More than 40 worshippers at a Baghdad Catholic church were killed when insurgents stormed the church Sunday night; U.S. military officials said the subsequent raid by Iraqi commandos that killed the hijackers demonstrates the Iraqis’ ability to fight for themselves. B16 denounced the attack as “ferocious.”
Victims’ groups held a vigil yesterday in St. Peter’s Square, and the Vatican says we’re all in this together, so let’s try and get along. A California man is charged with beating an elderly priest who allegedly abused him decades ago during a camping trip.
Jury selection begins today in the trial of Brian David Mitchell, the itinerant street preacher who’s charged with breaking into Elizabeth Smart‘s Utah bedroom and kidnapping her back in 2003.
On the run-up to Election Day tomorrow, black clergy rallied their flocks to go cast a “blood-stained ballot” in solidarity with President Obama. The military says chaplains have nothing to worry about if gays are allowed to serve openly in the military, but chaplains remain nervous.
WaPo says contraception could well be free under Obama’s health care reform, but first the feds have to decide whether the Pill counts as “preventative medicine.” The 700 sophomores at La Quinta High School in southern California will have to sit through anti-bullying lessons after some knucklehead thought it’d be a good idea to play a game of “Beat the Jew.”
Over in the UK, there’s mounting concern that Anglican priests were duped (or pressured?) into presiding at sham marriages. The Vatican bank is promising to clean up its act and follow all the rules on money transfers, but Italian prosecutors remain skeptical.
WaPo probes the growing divide between U.S. and Israeli Jews. Jews in Chicago are wary but undeterred after bombs were discovered in packages shipped from Yemen to Chicago-area synagogues. A gay-friendly synagogue may have been one of the intended targets, CNN says. Israel blasted as “absurd” a UNESCO decision to designate Jewish-Muslim holy sites in the West Bank as “Palestinian.”
And when is a hijab more than just a hijab? When it’s worn by Turkey’s first lady during an official state reception to mark Republic Day in the officially secular (but increasingly religious) Islamic country. The imam behind the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” brushed off advice from a leading Saudi cleric that he move the proposed Park51 Islamic center away from Ground Zero.
For you history buffs, it’s the 60th anniversary of the last officially proclaimed Catholic dogma, that the Virgin Mary was “assumed body and soul” into heaven at the end of her earthly life. It’s also All Saints Day, and our pal Jim Martin has his annual paean to the saintly and not-so-virtuous.
