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Philippine bishop pleads for peace with rebel, government negotiators

Catholic News Service — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:25:44 UT

Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, Philippines, has urged government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace negotiators to stop the fighting that has displaced thousands of villagers in the southern Philippines.

Exhibit at Vermont priory aims to keep memory of atomic bombings alive

Cori Fugere (Catholic News Service) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:36:15 UT

Natsumi Nagao was 14 when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. She was injured so badly her skin hung off her body and had to be cut off. When her father found her several days later, the only way he recognized her was by her cries.

Catholic schools work to curb obesity, promote fitness and nutrition

Geoffrey A. Brooke Jr. (Catholic News Service) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:44:58 UT

Obesity, one of the fastest growing problems in North America, is being tackled by Catholic schools and colleges hoping to reverse the trend while also promoting general wellness.

Pope calls for immediate end to military action in Georgia

Catholic News Service — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:52:43 UT

Pope Benedict XVI appealed for an immediate end to military operations in Georgia and its breakaway province of South Ossetia.

British government permits church to exhume Cardinal Newman's body

Simon Caldwell (Catholic News Service) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:32:40 UT

The Ministry of Justice granted a license to allow undertakers to dig up the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman from a grave in a small cemetery in the suburbs of Birmingham, England, and transfer it to a marble sarcophagus in a church in the city, where it can be venerated by pilgrims.

Back-to-school supplies and demands: High prices are testing parents

Carol Zimmermann (Catholic News Service) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:42:36 UT

Parents -- already coping with the high cost of food and gas -- are now getting hit hard with a school-supply price tag that increases each year as items on the list become more high tech than the traditional pens, pencils, glue and notebooks.

UPDATED: Pilgrimage bus crashes en route to Marian Days; 17 dead

Catholic News Service — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:07:02 UT

Seventeen parishioners from Houston-area Vietnamese Catholic churches were killed early Aug. 8 when the pilgrimage bus they were taking to Marian Days in Carthage, Mo., ran off a highway overpass north of Dallas and crashed onto the road below.

Parishioners send off two Indiana Catholic divers to Beijing Olympics

Catholic News Service — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:51:38 UT

Two divers from parishes in the diocese -- Mary Beth Dunnichay of St. Joseph Church in Elwood and David Boudia of Our Lady of Grace Church in Noblesville, Ind. -- were among the hundreds of American athletes competing on the world stage during the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Former Olympic spiritual adviser hopes for calm Beijing games

Brigitte Schmitt (Catholic News Service) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:15:32 UT

A Catholic chaplain who served at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich said he hopes the Aug. 8-24 Olympics in Beijing are free from the kind of violence that brought the '72 games to a standstill.

In fight against AIDS, agencies consider male circumcision

Ioan Grillo (Catholic News Service) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:30:27 UT

When French scientist Bertran Auvert was studying male circumcision in South Africa, he discovered circumcised men were 60 percent less likely to contract HIV when having sex with women. While some scientists had speculated about such an effect, it had never been proven, and the results were one of the most important medical breakthroughs since the AIDS epidemic first exploded in the 1980s.

Elegy

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:30:42 UT

Actress Bette Davis opined that old age is "not for sissies." And Leo Tolstoy declared the process was "man's biggest surprise."
Both quotes are invoked by Ben Kingsley's character in "Elegy" (Goldwyn), a somber but generally absorbing and impressively acted adaptation of Philip Roth's short novel "The Dying Animal."

Speakers call for less stigma, more money for AIDS medicine

Ioan Grillo (Catholic News Service) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:53:58 UT

Key speakers at a global AIDS conference called for more money for medicine and less stigma in the fight against HIV, while a Mexican Catholic leader stressed the need for solid marriages and faithfulness.

Before today's FCC, you pay your money and you take your chances

Mark Pattison (Catholic News Service) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:45:41 UT

Money makes the world go round. If one ever needed any evidence of that, look at two big-money deals involving the Federal Communications Commission that took place within a week of each other.

Catholic educators examine best way to educate middle-school students

Barbara Watkins (Catholic News Service) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:05:22 UT

Educators nationwide continue to debate the best way to educate middle-school students -- in a single school for kindergarten through eighth grade or a separate middle school.
In the St. Louis Archdiocese, the focus is not on where to teach them but how.

As Olympian, 'lost boy' looks to raise awareness about Darfur genocide

Luke Eggleston (Catholic News Service) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:35:44 UT

In 2001, some "lost boys of Sudan" arrived in the U.S. and the first phase of their long run from the horrors of their homeland's civil war was fading in the distance.
For one boy resettled in the Syracuse Diocese, however, that year marked the beginning of a new run, both literally and figuratively.