Leaders from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim faiths in Canada have joined in calling on the government there to include a conscience protection clause for medical staff in forthcoming legislation on euthanasia and assisted suicide. “We ask, simply, for the same protection that has been provided…in every foreign jurisdiction in the world that has legalised euthanasia/assisted suicide; that is, never to force hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and other care facilities to go against their mission and values, which are their institutional conscience,” the leaders stated.
A Christian woman in China has been killed attempting to halt a church demolition. The woman, identified as Ding Cuimei, is reported to have been buried alive as authorities moved against the church in Henan province as part of a wider drive to demolish church properties across China. The woman’s husband, the church’s pastor, was also buried, but managed to escape.
Baroness Nuala O’Loan has criticised the Irish media of being “aggressively hostile” to the Catholic Church and of having contributed to its decline in Ireland. Speaking at a conference in Boston, USA, Baroness O’Loan said “Papers like The Irish Times now run columns in which things are said about and imputed to Catholics which would not be tolerated in the context of Islam or Judaism, or of homosexuals or humanists”.
Pope Francis has once again spoken up in defence of the family, insisting that it should be a key focus for all following the Synod of the Family convoked last October. Answering journalists’ questions, the Pontiff moved past the media focus on Communion for remarried Catholics to state: “‘Do you not realise that that is not the important problem? Don’t you realise that instead the family throughout the world is in crisis? The family is the basis of society. Do you not realise that the young don’t want to marry? Don’t you realise that the falling birth rate in Europe is something to cry about?..These are the big problems.”
Almost one third of Irish children are raised in materially deprived households, a new study published by UNICEF has revealed. Further, Ireland has the fourth worst income inequality in the EU ranked just below Britain, Belgium and Bulgaria.
