LONDON (CNS) -- A British cardinal said Great Britain is being reduced to a "profoundly needy land" by attempts to purge religion from public life. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said secularization has led to the collapse of shared moral values and has created a sense...Read More

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Repeating a remark he often has made since former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, Cardinal Renato Martino expressed hope that the deposed dictator would not be executed. "There is no doubt" that Saddam was a ruthless dictator responsible for hundreds of deaths, said Cardinal Martino, president of the...Read More

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Newsweek magazine has named Jesuit Father John P. Foley, president of the national Cristo Rey Network of Catholic high schools, among "the people to watch in the year ahead." Two other religious figures -- Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Muslim professor Ingrid Mattson -- also made the magazine's gallery of...Read More

br />WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In his brief, unelected tenure in the nation's highest office, President Gerald R. Ford restored integrity and character to the White House and brought a measure of healing to a country badly wounded and divided by the Watergate scandal. Ford, who had a bout with pneumonia last January and two heart...Read More

Dolores Orlando of Towson recently walked into the Catholic Corner Bookstore determined to find specific Christmas cards and a statue of St. Joseph, and looked relieved when she spotted the establishment’s owner, Joan Linz. “Joan, I really need your help,” said Ms. Orlando, an Immaculate Conception, Towson, parishioner. The bookshop keeper, a parishioner of St....Read More

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Once again Christmas in the Holy Land is faced with "circumstances of death and frustration," but the holiday still brings joy and announces salvation to all, said Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem in his traditional Christmas message. Though the West Bank city of Bethlehem should be a city of peace it...Read More

ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- Midnight Mass used to be one of the mainstays of a Catholic Christmas. But in recent years the tradition once celebrated at virtually every parish has given way to Masses at 11 p.m., 10 p.m. or even earlier. "The midnight Mass is a tradition that goes back to the 11th century,"...Read More

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNS) -- Church authorities in Argentina are preparing to encase the country's most revered icon -- a 17th-century terra-cotta statue of the Virgin of Lujan, patron saint of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay -- in bulletproof glass to safeguard it from vandalism.Read More