A police officer who was doing security work for a Catholic school for girls in north-eastern Pakistan opened fire on a group of teachers and students, killing two young girls, one of whom was only nine years old, reports Aid to the Church in Need. Five other girls, and one adult woman were injured in the shooting, which occurred on 16 May in Sangota, in the Swat Valley, at a school run by the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi.

The police officer had been hired in February to provide security at the school and has been arrested. An inquiry is ongoing.

In the wake of the incident, Archbishop Joseph Arshad of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, said: “We feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the growing terrorism in the country”, adding, “this is regrettable. We demand that the guard be punished, to avoid similar incidents in the future.”

A child protection expert says there is an ‘irrefutable’ link between unsupervised smartphone use and sexual offending.

Exposure to pornography from a young age, almost invariably through a smartphone, has become an almost routine fixture of sexual offence cases involving child offenders when they appear before the courts.

According to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), more than 20 per cent of sexual offences are committed by a male child. The link with pornography, according to Kieran McGrath, a social worker with 30 years’ experience, is “irrefutable”.

Most professionals working with children who display concerning behaviour believe there is a direct connection between sexual offending and the ease with which they can access extreme pornography on a device that can be all but impossible for parents to supervise.

“It coincides with the smartphone, so the last decade or so,” says Mr McGrath, when asked when he had first started to notice the problem.

Two Christian nurses in Pakistan have gone into hiding after being falsely accused of blaspheming the Qur’an.

Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, Mariam Lal, 54, and Newosh Arooj, aged 21, said “If we showed our faces in public, we could easily be targeted, lynched even. We can’t stay in one location. We have to keep on the move for our own security. The person who succeeds in killing us knows they would be hailed as a hero.”

The pair were on duty as nurses on a psychiatric ward at Civil Hospital, a government establishment in Faisalabad when a patient handed them part of a sticker which she had torn off a medicine cabinet. The sticker included a verse from the Qur’an. The next morning, a mob descended on them, accusing them of blasphemy, but the two nurses were lucky to escape with their lives.

They were however officially charged with desecration of the Qur’an, which carries life imprisonment, and have had their lives on hold for two years while the case rumbles on.

Research shows that a disproportionately high number of blasphemy cases in Pakistan involve Christians, even though they make up less than two per cent of the population.

Khloé Kardashian has revealed that she struggled to bond with the baby she procured via surrogacy. Having paid someone else to gestate for her, the reality TV star reports that “I definitely buried my head in the sand during that pregnancy” and “didn’t digest what was happening”.

The segment in the latest series of The Kardashians sees Khloé acknowledge that in effect she bought a baby, calling it “such a transactional experience”. And, centrally, that none of this was in the baby’s interests: “it is not about him”.

She tacitly acknowledges the harm this does, saying, “I felt really guilty that this woman just had my baby and I take the baby and go to another room and you are separated”.

Writing for unHerd, Mary Harrington says her choice of phrase is telling: there was a “you” — a mother-baby dyad that did not include her, and that had to be destroyed in order for the baby to become “my baby”.

But while this might have been transactional, Kardashian says, “it doesn’t mean it is bad or good. It is just very different.”

Harrington disagrees: “Surrogacy bakes mother-loss into a baby’s earliest experience — and inflicts this loss on a profoundly vulnerable infant, in the name of adult desire. Parents have a duty to put their children’s needs first. This is an inexcusable inversion of that duty”.

Three schools in Raheny are to stay under Catholic patronage after an in-depth debate in the North Dublin community.

The schools took part in a pilot scheme that investigated local interest for divestment, but Minister for Education Norma Foley confirmed they were “not amenable to or potential candidates for transfer of patronage”.

Discussions on divestment, which took place in Autumn last year, involved parents and others with interest in the schools and became heated, The Irish Catholic understands.

While a minority of parents took a hard line in pushing for divestment, somewhere around 80% of parents who gave their views wanted to keep the school’s Catholic ethos.

Some 63 schools across the country participated in the pilot scheme, a joint project between the Department for Education and the Irish bishops’ conference.

The results were due to be released in March, but Minister Foley has yet to do so.

The Irish Catholic understands that the vast majority of schools favour retaining their Catholic patronage, leading to speculation that the reports’ release are being delayed as they reflect an unpopular political opinion.

A priest in the western Mexican state of Michoacan has been brutally murdered, becoming the ninth slain in the country in the past four years.

Rev Javier García Villafaña’s body was found with several gunshot wounds, inside a vehicle he was driving near Capacho on the shores of Cuitzeo lake.

His death came one day after Monsignor Faustino Armendáriz Jiménez, archbishop of the northern state of Durango, was attacked in the state’s cathedral by an elderly man who tried to stab him.  He escaped uninjured.

In a statement, the Mexican Episcopal Conference condemned the killing of Rev Garcia and the attack on Monsignor Faustino and called on authorities to find those responsible.

“It is a painful reminder of the serious situation we face as a society, in which the presence of organised crime and impunity continue to threaten the lives and safety of so many,” the statement said.

According to the charity Open Doors, Christian leaders are often seen as a threat or symbol of defiance to criminal gangs controlling an area. If Christians refuse to comply with their demands or vocalise opposition to their criminal activities they risk being brutally beaten, kidnapped or murdered.

A new survey shows strong support for multi-denominational education and relatively little for religious-run schools, according to the Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI), the representative body for the State’s 16 regional education and training boards.

The ETBI-commissioned poll, based on a representative sample of 1,011 adults by research firm Opinion, found that 61 per cent of adults had a preference for multi-denominational education compared to 9 per cent who had a preference for a religious body to provide education.

ETBI general secretary Paddy Lavelle said: “Our research shows that there is a strong appetite for the Community National School as the model of choice and this needs to be urgently prioritised by Government if it is to achieve its target of 400 multi-denominational primary schools by the year 2030.”

Catholic bishops have expressed supported for changing the patronage of Catholic schools. However, they have warned that a law which prohibits Catholic schools from prioritising the enrolment of local children of the same faith is emerging as a “stumbling block” to the process.

Abortion campaigner Ailbhe Smyth has warned Green Party TDs that voters may not “forgive” them in the next election if a radical expansion of the State’s abortion regime is not agreed upon as soon as possible.

A Bill introduced by People Before Profit (PBP) to remove the three-day waiting period and decriminalise abortion in its entirety was up for debate in the Dáil Thursday.

But the Government has put down an amendment to the Bill, which would delay dealing with it until next May.

While Green Party ministers Catherine Martin and Roderic O’Gorman back many of the Bill’s measures, the Green Party supports the move to postpone its second reading until the recommendations of a review of the 2018 legislation can be considered.

Veteran campaigner, Ailbhe Smyth, said it would be “a very real failure” for Greens to vote against the Bill. She warned that if they don’t, “voters won’t necessarily forgive it very easily”.

A group of activists has called on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying to proceed with their examination of the issue as a matter of urgency so that any recommended legislative changes can be enacted within the lifetime of the Government.

Irish Doctors supporting Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) spokeswoman, Dr Sinead Cotter, said the committee is due to begin hearings on June 13th, but time is of the essence as any proposed legislative change would have to be enacted before the next general election.

“If the bill is still stuck in the legislative process by the time Taoiseach Leo Varadkar heads to the Áras to dissolve the 33rd Dáil, then it falls, no matter how much work was involved and how close it is to being passed so it is vital that committee completes its work within the lifetime of this Government.”

Highlighting at least 775 women who travelled abroad for an abortion even after the procedure was legalised here, the National Women’s Council of Ireland have re-issued a call for abortion to be decriminalised in its entirety.

NWCI Director Orla O’Connor said while “many women have been able to access this care since 2019 and this is applauded, there are too many women and pregnant people who still don’t have access due to systemic barriers, particularly the most marginalised”.

In relation to those who still travel abroad for abortions she said: “The medical providers are telling us the main reasons that they are travelling is the narrowness of the 12 week (limit) is causing a problem”.

“And then the other reason is for couples (with a fatal foetal anomaly diagnosis), and we’re really hearing heart breaking stories from couples, where the doctors have to predict that the foetus will die within 28 days of foetal anomaly, and doctors are saying that that is just too rigid. They can’t say exactly what day the foetus might die, so couples are still traveling with fatal foetal anomaly.”