their original birth certificate and learn the identity of their birth parents, even where they object, under new legislation approved by Cabinet on Wednesday. The legislation contains no provisions for assuring the same rights to donor-conceived persons.

The Birth Information and Tracing Bill will grant priority to the adopted person who is seeking to learn their birth identity, over privacy objections of birth-mothers, by granting them for the first time the absolute right to see their original birth certificate and early-life records.

This may also give the adopted person details of their father’s identity, though this was not recorded in some cases.

The new legislation will also establish a national tracing service to facilitate people who wish to establish contact with their birth relatives.

It will also set up a contact preference register for people to record their preferences for contact.

This legislation seeks to bypass the legal difficulties of the constitutional rights of privacy of birth mothers by grounding the adopted person’s right to access documents in the right a person has to their own personal data.