More than 1,200 church leaders have urged PM Boris Johnson not to introduce Covid vaccine certificates, saying they are an “unethical form of coercion”.

In an open letter, the leaders – who include Anglican and Catholic ministers – warn passports could create a “surveillance state”.

The government says it is reviewing whether to use vaccine certificates and “no decisions have been taken”.

The UK equality watchdog says passports could create a “two-tier society”.

The church leaders go so far as to say that introducing the passports would create a “medical apartheid”.

“This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives,” the letter said.

“As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics.”

The church leaders said that, regardless of the government’s final decision, they would not refuse entry to their churches to anybody without a vaccine passport – or any other certificate which they have labelled “proof of health”.

Monkey-human embryos have been created and kept alive for an extended period for the first time in research that scientists said posed significant ethical questions.

The embryos, some of which continued to develop until 20 days, were made by injecting human stem cells into macaque embryos in a laboratory.

These stem cells continued to proliferate, creating embryos that were neither monkey nor human. All were grown outside the womb, and they averaged about 4 per cent human cells.

The researchers said that their work, which was published in the journal Cell, offered a way of studying early human development.

“As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,” said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, from the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, California.

Other scientists said that although the work may offer a way around this ethical problem it created another.

Leaders of different faiths and Christian denominations have reacted with anger to a Statutory Instrument that formally institutes penal provisions for most indoor and outdoor gatherings including public worship. According to Professor Oran Doyle of TCD, the provision even makes hearing Confession outdoors an offence.

In response, the four Catholic Archbishops called the move, together with the associated penal provisions, “provocative” and “draconian”. Gardai had already been treating public worship as an offence.

“We will seek an immediate meeting with Minister Donnelly and we request the suspension of this harsh and unclear statutory instrument,” Archbishop Eamon Martin said.

The chair of Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council has said he is disappointed by the measure to outlaw religious services.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri said faith communities have suffered enough and this is the second Ramadan that his community has been unable to visit a place of worship.

He said he is in agreement with the Catholic Archbishops and he is also considering taking legal advice.

John Ahern, pastor at All Nations Church, said he was “appalled” at the outlawing of services. “We’re going to issue a letter to the government about it this week,” he said. “They’re going to be reviewing the restrictions on May 4. If they don’t lift the ban, we’ll be calling on churches to open up anyway because we can’t go on like this.

“None of us want to be breaking the law and we know this has been a very difficult time for gardai and the government, but it is wrong to be criminalising worship in what is meant to be a free, democratic country.”

President Michael D Higgins has stated that the teaching of children in Northern Ireland separately can no longer be justified.

Mr Higgins told The Late Late Show that segregating children in the North according to their religious denominations is “abandoning them to parcels of hate and memory that others are manipulating”. He did not provide direct evidence for this.

“Who in 2021 can justify the teaching of children separately on the basis of belief? Is it important if you talk about an ethical present and an ambitious future that you deal with it,” he said.

For the first time in the history of the State it will become a specific criminal offence, with longer prison terms, to commit a hate crime based on the colour of a person’s skin, sexual orientation or their gender, including gender expression or identity.

The new offences, set to be provided for under the are the first of their kind in the Republic. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee published the general scheme of the Criminal Justice (Hate Crime) Bill 2021 on Friday morning.

Displaying content intended to incite hatred in a public place, including on social media, will carry a prison sentence of up to six months on conviction. However, very specific “intent or recklessness” criteria must be met before such charges can be brought. This is to ensure “giving offence” is not criminalised.

The threshold for criminal incitement means a person must either have deliberately set out to incite hatred, or at the very least have considered whether what they were doing would incite hatred, concluded that it was significantly likely, and decided to press ahead anyway.

While the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989 has been in place for over three decades, it deals with hate speech, requires a higher threshold of evidence, resulted in very few prosecutions, and does not cover gender, disability or Traveller ethnicity.

The Taoiseach has praised the Churches for their ongoing contribution to peace building, and the work they undertake on an ongoing and daily basis at community levels in Northern Ireland.

Representatives of the Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of Ireland, and Catholic church, and of the Irish Council of Churches, met with Micheál Martin yesterday to discuss a range of issues from the recent violence in Northern Ireland to the response to the covid-19 pandemic.

A statement from the government press office said that the Taoiseach and the Church leaders had a very constructive discussion on Northern Ireland, including a shared and grave concern at recent incidents of violence on the streets.

The Taoiseach and Church Leaders also agreed the pandemic has posed challenges for all citizens in terms of their mental health and wellbeing and “recognised the importance of faith to the spiritual and mental well-being of many people and communities and look forward to the time when church services and other in-person activities can resume”.

Both the current and former Archbishops of Canterbury have expressed regret that churches were locked shut during the first UK lockdown.

The Church took the decision after the Government banned public gatherings of two or more people.

In Ireland at the time, while the Government didn’t close churches, many dioceses outside of Dublin ordered them shut.

Justin Welby told the Financial Times he didn’t push hard enough to keep churches available, at least for individual prayer.

He had also ordered clergy not to go in to them, even for private prayer or to conduct online services.

He now admits he made a mistake, saying he was too risk-averse.

Separately, the retired Archbishop, Rowan Williams, said there was a stronger case than he recognised at the time for keeping churches open for private prayer, simply because people value the sheer space.

Boris Johnson has confirmed churches in Britain will still be allowed to pray for gay people who request help to live chastely – despite plans to ban conversion therapy.

The Prime Minister said all adults can still get ‘appropriate pastoral support including prayer’ in religious settings in the ‘exploration of their sexual orientation’.

The PM told the Evangelical Alliance (EA) that he takes ‘freedom of speech and freedom of religion very seriously’ and he will not back calls from some LGBT campaigners who wanted a ban on any practice aiming to change someone’s sexual identity, including prayer.

The EA’s UK Director Peter Lynas had warned that a ban would be “a substantive block on supporting those that do not wish to act on their sexual attraction.”

“Ironically, those calling for a ban are promoting polices that would discriminate against someone based on their sexuality – preventing someone who is gay from accessing counselling available to a straight person.”

He added: ‘An expansive definition of conversion therapy, and a ban along such lines, would place church leaders at risk of prosecution when they preach on biblical texts relating to marriage and sexuality.

He said they naturally “oppose abusive practices, and the use of electro-shock treatment and corrective rape are clearly wrong and should be ended”.

“However, such practices should already be banned or illegal and as such should be dealt with under existing policies and laws.”

An Irish Bishop has had an affidavit filed with the High Court in support of the case challenging the constitutionality of the ban on public worship.

The move was reported by the court reporter for the Irish Times though the identity and denomination of the ecclesiastic was not revealed.

Counsel on behalf of Galway businessman, Declan Ganley, was given permission by High Court Judge Charles Meenan to file the affidavit on behalf of the bishop at a hearing on Tuesday.

The Judge also allowed an additional filing to further argue against the ban on the grounds of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

The case also stands on article 44 of the Irish Constitution which holds that freedom of conscience “and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen”.

Moves to legalise euthanasia in France and Latvia have floundered.

The French bill was a personal initiative of a deputy for the parliamentary splinter group Libertes et Territoires (“Freedom and Territories”). He said the law would put a stop to a national “hypocrisy” of French residents travelling to Belgium or Switzerland for assisted suicide while, he claimed, French doctors are secretly performing 2,000 to 4,000 euthanasia every year.

The bill’s opponents filed about 3,000 amendments ahead of the debate which slowed down proceedings and made a vote in the allotted time impossible, thus killing the bill.

Meanwhile, on March 25, after a long debate, the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) rejected a public petition which had called for the legalisation of euthanasia. A total of 49 members voted for rejection, 38 voted against, and two abstained.

Opponents emphasised that Latvia needed to get its palliative care system in order first, before considering right-to-die initiatives. Deputy Vitālijs Orlovs, who is a doctor, declared in the debate: “I was taught to fight for patients’ lives to the end. I cannot imagine injecting a person with some substance to help them die – not for any amount of money.”