Euthanasia should be an option for ill children between the ages of one and 12 who are in ‘unbearable pain’ and for whom there is no hope of a cure, Health Minister Ernst Kuipers has said in a briefing to MPs.

Euthanasia for terminally ill babies is not part of the original law but stems from a separate ‘protocol’ drawn up by paediatricians and the health and justice ministries dating from 2005.

Kuipers, acting on the advice of paediatricians, is proposing a similar protocol for children under twelve for whom no formal criteria have been created so far. He has proposed seven criteria including that the child’s suffering is ‘unbearable’ and there is no possibility of a cure or a treatment to alleviate the pain. Palliative care doctors say almost all pain can be controlled today.

Kuipers proposal is currently out to consultation. He will present the final concept in October, when he will also announce when the protocol will come into force.

The number of people in England and Wales aged 65 and over has for the first time surpassed the number of children aged under 15, according to the first results of the 2021 census in a sign of how fast the population is ageing. Populations throughout Europe, including Ireland, are getting older as a demographic crisis takes hold.

The news comes only weeks after the population of Ireland was announced as 5.1 million, its highest level in a census since 1841.

Across the Irish Sea, a 20% surge in the number of people aged 65 and over in the past decade drove the population of England and Wales to a historic high of 59,597,300, the Office for National Statistics recorded 11.1 million people aged 65 and over compared with 10.4 million people aged under 15, tipping a balance that has always favoured the young.

The number of infants aged four and under was one of the few categories where the population fell but the over-90 population broke through the half a million mark, rising to 527,900 people.

Pro-choice campaigners and politicians want to introduce 150-metre zones around facilities providing abortion so prayer vigils, offers of help, and pickets would all be banned.

At a meeting on Monday, local authorities retreated from their previous opposition to the use of bylaws to move the protests. Councils have more flexibility than the national Government around where people are allowed to gather and it is thought that bylaws could be used as a temporary measure while national legislation continues to be examined.

Susan Aitken, the SNP leader of Glasgow city council, said she was prepared to make her authority a national test case.

Concerns have been raised about legal issues surrounding the introduction of national legislation, such as human rights and the ability to protest. Nicola Sturgeon again signaled support for a national law, although that could take years to resolve those issues.

The past seven days were among the deadliest for Catholic priests and religious in recent years, with one violent murder every 33 hours.

Monday, June 20, saw the killing of two Jesuit priests in Mexico.

On Saturday, June 25, Sister Luisa dell’Orto, a Little Sister of the Gospel of Saint Charles de Foucauld, was killed in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.

In between those murders, two more took place in Nigeria.

Also on Saturday, June 25, Father Vitus Borogo was murdered in Kaduna State, the same region where two churches were attacked a week earlier. The murderers are believed to be members of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram.

The 50-year-old priest was murdered at a farm, during what the chancellor of the diocese defined as a “raid by terrorists.”

On Sunday, June 26, Father Christopher Odia was murdered after being kidnapped from the Diocese of Auchi, Edo State, in the southern region of Nigeria. He had been abducted on his way to Sunday Mass at St. Michael Catholic Church Ikabigdo.

He was 41 and ordained a priest in 2012.

According to Open Doors International, an NGO that tracks Christian persecution globally, in much of northern Nigeria, Christians live under the constant threat of attack from Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Fulani herdsmen, and other criminals who kidnap and murder at will.

While all citizens of northern Nigeria are subject to threats and violence, Christians are often specifically targeted because of their faith — ISWAP and Boko Haram want to eliminate the Christian presence in Nigeria.

A worker who said his supervisor failed to act when a colleague laughed at his tattoo of Jesus Christ, told him Polish people are “too religious” and insulted the Pope in front of him has been awarded €15,000 for racial and religious harassment at work.

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) was told the harassment started after the victim told his employer that his supervisor was planning to extort money from the company by staging an accident at work and making a personal injuries claim.

Days later, Andrzej Waszkiewicz overheard the supervisor, Mr A and a second employee, Mr C calling him a “rat” and a “snitch”, he told the commission.

Mr Waskiewicz, who told the WRC he is a Catholic and from Poland, said Mr C “made fun” of his race and religion in a series of episodes between 12 October 2020 and 22 October 2020 and that his supervisor, Mr A, “did nothing to stop it”.

Mr C questioned his faith and laughed at his traditions, such as celebrating Christmas on December 24th, he said.

Mr Waszkiewicz’s claim was upheld by the WRC.

The US Supreme Court has upheld the right of the football coach of a public high school to kneel and pray on the sports field after games.

The case before the justices involved Joseph Kennedy, a Christian and former football coach at Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington. Kennedy started coaching at the school in 2008 and initially prayed alone on the 50-yard line at the end of games. But students started joining him, and over time he began to deliver a short, inspirational talk with religious references. Kennedy did that for years and led students in locker room prayers. The school district learned what he was doing in 2015 and asked him to stop.

Kennedy stopped leading students in prayer in the locker room and on the field but wanted to continue praying on the field himself, after games, with students free to join if they wished. Concerned about being sued for violating students’ religious freedom rights, the school asked him to stop even this practice while still “on duty” as a coach after the game. When he refused, the school put him on paid, administrative leave.

On Tuesday, the court ruled 6-3 in favour of the coach, saying his prayer was protected by the First Amendment.

“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

The Rally for Life has been banned by a county council from putting up posters advertising an upcoming event in Fingal.

An officer in the Operations Department of Fingal County Council (FCC) told the Rally that the council “does not allow posters of a contentious nature on public property.”

When questioned by Gript, the staff officer who oversaw the decision, claimed that  there would be “lots of complaints from the public” if the poster were allowed.

She added that permission was refused due to an image on the poster, rather than the fact that the posters promoted a pro-life event, but emails seen by Gript show that the Rally offered to remove the image in question from the poster and were told the poster would still be refused as the issue itself was still “contentious.”

Megan Ní Scealláin of the Rally for Life Committee told Gript that the FCC’s refusal was “open censorship of one point of view,” and was, in their view, “an attack on free speech happening in plain sight” and was “completely unacceptable.”

It occurred in the wake of Friday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade.

The centre in Colorado, Life Choices, sustained fire and heavy smoke damage, authorities said. The front of the building also was defaced with pro-abortion slogans, including the words, “If abortions aren’t safe neither are you,” written in script with black spray paint.

Federal law enforcement had issued a warning that a radical group is “calling for extreme violence” against churches and pro-life pregnancy centres nationwide in response to the Supreme Court’s expected reversal of abortion rights.

An internal document obtained by Newsweek outlines intelligence shared by the Department of Homeland Security with the Catholic Church of a planned “Night of Rage,” targeting churches and pregnancy centers over their opposition to abortion rights.

A UK High Court judge has ruled that the husband of a woman who died while pregnant can use an embryo created during fertility treatment to have a child using a surrogate.

Ted Jennings, 38, and his late wife, Fern-Marie Choya, who died aged 40 in 2019 after her womb ruptured while she was 18 weeks pregnant with twin girls, had undergone several IVF cycles.

Jennings wants to use the couple’s remaining embryo — created using his sperm and his wife’s eggs in 2018 — in treatment “with a surrogate mother”.

He asked a High Court judge for a declaration that it would be lawful for him to do so, because Choya had not given consent in writing.

In a ruling last week, Mrs Justice Theis said she was “satisfied” that Choya had consented to use of the embryo, which is stored at a private fertility clinic in London, in the event of her death. The judge concluded that Choya had not been given sufficient opportunity to give consent in writing because a form completed during the IVF process was “far from clear”.

The judge said that the interference with Jennings’s “right to respect to become a parent” were she not to grant the declaration he sought “would be significant, final and lifelong”.

Assisted suicide for healthy persons is not medically and ethically justifiable, according to new guidelines issued in May by the Swiss Medical Association. In Switzerland people merely ‘tired of life’ can avail of assisted suicide.

Patients should also have at least two meetings with a doctor– at least two weeks apart –before the final decision to ensure that their desire is “well-considered and enduring”.

The guidelines underscore that the doctor is free to refuse to cooperate: “The true role of physicians in the management of dying and death, however, involves relieving symptoms and supporting the patient. Their responsibilities do not include offering assisted suicide, nor are they obliged to perform it. Assisted suicide is not a medical action to which patients could claim to be entitled, even if it is a legally permissible activity”.

The new guidance is in line with the ethical guidelines issued in 2018 by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. While not legally binding, they will form part of an ethical code for Swiss doctors.