A video shared widely in India shows two Christian women being paraded naked and groped by a group of apparently Hindu men before being dragged into a field where they were allegedly raped.

The women, one in her twenties and the other in her fifties, are seen pleading with the mob not to harm them as ethnic violence flared in the northeastern state of Manipur which shares a border with Myanmar. When the younger woman’s brother and father tried to protect them, officials said, the mob bludgeoned them to death.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, reacted to the violence saying “The guilty will not be spared,” “What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven.”

Modi urged the heads of state governments to ensure the safety of women and said the incident, which took place on May 4, was “shameful for any civilised nation”.

The attack has sharpened focus on a conflict in Manipur that threatens to erupt into civil war. At least 140 people have been killed in the past two months as mobs rampaged through villages, attacking locals and torching houses.

The unrest was caused by a demand from the mostly Hindu Meitei people for special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Christian Kukis and other tribal groups, as well as getting a share of government jobs.

Canadian fertility rates have fallen sharply in recent decades, to levels far below what women say they want, and may be linked to a decline in religious participation, new research has found.

The study by demographer Lyman Stone, involving a survey of 2,700 Canadian women, examined to what extent, and through what means, religion influences fertility.

Overall, they found that “Canadian women who attend religious services at least monthly desire to have more children, spend more of their life married, and ultimately have more children than nominally religious or nonreligious Canadian women”.

The study suggests that religiously observant women may have more children “because their desires for larger families lead them to make different life choices”.

Ireland must use its “moral authority” to speak up for persecuted Christians, a number of politicians have said, urging the Tánaiste to raise the issue at September’s UN Assembly.

The comments come after representatives of Church in Chains, an Irish charity fighting Christian persecution, told an Oireachtas committee that millions of Christians are at risk of violence.

The former Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan told The Irish Catholic that Ireland must lend its voice to calls to end anti-Christian persecution.

He commended the “very important message” of the Christian charity, adding that he wrote to Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin “urging him to lend his voice at the foreign affairs council in Brussels and at the UN in September” to support persecuted Christians.

Ireland must do more to raise awareness of the issue, the Fine Gael TD said, adding that we are a recognised “moral authority” on the global stage.

His views were echoed by Senator Joe O’Reilly, who also commended Church in Chains’ appearance before the Committee for Foreign Affairs.

“We haven’t been doing enough” to raise awareness of this “huge international problem”, said Mr O’Reilly.

European bishops have released a statement condemning the drafting of a right to abortion in the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, arguing that the proposed amendment would run afoul of European Union law and human dignity.

Abortion activists have for years pushed for the modification to union law, with initiatives such as the Simone Veil Pact calling for broad abortion rights throughout the continent.

In its Tuesday statement, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) argued that the measure would constitute an “ethical indefensibility” against human rights and European law.

Stating that “​​human dignity is an overarching value in the EU Treaties and Charter,” the bishops wrote that “respect for the dignity of every human being in every stage of its life, especially in situations of complete vulnerability, is a fundamental principle in a democratic society.”

In-person appointments for all abortions must be reinstated to ensure that the gestation of babies can accurately be assessed, according to a leading pro-life group in the UK.

This follows the ruling from the Court of Appeal that Carla Foster who was jailed for illegally inducing an abortion in the eighth month of pregnancy, will be released from prison.

Right To Life UK also called for a full inquiry into the abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, for sending out abortion pills to a woman whose baby, Lily, was at least 32 weeks gestation, which is 22 weeks beyond the legal limit for at-home abortions.

The organisation has asked the Government to firmly reject changing legislation to make abortion legal right up to birth, as is proposed by abortion campaigners, led by BPAS, who are cynically using this tragic case to call for the removal of more abortion safeguards and the introduction of abortion up to birth across the United Kingdom.

Two Ukrainian priests who were arrested by Russian troops last year are still missing, according to the Pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

Until November 2022, several Catholic parishes and a Redemptorist monastery were still operating in the occupied territories, but in mid-November two Redemptorist Fathers, Fr Ivan Levitskyi C.SS.R. and Fr Bohdan Heleta C.SS.R., one of whom suffers from a severe form of diabetes, were arrested by Russian troops and are still being held at an unknown location.

“Despite prayers, protests, and efforts by the Catholic Church to contact those responsible, to find out the situation of the priests, there is still no news of the priests to this day”, says the auxiliary bishop Maksym Ryabukha.

The bishop requested that ACN continue to ask all benefactors and friends to pray for the speedy release of Father Ivan Levitskyi and Father Bohdan Heleta.

A Dutch court has convicted a man for helping at least 10 people take their own lives by selling them deadly “suicide drugs” and instructions for their use, in what has been seen as the latest test case for Dutch ‘right-to-die’ policies.

The man, identified only as Alex S. in line with Dutch privacy guidelines, sold the drugs to more than 1,600 people before police arrested him. He first bought the drugs online for himself, East Brabant District Court said in a written verdict.

“He is convinced that every person has the right to decide about their own life and believes that government policy in this area falls short,” the court said.

While the Netherlands was the first nation to legalise euthanasia in 2002, assisted suicide, the practice of someone who is not a physician providing a person with a self-administered lethal substance, remains illegal.

Since then the numbers availing of it have increased, and the grounds for accessing it have expanded.

The Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council, tasked with enforcing Smith-Connor’s penalty, refrained from pursuing prosecution within the statutory time-limit. This followed the police’s assessment that praying silently was not an offence in England and submissions by Adam’s legal team that the state had no power to restrict thoughts directed towards God.

Reflecting on the ordeal and the positive outcome for freedom of thought, Smith-Connor said: “Nobody should be criminalised for what they believe – especially not when they express that belief silently, in the privacy of their own minds. I’m glad that, in my case, common-sense policing won the day. However, it’s not right that I had to wait anxiously for a full six months for the authorities to determine my fate. The process, in essence, became my punishment.”

A Tory councillor who tweeted “Pride is not a virtue but a sin” is being investigated by the Conservative Party headquarters in the UK.

King Lawal, a Northamptonshire Councillor, has been suspended from the party and said he has been “cancelled” by six other organisations after expressing his Christian beliefs on social media.

Responding to images of Pride parades organised by LGBT groups at the end of last month, he wrote: “When did pride become a thing to celebrate? Because of pride, Satan fell as an archangel. Pride is not a virtue but a sin. Those who have pride should repent of their sins and return to Jesus Christ. He can save you. #PrideMonth #Pride23 #PrideParade.”

Councillor Lawal, 31, said that soon after posting the tweet he was suspended by the local Conservative group, and forced to resign from his job in a nursing and care business.

Speaking for the first time since the backlash, Cllr Lawal said: “It is now almost impossible to say something biblically truthful on sexual ethics in U.K. society without being cancelled and having your life ruined.”

Several churches in Pakistan have been forced to close after Islamist extremists declared they are seeking revenge for the burning of the Qur’an outside a mosque in Stockholm, Sweden on the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, a bishop has said.

Heightened security risks present a fresh challenge for a Church already under pressure in a country where at least 57 allegations of blasphemy were legally registered during the first five months of 2023.

Bishop Yousaf Sohan of Multan told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that the Pakistani Government insisted that churches and other Church buildings, including schools, increase security measures in response to growing fears of extremist attacks.

Lahore-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has threatened to carry out suicide bombings against Pakistan’s churches in retaliation for the Qur’an burning by an Iraqi atheist.