Benedict XVI to Read Genesis on TV
Kicks off Bible Marathon Before Synod

http://www.zenit.org/article-23105?l=english

Obama backs faith in public life

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has said he would expand George W Bush’s programme of involving religious groups in government initiatives.

The Democratic Party candidate unveiled plans for a council of faith-based and neighbourhood partnerships in Ohio.

He said challenges from saving the planet to ending poverty were too big for the government to solve on its own.

A council involving religious groups would help to set the national agenda, Senator Obama said in his speech.

“We know that faith and values can be a source of strength in our own lives,” said Mr Obama.

“That’s what it has been to me and that’s what it has been to so many Americans. It can also be something more.

“It can be the foundation of a new project of American renewal and that’s the kind of effort I intend to lead as president of the United States.”

Unease

The Illinois senator was speaking in the key battleground state of Ohio as part of a series of speeches he is giving this week with an eye to voters in middle America who remain unsure about his patriotism and religious background.

Yet even as he was stressing his belief in the separation of church and state, the senator’s plan was provoking unease amongst some groups who see it as a continuation of the faith-based programme of President Bush.

Former White House officials have claimed that was hi-jacked to promote partisan interests.

Yet paradoxically it is some of these ex-Bush administration insiders who are embracing Mr Obama’s plans most enthusiastically.

It remains to be seen whether the voters will share that opinion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7484574.stm

Published: 2008/07/01

Jerusalem Patriarch Takes Office
Thanks Predecessor for More Than 20 Years of Service

http://www.zenit.org/article-22996?l=english


JERUSALEM, JUNE 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Archbishop Fouad Twal took his post as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, joining with Benedict XVI in thanking his predecessor.During an enthronement Mass on Sunday, Archbishop Twal, 67, officially succeeded Archbishop Michel Sabbah, who stepped down after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

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Nurse writes book on near-death

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7463606.stm

An intensive care nurse from Swansea has published an academic book about near death experiences following 10 years of research.

Penny Sartori, who works at Singleton and Morriston Hospitals in Swansea, has 15 accounts, mainly from heart attack patients, of near-death experiences.

They include out-of-body occurrences, reports of a tunnel leading to a bright light and meeting dead loved ones.

The book, costing £85, is intended for academic study and college libraries.

Ms Sartori decided to launch her formal study in 1998 after working closely with critically-ill patients throughout the 1990s and discovering there was very little reference data available for nurses and other healthcare workers.

She spent five years compiling the study, three years writing it up and two years preparing it for publication. The book is called Near Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients, a Five Year Clinical Study.

She found that people who went through out-of-body experiences floated above themselves and were able to accurately recount what had happened in the room even though they were unconscious and their eyes were closed.

“People also reported travelling down a tunnel towards a bright light,” she said.

“Some reported meeting a figure who told them their time had not yet come, and others said they met dead relatives and communicated with them by telepathy.”

Some patients reported having their entire lives flash by them in an instant Penny Sartori

In another case a patient reported encountering a dead relative who gave a message to pass on to another member of the family who was still alive.

Ms Sartori said the information had stunned the receiver because it had been a secret and it was impossible the patient had prior knowledge of it.

Near-death experiences were typically often explained away as the effect of endorphins, abnormal blood gases or low oxygen levels, she said.

However, the study measured these and took them into account when researching the patients’ reports.

“All the current sceptical arguments against near-death experiences were not supported by the research,” she said.

In one case a critically-ill patient, who also had cerebral palsy, awoke from a near-death experience able to use his right arm normally, even though it had been bent and contracted since birth.

“It shouldn’t have been possible without an operation to release his tendons, but he could open his arm freely,” said Ms Sartori.

Some patients reported floating back into their bodies after nearly dying, and for others it was a sudden snap back.

“Some patients reported having their entire lives flash by them in an instant,” she said.

Private theory

While she found 15 patients reporting near-death experiences, Ms Sartori believes it could be more common but that some patients’ ability to recall the event fails shortly after they pass the critical episode and regain consciousness, like a dreamer forgets a dream.

She now intends to continue her research into the phenomenon and is developing a private theory, not included in her book, about what could be happening to these patients.

“I don’t think it’s quite as simple as life after death,” she said.

“It’s what consciousness is and how we define it. We are entering an exciting time researching consciousness.

“Current science says it is a by-product of the brain. But it may be that consciousness is around us and the brain might be a mediator, an antenna, instead of controlling consciousness.

“It is a fascinating subject and I’m looking forward to continuing my research,” she added.

First farmers made ‘lucky beads’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7457755.stm

The green beads were prized by early agriculturalists Enlarge Image

Some of the first farmers in the Near East probably used green beads as amulets to protect themselves and their crops, a study suggests.

The authors of the research suggest that early agriculturalists attached special importance to this colour.

Beads they recovered from dig sites in Israel had been made from a variety of green minerals and the farmers went to great efforts to obtain them.

Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer, from Israel’s University of Haifa, and Naomi Porat, from the Geological Survey of Israel in Jerusalem, examined 221 beads from eight Neolithic (or late stone age) sites dating to between 11,600 years ago and 8,200 years ago.

None of the minerals the beads were made from came from the immediate vicinity of the sites. Some were mined from as far afield as northern Syria, Cyprus and Saudi Arabia.

White, black, brown, yellow and red beads were being made tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture.

But the researchers point out that green beads are first found in significant numbers during the agricultural revolution which gained pace from about 10,000 years ago in the Near East.

“We propose that the green colour mimics the green of young leaf blades, which signify germination and embody the wish for successful crops and for success in fertility,” the authors write in PNAS.

They suggest that the onset of agriculture brought on demographic changes such as higher birth rates, but also higher child mortality.

These early farmers may have developed new cultural devices for dealing with these changes.

Green beads were probably used as amulets to ward off evil and as charms for maintaining the fertility of both people and crops, say the researchers.

Blair ‘to devote life to faith’

Former prime minister Tony Blair has promised to “spend the rest of my life” uniting the world’s religions

He said faith could be a “civilising force in globalisation”, bringing people together to solve problems such as malaria and extreme poverty.

Mr Blair, who is now a peace envoy to the Middle East, told Time magazine that religious belief had given him “strength” while in power.

He is launching a “faith foundation” in New York on Friday.

Mr Blair, who recently converted to Catholicism, said: “Faith is part of our future, and faith and the values it brings with it are an essential part of making globalisation work.”

‘Fantastic thing’

His foundation will attempt to bring religions together to tackle global issues such as the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals, which range from eradicating extreme poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability.

One of its first priorities will be to fight the spread of malaria.

Mr Blair said: “If you got churches and mosques and those of the Jewish faith working together to provide the bed nets that are necessary to eliminate malaria, what a fantastic thing that would be.

“That would show faith in action, it would show the importance of cooperation between faiths, and it would show what faith can do for progress.”

He added that it was possible to “achieve a greater understanding between the different religious faiths, so that we make platforms for action by those faiths and deal with some of the biggest issues in the world”.

Mr Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell, when asked about his boss’s faith, once famously remarked that the government didn’t “do God”.

But Mr Blair, 55, has recently spoken out on the subject far more than during his 10 years in Downing Street.

Discussing decisions he made as prime minister, he told Time: “You don’t put a hotline up to God and get the answers.

“The worst thing in politics is when you’re so scared of losing support that you don’t do what you think is the right thing.

“What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it.”

Mr Blair is not being paid for his work as a Middle East envoy for the “Quartet” of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia.

But he has lucrative consultancy posts with insurer Zurich and merchant bank JP Morgan, on top of a reported £5m deal for his Downing Street memoirs.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7426647.stm

Published: 2008/05/29

Tenn. woman who spent life in iron lung dies at 61.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_re_us/iron_lung_death

By WOODY BAIRD, Associated Press Writer Thu May 29, 1:35 AM ET

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A woman who defied medical odds and spent nearly 60 years in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said.
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Dianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long metal tube since she was stricken by polio at 3 years old.

Family members were unable to get an emergency generator working after a power failure knocked out electricity to the Odell family’s residence near Jackson, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, brother-in-law Will Beyer said.

“We did everything we could do but we couldn’t keep her breathing,” Beyer said. “Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months and she just didn’t have the strength to keep going.”

Capt. Jerry Elston of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department said emergency crews could do little to help. The local power company reported spotty power outages in the area because of a tree that fell on a power line.

Odell was afflicted with “bulbo-spinal” polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.

She spent her life in the iron lung, cared for by her parents, other family members and aides provided by a nonprofit foundation. Though confined inside the 750-pound apparatus, Odell managed to get a high school diploma, take college courses and write a children’s book about a “wishing star” named Blinky.

“Dianne was one of the kindest and most considerate people you could meet. She was always concerned about others and their well-being,” said Frank McMeen, president of the West Tennessee Health Care Foundation which helped raise money for equipment and nursing assistance for Odell.

Odell accepted her life with grace, McMeen said.

“Everyone she encountered came to her because they cared about her,” he said, “so she grew up in her 61 years thinking every person is good.”

Odell’s iron lung, similar to those used during the U.S. polio epidemics that peaked in the 1950s, was a cylindrical chamber with a seal at the neck. She lay on her back with only her head exposed and made eye contact with visitors through an angled mirror. She operated a television set with a small blow tube and wrote on a voice-activated computer.

The positive and negative pressures produced by the machine forced air into her lungs and then expelled it.

Iron lungs were largely replaced by positive-pressure airway ventilators in the late 1950s that give users much more freedom of movement. But a spinal deformity from the polio kept Odell from wearing a more modern, portable breathing device.

Joan Headley of Post-Polio Health International in St. Louis said about 30 people in the United States still rely on iron lungs but few users are confined to them all the time. No one keeps records, she said, on the longest confinement.

Caregivers could slide Odell’s bedding out of her iron lung for basic nursing care but only briefly, McMeen said.

Though Odell could not leave the iron lung, she was able to be moved in the machine out of her home. For Odell’s 60th birthday, in February 2007, friends and family held a party for her, with about 200 guests, at a downtown hotel in Jackson, a town of about 50,000 residents. She had a 9-foot birthday cake and letters from around the country, McMeen said.

In a 2001 interview with The Associated Press, Odell said she wrote her children’s book to show youngsters, especially those with physical disabilities, that they should never give up.

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you see someone do the same thing,” she said.

http://paper.standartnews.com/bg/article.php?d=2008-05-28&article=234058

28.5.2008

Египетският археолог Захи Хауас, известен с прякора Индиана Джоунс, тъй като не се разделя с шапката си, твърди, че е на път да открие гробницата на Клеопатра. Засега е открил тунел под храм, който водел към гробницата, изпълнен с необичайно количество монети с образа на египетската царица и нейни скулптури
Фото ИнтернетЕдна от големите загадки на древността може скоро да бъде разгадана. Египетският археолог Захи Хауас твърди, че е открил мястото, където е погребана легендарната египетска царица Клеопатра, пише в. “Таймс”. Ако Хауас се окаже прав, то това ще е най-голямото археологическо откритие в Египет от 1922 г. насам, когато британският археолог Хауърд Картър открива гробницата на Тутанкамон. 60-годишният Хауас, когото наричат Индиана Джоунс, защото не се разделя с широкополата шапка, подобно на героя от едноименния филм, предполага, че Клеопатра и нейният възлюблен -римският пълководец Марк Антоний - са погребани заедно в храма на Озирис, известен като Taposiris Magna, на 45 км западно от град Александрия. Археологът открива под храма тунел, дълъг 121 м, в който намира статуи на Клеопатра, сред които и една алабастрова глава, както и множество монети с нейния образ. “Подобни артефакти не можете да откриете в обикновен храм”, обяснява Хауас. Друго доказателство е, че храмът е бил добро място за скривалище. След като при Акциум през 31 г. пр. Хр. Октавиан побеждава флотата на Марк Антоний и Клеопатра, двамата побягват към Египет. Битката слага край на властовите им амбиции и те решават да се самоубият. Според Хауас, който е и шеф на Висшия съвет по антични ценности на Египет, телата им са погребани под храма на Озирис. Археологът още не е открил самата гробница, но през ноември ще продължи разкопките, като използва радар за откриване на подземни камари. Хауас работи заедно с 12 археолози и 70 работници

Orthodox bishop shares Communion with Catholics

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=58680

Timisoara , May. 27, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A Romanian Orthodox bishop has shared Communion with Catholics, causing a sensation in a country where Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox have a history of tense relations.

At the consecration of the Queen of Peace parish church in Timisoara on May 25, Orthodox Metropolitan Nicolae Corneanu of Banat asked to share Communion. The Orthodox metropolitan approached the altar and received the Eucharist from his own hand.

Romanian Catholic Bishop Alexandru Mesian of Lugoj was the celebrant of the Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Catholic church; Archbishop Francisco-Javier Lozano, the apostolic nuncio to Romania, was also present.

Although Orthodox and Catholic bishops often join in ecumenical services, and occasionally participate in each other’s liturgical ceremonies, they do not share Communion– an indication of the breach in ecclesial communion between the Orthodox churches and the Holy See. In Romania, tensions between the Orthodox Church and the Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic Church have been pronounced, adding to the surprise created by Metropolitan Corneanu’s action.

With some Orthodox believers outraged by the metropolitan’s sharing Communion with Catholic bishops, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania issued a statement saying that at the next meeting of the Orthodox synod, in July, Metropolitan Corneanu “may be asked to give an appropriate explanation” for his action.

The statement from the Orthodox patriarchate went on to say that ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church, “already quite fragile, cannot be helped, but are rather complicated,” by sharing in Communion.

Metropolitan Corneanu– who was one of the first Orthodox bishops to admit that he had cooperated with the secret police under the Communist regime– has a record of friendship with Romanian Catholics. He was among the few Orthodox leaders prepared to return church properties that had been seized by the Communist government from Catholic ownership in 1948 and handed over to Orthodox control.

Ватикан запретил всем семинариям, орденам и общинам Католической Церкви принимать людей с гомосексуалными наклонностями

http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=62745&cf=

21 мая 2008, 13:55

Кардинал Тарцисио Бертоне, госсекретарь Ватикана, направил письмо епископам всего мира с нормами, установленными Конгрегацией католического образования в документе 2005 года и подтвержденными Папой Бенедиктом XVI, сообщает “Baznica”.

Документ касается критериев распознавания призвания в отношении лиц, имеющих гомосексуальные склонности в связи с принятием их в семинарии или ордена. Эти нормы признаны универсальными и не имеющими исключений.

В резюме “Rescriptum ex audientia”, написанном в ответ на различные вопросы, кардинал Бертоне говорит, что нормы, определяющие выбор кандидатов на священство действительны “для всех домов священнической формации, включая те, которые относятся к Конгрегации Восточных Церквей по вопросу евангелизации людей и к Институтам посвященной жизни и Обществам апостольской жизни”.

Письмо было написано в ответ на “многочисленные просьбы о разъяснении,” и подразумевает, что запрет против принятия гомосексуальных кандидатов в семинарии касается не только епархиальных семинарий, но также религиозных орденов и общин, в том числе расположенных на миссионерских территориях.

Инструкция 2005 года четко утверждает, что Католическая Церковь, “уважая мнение людей в вопросах, не может допустить в семинарию или святой орден тех, кто практикует гомосексуализм, имеет устойчивые гомосексуальные тенденции или поддерживает так называемую, “гей культуру”.

Такие люди, фактически, находятся в ситуации, которая мешает им выстраивать правильные отношения между мужчинами и женщинами. Нельзя игнорировать негативные последствия, которые могут произойти от рукоположения людей с устойчивыми гомосексуальными тенденциями,” говорится в документе 2005 года.