NEWS IN BRIEF

Church going
IN FUTURE, TOURISTS ARE 10 be asked to pay to look at eight churches in the north Italian city of Verona, including the Cathedral of San Zeno, the Italian tourist board announced this week. Except for times during Mass, visitors will buy entrance tickets.
Rosary rights VATICAN EADIO SAID this week that two different groups hold legitimate rights to market recordings of Pope John Paul II praying the Rosary. In recent months, the two companies claimed the only valid rights to the Rosary recordings. Over half a million copies of the Pope's recording have been sold, worldwide, so far.
Templeton 1995 THF PRESTIGIOUS UN award, the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, will be presented this year to Paul Davies, a physicist who has explored the implications of science for theology. A native of England, Davies is now based at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Mother Teresa was the first recipient of
the Templeton Prize, in 1973, and a variety of distinguished world figures, Christian and non-Christian, have been awarded it since.
Shroud interest Two CATHOLIC US experts on the Shroud of Turin have been visiting re-opened churches in Russia and talking about their researches. On their 10-day visit, John Jackson and his wife Rebecca met Russian biochemist Dmitri Kousnetsov, who has challenged the 1988 radiocarbon testing results that say the shroud dates to 1260 1390 AD. He claims that his researches prove it goes back at least 1,800 years.
Byzantine death ARCHBISHOP STEPHEN Kocisko, retired head of the US Byzantine Catholic Archdiocese of Pittsburgh, has died of pneumonia. He was 79 years old. Archbishop Kocisko, who retired in 1991, on his 76th birthday, attended the Second Vatican Council as a bishops and was the only representative of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church to have attended every world synod of bishops.