NEWS IN BRIEF

Disabled plea Disabled plea
FAMILIES WITH disabled members deserve help from church communities in overcoming emotional trials and forms of discrimination, said Pope John Paul last week. The Pope cited Gospel accounts of Christ's attention to the handicapped and said local churches should likewise welcome the disabled in their midst. "Liberating the human being from evil and from the discrimination caused by his difficulties requires the willingness to he with that person in order to share his condition", he told an assembly of an Italian movement for the blind.
World's children THE POPE SAID THIS week that he hoped his letter to the world's children would help them prepare for Christmas and love Jesus. The Pope announced the letter on the occasion that he blessed nativity scene figurines of the infant Christ held up by thousands of young people in St Peter's Square. The letter said that the Pontiff wanted children to be "joyous messengers of his gospel for a peaceful world".
Clerical support A LEADING CHURCH of Ireland cleric has defended the Catholic Church this week, warning that Irish Catholics are in danger of "rejecting the good and the saintly" among their priests and religious because of child abuse by a very few. The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, the Very Rev John Paterson, speaking in a sermon on Sunday, said: "Sadly our Irish society seems only too capable of moving from adulation to rejection".
Orthodox split
THE RUSSIAN Orthodox Church has recommended that the Church withdraw its membership of the World Council of Churches and other major ecumenical organisations in protest at continuing "missionary inn-usions" in Russia by nonOrthodox Churches. The recommendation was made
last week by the Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church's governing body, the Synod. Church sources said this week that the Bishops' Council meeting was taking place in a "heated atmosphere", because of increasing pressure from the Church's "radical conservative wing" to curb the activities of "reformist groups" within the Church.
Rabbi dies
THE CHIEF RABBI of France from 1955 1980 has died at the age of 99. In his years of office at the head of France's Jews, Jacob Kaplan watched the growth of the Jewish community from 250,000 to 700,000. Rabbi Kaplan served in the First World War and received a Croix de Guerre for gallantry. He was appointed acting Chief Rabbi of France following the liberation in 1944, and led the Jewish people's attempt to rebuild their lives in the wake of the chaos of German persecution that left 100,000 Jews dead. In the years following the Second World War, Rabbi Kaplan established the JewishChristian Friendship Association.
Death sentence THE FORMER MINISTER and pro-life activist, Paul Hill, was sentenced in Florida last week to death by the electric chair for murdering an abortion clinic doctor and his escort last July.
Swashbuckling LARNE PRIEST FR Pat Buckley has said he expects to present a "stronger" case to the next jury charged with deciding whether or not he was defamed by the late Fr Michael Cleary in a 1991 Dublin radio broadcast. Last week in Dublin, a High Court jury failed to reach a verdict in the defamation action taken by Fr Buckley against the radio station and a retrial was ordered. Fr Buckley claims that Fr Cleary said he was a conman who charged exorbitant sums for marriage services and who knowingly celebrated Masses which were invalid.