Europe

Swiss cancel condoms ad
THE Swiss government has withdrawn an advertisement urging the country's Catholic priests to promote condoms.
The health ministry recalled the posters, which bot a the slogan "Dear Father, if Rome doesn't want you to talk about contraception, then talk about condoms instead", after talks with the country's Catholic bishops' conference.
A government spokeswoman said: "It was never our intention to attack Rome, the Vatican or the Church, or to hurt religious feelings."
An actor's life for the Pope
AN 81-YEAR-OLD actress who grew up with Pope John Paul II has published a book of memoirs, recalling perform ing alongside the future pontiff in clandestine theatres in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The Great Friend was published by the tiny Kwadrat publishing house in the southern city of Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla lived
for 40 years before being
elected Pope in October 1978. The publishing house initially printed 2,000 copies of the paperback, priced at £5.50.
"As a witness, I wanted to show how facts from his earlier life influenced and helped him as Pope — the gift of speaking clearly to an audience, the strong voice, the unfailing memory, the
gestures," Halina Kwiatkowska said of her
160-page book.
Manager Jacek Stroka said he persuaded Mrs Kwiatkowska to write the book to mark 25 years of John Paul's pontificate, 45 years since Karol Wojtyla became a bishop and 65 years since both graduated from high school.
Mrs Kwiatkowska writes of her experience of acting alongside the young Wojtyla in Polish romantic dramas, describing how he saved one performance by learning the part of a friend who was kicked out of the play at the last minute for misbehaviour.
In 1938, Mrs Kwiatkowska and Wojtyla went on to study Polish literature at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, 180 miles south of Warsaw.
The book describes their participation in clandestine performances by a fivemember troupe in private apartments during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and rehearsals at Wojtyla's apartment.
Kaspar urges unity in faith
A sENIot Vatican official has told Eastern European Christians that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were united in faith.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, made his comments during a meeting with the Bulgarian Orthodox community residing in Rome, which had gathered to celebrate Easter. "You Ortho
dox and we Catholics do not have the same Easter date, but we have the same paschal faith," the cardinal told them.
The community was celebrating its first Easter in the church of SS Vincent and Anastasius. The church was given to the Bulgarian community in Rome last year by John Paul II, coinciding with his trip to Sofia.
Present at the celebration, which was presided over by Archimandnte Thion, vicar of the Orthodox Diaspora for Western Europe, were the ambassadors of Bulgaria to the Vatican and to Italy, as well as the ambassadors to the Vatican of Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia.
New impetus will be given to Catholic-Orthodox relations on May 24, the feast of SS Cyril and Methodius, when two Bulgarian delegations will visit Rome. One delegation will be headed by King Simeon and the Prime Minister, and the other by officials of the Bulgarian Holy Synod.
Cardinal Kasper said: "Bulgarians have much to give, because they have a spiritual richness, especially in SS Cyril and Methodius, who come from Bulgaria and represent all the Slav peuples."
Collaborator allowed to stay
THE CZECH bishops have
refused the resignation of a
high-ranking cleric who admitted collaborating with the communists.
Mgr Karel Simandl, the general secretary of the Czech bishops' conference, offered to quit after his name appeared on a list of police informants. The list was released in late March by the Czech interior ministry.
"Mgr Simandl is valued as a loyal cooperator, whose record has been unblemished since the fall of eortrcriunisnf," said Marianist Brother Lawrence Cada,
the bishops' conference spokesman.
"In view of his past services, and the fact that he refused to collaborate further after his initial mistake, the bishops have asked him to continue his functions."
About 10 per cent of Catholic priests are believed to have worked with the secret police in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Encyclical gets mixed response
POPE John Paul II's encyclical on the Eucharist has drawn a mixed response from Christians in Germany.
The German bishops said in a statement they welcomed Ecclesia de Eucharistia, noting that the Pope spoke positively about ecumenism and described the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist "without any shrillness".
Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, president of the bishops' conference, said the Pope took a "very reserved" position on joint Communion "so long as a real union between the churches has not been reached". But the German Protestant Church Council, an umbrella group uniting Lutheran and Reformed churches, issued a statement regretting the encyclical. it said the Catholic
teachings presented in the
encyclical were not new, but were presented "in a brusque manner".
No confidence with Church
LESS THAN a quarter of Getman Catholics who participated in a major survey said they had confidence in the Church, while 36 per cent said they saw an urgent need for change.
The survey questioned some 350,000 Germans on their views on major institutions, including the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Overall, 11 per cent of Germans said they had confidence in the Catholic Church, 45 per cent had no confidence in the Church, 12 Qer cent said the Church did itsjob well and 29 per cent wanted change.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, chairman of the German bishops' conference, said the results were "dramatic".
The cardinal told Stem magazine: "It is painful to be in the
process of becoming less
important. It's hard to become a minority, but it is not so hard to be a minority. Minorities are more flexible."
Cardinal Lehmann said that the social arms of the Catholic and Protestant churches were listed among the most trusted institutions in Germany, and that it was a misunderstanding for people to see the church welfare institutions as separate from the larger Church.
"Social commitment cannot be divided from faith," he said.
Theologian
honoured
A P toVimia i liberation theologian has won a major Spanish award for his work in "communications and humanities".
Dominican Fr Gustavo Gutierrez beat off stiff competition to clinch Spain's 2003 Prince of Asturias Award.
The award cited the deep spiritual dimension the Peruvian priest brought to liberation theology, putting him "outside the radical views which other theologians have wrapped around themselves".
Fr Gutierrez, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, is generally credited with coining the term "theology of liberation" because of his 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation.
Vatican
British cleric calls for peace
A SENIOR Vatican official has appealed to Buddhists around the world to "join in prayer for the cause of peace".
Archbishop Michael Fitzger aid, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the highest-ranking Briton in the Vatican. noted that Catholics and Buddhists both used beads in meditative prayer. Buddhists repeat a mantra or phrase while fingering the ma/a, normally a string of 108 beads.
In his message to Buddhists preparing for the May 15 feast of Vesakh, Archbishop Fitzgerald explained that for Catholics "the rosary represents a most effective means of fostering contemplation of Jesus Christ".
"By virtue of their meditative character," he said, the Christian rosary and the Buddhist mala "have a calming effect on those who pray them they lead them to experience and to work for peace, and they produce fruits of love".
"We Christians and Buddhists are convinced that the origin of all conflict is ultimately located in human hearts characterised by selfish desire, specifically by desire for power, domination and wealth, often at the expense of others," Archbishop Fitzgerald wrote.
In addition, Christians and Buddhists were convinced that peace must be born and cultivated in individual hearts before it can become a social reality, he said.
Inviting Buddhists to increase their mala meditations as Catholics increase their recitation of the rosary, the archbishop said that "by persevering in prayer we will contribute to advancing peace in the world both now and in the future".
Study bible for life's answers
RENEWED study of the Bible will provide answers to questions troubling men and women of today, the Pope has said.
Pope Johtf Paul H made the comment during an address to the members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission at a plenary assembly marking the 100th anniversary of the institution.
The commission began work on the theme of the Bible and morality last year, and eventually a document will be produced.
The Pope said it was a timely topic that responded to a "paradoxical situation" in the contemporary world.
"The person of today, disappointed by so many unsatisfactory responses to the fundamental questions of living, seems more open to the voice that comes from transcendence and expresses itself in the biblical message," he said.
"At the same time, though, he seems increasingly intolerant toward the requests of behaviour in harmony with the values that the Church has always presented as rooted in the Gospel."
Paper attacks Big Brother
Tin omcis. Vatican newspaper has launched a savage attack on the television reality
gameshow Big Brother, branding it 'useless and parasitical'.
L'Osservatore Romano described the housemates as empty protagonists, and the viewers as people full of morbid curiosity.
Big Brother has become a big hit in Italy, but the newspaper asked how so many could watch such a tedious programme, when the world situation was so serious.
In Italy, where the show is known as Grande Fratello, more than eight million people tune in every day to watch the latest events in the Big Brother house in Rome.
Russians claim icon is fake
RussiAN experts have claimed that the icon of Our Lady of Kazan held by Pope John Paul H is not genuine.
A commission of the Russian Culture Ministry concluded that the icon was not the original of 1579, but a copy of made in the middle of the 18th century.
Last month Vatican sources indicated that the Pope might make a brief stopover in Kazan on his way to Mongolia in August to return the icon to Russia,
General audience
THE ENcI.tsH summary of Pope John Paul II's weekly general audience, given at St Peter's on Wednesday, April 30, 2003.
"Dear brothers and sisters, Psalm 101 (100) presents the figure of an ideal political ruler who models his actions on God's just governance of the world.
"The ruler's personal life is marked by moral integrity, while his public activity reflects a resolute commitment to combating every form of injustice in society.
"As the Church sings this psalm in her morning prayer, she applies it to individual believers, who are called to govern their lives in justice and mercy, uprooting evil from their hearts and working for the growth of a society which embodies God's own justice, mercy and goodness."