The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis’ post-synodal document on the family will be published on April 8. The Apostolic Exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia’ meaning ‘The Joy of Love’ will be released at a press conference that morning led by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna.

Northern Ireland’s newly issued abortion guidelines will “make doctors more conscious of their obligations” and make procuring a termination harder, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has said. The new rules, SPUC, added clear up the ambiguity of the previous ones where abortion as a legal option was “open to a wide spectrum of interpretation”.

Christians in the Islamic State stronghold city of Raqqa are being prevented from leaving and are now forced to study Islam, an observer group has revealed. It is believed that there are 43 Christian families remaining in Raqqa, having survived thus far by paying the non-Muslim tax levied by Islamic State.

A Christian man in Britain whose role as a magistrate was terminated by the Lord Chancellor after he expressed support for adoption by traditional family units over same-sex couples has now been removed from a National Health Service Trust where he held a non-executive position. Richard Page has been informed the NHS he is suspended while the body “considers whether it is in the interests of the health service” for him to remain in his post.

Christian groups in Northern Ireland have welcomed newly published guidelines on abortion which offer no change in laws regulating terminations there. Despite some concerns over the affording of a more liberal approach to interpreting the new guidelines, issued in the wake of a legal challenge, both the Christian public policy charity CARE and the Evangelical Alliance have expressed support for them.