There is a “crisis” among young people who “we are losing to self-harm, through addiction, and reckless actions”, the Bishop of Derry has warned.

Bishop Donal McKeown told The Irish Catholic that priests are “constantly burying young people who die for want of a reason for living”, while also saying the Church must be a “prophetic voice” and critic.

He lamented the lack of reflection in society on root causes: “They don’t ask: ‘How is our worldview actually nourishing dysfunctionality? How is it actually promoting a negative worldview that has no hope?”

“If all you can tell young people is ‘Have fun’, ‘Life is too short to say no’, ‘Let’s feel good’… These are ads, slogans that are being churned out to them. If you keep telling them that, no wonder they will say ‘what on earth’s all this whole living thing about?’ It’s good for the market, but our job is to critique what the strong would like us to promote.”

Judges have no place deciding who can die by assisted suicide the former head of the UK High Court’s family division has said.

Sir James Munby warned that it was not the “proper function” of a judge to rule whether someone would be eligible for such a death, and described the proposals, by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, as “defective”.

In a major intervention in the controversial debate, he suggested it was “not what judges do and not what judges are for”.

Ms Leadbeater published her Private Members’ Bill, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, on Monday night. The draft legislation gives High Court judges the final decision on whether an assisted death can go ahead.

However, Sir James, one of Britain’s most eminent retired judges, accused the MP of promoting a “profoundly unsatisfactory scheme” that would be open to abuse.

“All in all, in relation to the involvement of the judges in the process, the Leadbeater Bill falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards,” he said.

The UK’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting has ordered a costing to the NHS of implementing any new ‘assisted dying’ law.

Mr Streeting has announced his plans to vote against the Bill when it is debated in Parliament later this month.

Referencing a “chilling slippery slope argument”, he said he would “hate for people to opt for assisted dying because they think they’re saving someone somewhere … money, whether that’s relatives or the NHS.”

Speaking to ITV News earlier, the cabinet minister said: “I’m voting against assisted dying. I’ve got practical concerns about the Bill.”

The Green Party has vowed in its manifesto to institute controversial guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, which include availability of puberty blockers for teenagers. This is despite strong criticism from the Cass Review in the UK which highlighted the lack of an evidence base for such drugs.

In their manifesto, the Greens pledge to “Implement a community-based, person-centred model of trans healthcare, ensuring universal access to evidence-based care. Our policy will be guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”

A Nigerian Bishop has called for action to tackle escalating insecurity in the country’s Benue State, which has led to the closure of over 15 parishes in his diocese alone.

Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe expressed concern about the constant reports of killings and kidnappings in the country, emphasizing the role of the Nigerian government to protect lives and property.

“Every day we must hear about killings and kidnappings. And it is not for the people to defend themselves because the protection of lives and properties is in the hands of the government,” the Catholic leader explained.

He said authorities in Nigeria should “do the needful thing,” adding: “We have been plunged into untold hardship. It is not just Makurdi but the whole of this country. As you travel from any part of this country … until you arrive, you are not safe.”

Anagbe, a member of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Claretians), warned that the prolonged closure of schools in affected areas could create a generation of future bandits and terrorists.

An ‘Assisted Dying’ bill was published yesterday in the UK to enable doctors to help terminally ill adults to kill themselves. Critics point out that when euthanasia is introduced, the grounds for it constantly expand pointing to examples like Canada, Belgium and Netherlands.

MPs will debate and vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November.

The bill would require those who apply for assisted suicide to be over the age of 18, a resident in England and Wales and registered with a GP for at least 12 months. It also requires they have the mental capacity to make a choice about ending their life; and express a “clear, settled and informed” wish, free from coercion or pressure, at every stage of the process.

The legislation will require two independent doctors to determine whether the person satisfies the criteria to take their own life. According to legal expert, Yuan Yi Zhu, one doctor can recommend the other and people seeking assisted suicide will be able to ‘shop around’ until they find two doctors.

A judge will also take evidence from at least one doctor, and could also question the terminally ill person before allowing self-administration of the medication.

The individual would be allowed to change their mind at any time, and no doctors would be obliged to take part in the process.

If all the criteria and safeguards are met, the substance to end someone’s life must be self-administered.

A group of Muslim extremists killed an evangelist in eastern Uganda after he and another Christian refused to convert to Islam, according to reports.

Three days into an evangelisation event at which 18 Muslims converted to Christianity, Islamists surrounded Emmanuel Dikusooka, a 29-year-old father of three children, and a fellow church member, Jack Mbulante, as they returned to their hotel.

Armed with swords, sticks and iron bars, the assailants forced the two to surrender their bags, which contained Bibles and other Christian books.

“They threw them all into the River Lumbuye, then ordered us to hold the Quran up that they had and told us to recite and swear in the name of Allah,” Mbulante told Morning Star News. “They tried to force us to renounce Jesus Christ and our faith and then embrace the Islamic faith. We openly refused, which angered them, and they hit Dikusooka with an iron bar on the head, and he fell down.”

Mbulante escaped by jumping into a river and swimming to safety, but Dikusooka succumbed to his injuries.

A donor-conceived woman has questioned the ethics of the fertility industry and the inadequacy of legislation in Ireland. Donor-conception means that you are conceived via either sperm donation, egg donation, or both. Frequently the gametes are purchased, not donated.

Journalist, Louise McLoughlin, who describes herself as “a product of donor-assisted IVF”, has spoken to hundreds of donor-conceived people across the world for her podcast ‘You Look Like Me’.

Writing in the Irish Independent she says she finds it hard to put aside her knowledge of “the dark side of this industry”.

“At the end of the day, fertility clinics are a business, and the endgame is a successful pregnancy that puts a baby in the arms of its clients — nothing more”.

She adds that Irish legislation “does not currently go far enough when it comes to protecting the people being created”.

For decades, she says the industry was allowed to run free unchecked — happily using various self-serving misconceptions.

“The once-prevalent myth that we wouldn’t want to know where we come from has been debunked. Promises of anonymous DNA have been shattered. Assurances that donor-conceived people fare well — even when lied to — have been revealed to be little more than an idyllic fantasy”.

While denying that IVF is morally unacceptable, she said “The fertility industry, however, might just be”.

The Slovak Parliament has issued a rebuke to its EU counterpart for having attempted to assert a right to abortion.

In April, the EU Parliament passed a resolution calling for abortion to be included in the EU’s charter of fundamental human rights.

However, last week the Slovak Parliament voted 78 to 40 that abortion is a matter of national sovereignty and therefore beyond the competence of the EU.

The motion expressed concern over “repeated efforts” of the European Parliament “to interfere with” the sovereignty of the member states of the European Union, citing abortion as an example and adding that issues “related to health policy fall within the competence of national states”.

Argentina’s bishops have hailed the country’s Supreme Court for protecting the rights of a child in a case involving surrogate motherhood.

The court rejected the request of a male couple who contracted the surrogate to be registered as the sole parents of the child at the expense of the birth mother.

Welcoming the “unprecedented exemplary ruling”, the Bishops’ noted the Court’s decision that “the mother is the one who gives birth, regardless of the subjective self-representations and private wishes of third parties.”

The Bishops’ also welcomed the Court urging the nation’s Legislature to “correct the lack of regulation”, so as to take into account the rights of all involved and to limit harm to “the most vulnerable, that is, poor women and children processed as objects of desire”.