In brief

A Junior Choir is to be established at the London Oratory in Brompton Road, South Kensington. Membership, which will number up to 30, will be open to Catholic boys and girls from the age of eight. It will start in September, and applications for membership will be invited shortly.
Commenting on a report in a French periodical that Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author and Nobel Prizewinner. had been forbidden . by the Soviet censors to write the name of God with an initial capital letter, Pope Paul said: "We've arrived even at this today ... The absence of God seems to characterise current history and civilisation."
More than 145 million Catholics now live in the European Economic Community since the entry of Britain. Ireland and Denmark. Before January I, the E.E.C. had a population of 185.5 million, of which 137.3 million were Catholics.
Marriages declared invalid by the Diocesan Court in Rome totalled 473 in 1972, and 60 were . pronounced to be valid.
"Call to the North" organisers are seeking a benefactor to provide a helicopter to enable Church leaders to meet all demands on their time over the Easter period. The leaders are Archbishop Beck of Liverpool; the Archbishop of York, Dr. Donald Comm. and the former Moderator of the Free Churches, Dr. John Marsh.
The Anglican Bishop of St, Albans, Dr. Robert Runcie, has accepted an invitation from the B.B.C. to be chairman of its Central Religious Advisory Committee in succession to the late Bishop of Durham. Dr. Ian Ramsey, who died last autumn.
Thirty students and four chaplains took part in a Vigil for Christian Unity on Friday night at Morehouse, the York University Catholic Chaplaincy.
President Thieu's only daughter, Nguyen Thi Tuan Anh, 18, was married in Saigon Cathedral to Nguyen Tan Trieu, 28, son of the director-general of Air Vietnam. The bridegroom, previously a Buddhist, became a Catholic in order to marry.
About 40 children from Northern Ireland aged 12 to 15, both Catholic and Protestants, are to be given a two-week holiday in the Washington area of Co. Durham by the Knights of St. Columba. They will arrive on April 18.
.Often described as the Vatican's "swinging archbishop", 85-year-old Archbishop Pietro Sfair, Primate of Lebanon and Consultant to the Papal Commission for Oriental Law, has caused a stir by accepting a dinner invitation from the actress Sylva Koscina, who is appearing topless in a play based on "The Decameron."
The combined circulation of all Catholic periodicals in the United States and Canada increased by nearly 450,000 last year to a total of 22,805,000, according to the 1973 Catholic Press Directory, published in New York.
Fr. Austin B. Tomaney has been appointed by the Bishops of England and Wales as national chaplain to the Association for the Catholic Deaf. Fr. Tomaney, who is 45, has for the lust two years been a part-time member of the ecumenical Industrial Mission Team for Northumberland and Durham.
Plater College, Oxford, the Catholic residential college for men and women. plans to increase its number of students from the present 65 to 80. Work begins thiS month on new buildings. Half the cost is being met by the Department of Education and Science and the Catholic bishops of England and Wales are giving substantial help. But there is still over £30,000 to be found.
Christian Action's chairman, Canon L. John Collins, has resigned for health reasons. but remains president. lie is
. succeeded as chairman by Prebendary A. J. Drewett, who has headed its Race Relations Committee since 1959.
Among 15 radio centres criticised by Communist Russia in the trade union newspaper Trud arc Radio Vatican. the B.B.C. and the Voice of America. It describes their religious broadcasts as "purposeful propaganda."