The country’s Catholic bishops have said parents who choose a Catholic education for their children should have access, in any new roll-out of primary schools, to an appropriate number with a Catholic ethos.

Following their summer quarterly meeting, the bishops addressed the ongoing debate over school patronage and urged the State to be responsive to “the rights of parents to have their philosophical and religious beliefs supported during their children’s education”.

They expressed the hope that the State would support parents through the provision of schools “whose ethos genuinely reflects what they want for their children”.

Their statement, which was issued following their Summer General Meeting, reaffirmed their commitment to the reconfiguration of patronage in the primary school sector and said the bishops were supportive of an educational landscape which reflects the reality of the country’s increasingly diverse society.

However, they also stressed: “Parental choice is paramount, and that choice must be given full expression in any reconfiguration process.”

A unanimous US Supreme Court ruled yesterday in favour of a Catholic foster care agency in its biggest religion case of the year. The agency does not place children with same-sex couples because it believes in the right of children to be raised by a mother and father, where possible.

Justices said officials in Philadelphia violated the First Amendment by refusing to accommodate the agency’s faith-based ethos.

Legal precedent requires the government to offer religious exemptions when it’s willing to offer them for other purposes and can achieve its policy goals through other means, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion.

Catholic Social Services “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else,” he wrote.

The Slovak Parliament has rejected a move by the EU to influence local law on abortion and related sexual and reproductive matters.

A resolution rejecting the so-called Matic Report was initiated by MP Anna Zaborska of the Christian Union party and was adopted by 74 out of 117 votes.

It stated that “issues concerning the healthcare policy and education fall within the competence of the national states – Members of the European Union. Therefore, it views the draft proposal of the European Parliament Report on the Situation of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the EU in the Frame of Women’s Health as violating the principle of subsidiarity and overreaching the European Parliament’s competence”.

Following this, MEP, Miriam Lexmann, has initiated an open letter to the EU Parliament President David Sassoli that can be signed by national MPs from different EU Member States echoing the text of the Slovak resolution.

A Franciscan priest was killed in a hail of gunfire on his way to celebrate Mass and provide sacraments in a rural Mexican village known for drug cartel conflicts.

Fr. Juan Antonio Orozco, 33, was struck June 12 in the late morning as he drove in a rural region of western Durango state, where “he entered the crossfire of two groups fighting over the Durango to Zacatecas highway,” Bishop Luis Flores Calzada of Tepic said in a brief social media post. The bishop included a photo of the victim, wearing white robes, lying in front of a red pickup that identified the Franciscans’ parish ministry. The truck had several bullet holes.

Franciscan Fr. Gilberto Hernández, spokesman for the Order of Friars Minor, said the slain priest had travelled to celebrate Mass in a rural village. Orozco was one of three Franciscan priests serving the Santa Lucía de la Sierra parish in a rugged and isolated part of Zacatecas state. The spokesman said no threats against Orozco had been made, even though the region has public security issues.

The violent death of Orozco — known locally as Padre Juanito — marks the latest killing of a priest in Mexico. At least 29 priests have been killed in Mexico since 2012, according to the Catholic Multimedia Center.

Religious education teachers have expressed concern that children who are practising Catholics are singled out for bullying more than non-religious students, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

Citing upcoming research from DCU’s Anti-Bullying Centre, Prof James O’Higgins Norman said such pupils were often seen as “old fashioned or out of the mainstream culture” due to a decline in the number of children who practice religion.

“In addressing that we need to promote understanding of difference, that difference is the norm and a good thing, and no two kids are the same,” he said.

A Planned Parenthood-funded list in Argentina of supposed members of the “alt right” – including the country’s Catholic bishops – is being decried as harking back to the days of the country’s ‘Dirty War’ when it was under military rule.

A group of self-described progressive journalists created a website called Reacción Conservadora [Conservative Reaction], in which they have names, pictures and personal information of people and institutions that they claim are ‘conspiring’ to prevent the broadening of abortion rights.

The list includes Argentina’s Catholic bishops, politicians, journalists, academics, medical doctors and even the daughter of a candidate for sainthood.

The website included an interactive map with logos of organizations and faces of individuals. When a person clicked on the images, it would open a file with personal information about them.

The list reminded its targets of similar blacklists employed by the military during the 1974-1983 Dirty war, when the regime “disappeared” thousands of political opponents.

A Co Wicklow Catholic primary school has said it will not be using Flourish, a relationships and sexuality education (RSE) supplementary resource developed by the Irish Bishops’ Conference for use from junior infants up to sixth class.

The 22 parents said they did not want the program to be used even as a “supplementary” resource to complement the existing curriculum.

Their preference was that it not be used “in any shape or format”.

In a May 27th response, Lacken principal Fiona Jones and the school board of management assured the parents that “we intend to continue with our present RSE programme going forward. This rules out the use of any other programme, supplementary or otherwise.”

A British bioethicist is warning that extending a 14-day limit on experimenting on human embryos will “strip away one of the few remaining limits to injustices committed against embryonic human beings.”

For 40 years, the International Society for Stem Cell Research banned experimenting on human embryos that are more than 14 days old. On May 26, it lifted the prohibition and called for greater discussion on the issue.

David Albert Jones, the head of the Oxford-based Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said the decision was the latest in a series of changes that amounted to a “shifting goalpost” on human embryonic research.

“When the UK legalised experimentation on human embryos in 1990, it was promised that this would be subject to various ‘safeguards’: 1) No human embryo would be created by cloning; 2) No human embryo would be genetically modified; 3) No part-human, part-nonhuman embryo could be created; 4) The use of human embryos in assisted reproduction and in research would be regulated with the utmost care; 5) And, most famously, no experimentation on human embryos would be permitted after 14 days,” he said in a statement.

The view that men cannot transition to become women is a “protected belief” under equality law, a UK tribunal ruled yesterday.

An appeal panel led by a High Court judge found that a tax consultant was legally entitled to post social media comments arguing that gender identification was not the same as biological sex.

Maya Forstater was dismissed from the London office of the Centre for Global Development, a think tank, two years ago after she was said to have made “offensive and exclusionary” comments on Twitter.

She argued at an employment tribunal in 2019 that comments such as “woman means adult human female” or “trans women are male” were statements of neutral fact and were not transphobic or expressions of antipathy towards trans people.

But the tribunal rejected her claim and ruled that the decision to dismiss her was lawful.

However, on Thursday morning an employment appeal tribunal overturned that ruling, saying the original judge had “erred in law”.

The ruling of the three-strong panel, led by Mr Justice Choudhury supported Forstater’s argument that her comments were protected as a “philosophical belief” within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010.

A Pakistani court has ordered the release of a Christian couple who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar were jailed in 2013 for allegedly sending a text message insulting the prophet Muhammad – even though both are illiterate.

In April, the European parliament cited their case when it passed a motion condemning Pakistan for failing to protect religious minorities.

Last week, however, the Lahore Supreme Court acquitted the married couple on appeal.

Their lawyer, Saif ul-Malook, welcomed the ruling and said his clients are among the most helpless people in Pakistani society.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, where anyone deemed to have insulted Islam can face the death penalty and the whiff of even unproven allegations can lead to mob lynchings and vigilante murders.

Rights campaigners say accusations are often made to settle personal disputes.

Amnesty International welcomed the decision saying the couple should neither have been convicted nor faced a death sentence in the first place.

“‘Blasphemy’ cases are often premised on flimsy evidence in environments that make fair trials impossible, underscoring the significance of this verdict. The authorities must now immediately provide Shafqat, Shagufta, their family and their lawyer Saiful ul-Malook with adequate security,” said a spokesperson.