Ecumenical News International announced on October 1 that its ENInews service is suspending operations, effective immediately, as it seeks emergency funding in order to operate for the remainder of 2012.

“We regret taking this step, but despite a massive reorganization, ENInews is feeling the effect of the deep cuts from its historic supporters as well as from non-payment by quite a number of subscribers,” said the Rev. David Harris, president of ENI and publisher of the Presbyterian Record, based in Toronto.

“Subscribers and readers have said how much they value authoritative, unbiased news of ecumenical and inter-faith developments around the world,” said Harris. “We hope the suspension will be temporary and ENInews will secure a firm funding base.
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An international Anglican commission considered a number of ongoing and proposed ecumenical dialogues at its meeting in Dublin from Sept. 12-19, according to a news release from the Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS).

The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) “reflected on the Christian calling to work for the visible unity of God’s Church as ambassadors for Christ in the ministry of reconciliation,” according to ACNS.

The commission received updates from ecumenical dialogues with Lutherans, Methodists, the Orthodox, Reformed, and Roman Catholics. Regarding Anglican-related work, the group discussed the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant, the Anglican “instruments of communion,” theological anthropology and reception.
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Hong Kong – As the 4 to 10 May meeting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) drew to a close, participants emphasized the importance of social witness and openness in ecumenical dialogue.

“There seem to be many obstacles from a human point of view, and it does not seem likely to have fully visible unity in the near future,” New Zealand Anglican Archbishop David Moxon, the co-chairperson of the meeting, said on May 8. “We can, however, do a lot of things together during this slow process,” he added.

“As we discussed in the meeting, there can be more collaborations between us, such as (humanitarian agencies) Caritas International and the Global Anglican Relief and Development Alliance,” he said.

The Hong Kong ecumenical gathering is the second meeting for the third phase of ARCIC, which is focused on the examining the question of moral decision-making within the local and universal church.
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Roman Catholics and leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries where Queen Elizabeth II serves as head of state have welcomed an announcement by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron about changes to the royal succession that include allowing the monarch to marry a Roman Catholic.

“Attitudes have changed fundamentally over the centuries and some of the outdated rules … just don’t make sense to any of us any more,” Cameron told reporters on Oct. 28 at the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth, Australia.
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An estimated 275 Christian leaders are meeting in Indonesia from 4 to 7 October to plot an ecumenical future in what one veteran of the ecumenical movement called a watershed gathering.

Leaders of the fledgling Global Christian Forum (GCF) will gather evangelical, Pentecostal, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians here to assess recent changes in global Christianity, Religion News Service reports.
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In a historic move, the Anglican diocese of Rupert’s Land appointed a Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Paul Johnson, as dean of the diocese and incumbent for St. John’s Cathedral in Winnipeg, reports the Anglican Journal. This is the first time a Canadian Lutheran pastor has been appointed dean in an Anglican cathedral in Canada. A dean is the priest in charge of a cathedral (“mother church”) and occupies a senior position in a diocese.
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Leaders of the Church of England and the Methodist Church have been urged to work more closely in the future in order to strengthen Christian unity.

A statement issued by the Church of England’s communications office on June 16 said the Joint Implementation Commission (JIC) set up under the Anglican-Methodist Covenant of 2003 to enhance unity is recommending the two churches share their mission and ministry more widely.

A new JIC report, “Moving Forward in Covenant,” is due to be considered by the Methodist Conference and the Church of England’s General Synod, both taking place this summer. The JIC’s role is “to monitor and promote the implementation of the Covenant.”
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Diptychs, an arcane liturgical term that describes the order in which Orthodox churches commemorate each other at their services, is one of the tangled issues blocking plans for what could be the first great church council in 1,200 years.

Some Orthodox leaders say the churches need to get together to discuss common issues and speak with one voice on such important topics as bioethics, sexuality and the environment, but differences over arcane church issues such as diptychs and autocephaly (the independent status of Orthodox churches) run deep.
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Nineteen Canadian Christian evangelical pastors are spending nine days on a study tour of Israel that is intended to provide them with information and perspectives that could be used to defend Israeli government policies. The tour, a project of the Modern Israel Studies Department at Canada Christian College in Toronto in conjunction with the B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem, was funded by private donors.
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A gathering to improve relations between the many Protestant denominations in the Netherlands recently took place on the site of an earlier historic synod, though any idea of complete church unity taking place was said to smack of “an unrealistic utopia.” About 700 Christians from 50 Prot­estant churches attended what was billed as a “national synod” December 10-11 in the main church in the town of Dor­drecht.
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The president of the Lutheran World Federation, Bishop Munib Younan has said before meeting Pope Benedict XVI that their churches should issue a common statement on Holy Communion to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation that Martin Luther began in 1517.

“Our [the Lutheran federation’s] intention is to arrive at 2017 with a common Roman Catholic-Lutheran declaration on eucharistic hospitality,” Younan told the Italian Protestant news agency NEV the day before his audience with the Pope Dec. 16.
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The head of the World Council of Churches in his first official meeting with Pope Benedict XVI has said he wants to strengthen cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the Middle East.
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The Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomeos I, a key leader for the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, has written a Lenten encyclical that stresses the need for greater unity for churches, and counters accusations from some of his bishops that ecumenism is heresy.
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The Vatican official responsible for links with other churches has rejected suggestions of a “standstill” in the search for Christian unity. “There has already been a lot of movement,” Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told Ecumenical News International in Wittenberg, the eastern German town where in 1517, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses, thereby setting in train the breach with the papacy.

… continued
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Ecumenical News International and Washington-based Religion News Service (RNS) have launched a shared-content agreement to distribute selected stories from each others’ newswires.

… see more
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Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, an Oxford-educated cleric who served as the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to European organizations in Brussels, has been appointed as head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department of External Church Relations.

… continued
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Pope Benedict XVI says he has “full and unquestionable solidarity” with Jewish people and he has warned against any form of Holocaust denial. The Pope’s statement comes after outrage at his recent reinstatement of an excommunicated bishop, who has said the genocide of Jews in gas chambers never took place.
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Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has been elected as the new head of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church after serving a period as interim leader and following an election in which he got an overwhelming majority of votes.
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Lebanon-based Armenian Orthodox leader Aram I has at a Vatican meeting with Pope Benedict XVI proposed that the world’s churches set a common date for Easter, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
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The membership of Germany’s two largest churches is shrinking, but the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the country’s biggest Protestant grouping, has dropped below 25 million members for the first time since the unification of Germany in 1990.

At the end of 2007, EKD members accounted for 24.83 million of Germany’s 82-million people, the German Protestant news agency epd reported on 17 November. The EKD now has more than a million fewer adherents than it did five years ago.
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A member of the (Anglican) Church of England’s general synod who supports a greater female role in the church has predicted that within 10 years half of all full-time clergy will be women, but says moves to consecrate female bishops is not keeping pace.

The prognosis came from U.S-born Christina Rees, a writer, broadcaster and public speaker and chairperson of Watch (Women and the Church), started in 1996 as a forum for promoting women’s ministry in the Church of England.
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Canadian churches welcome PM’s apology on residential schools

Church leaders in Canada hope action will follow a public apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to victims of a policy whereby aboriginal children were placed in residential schools run by churches under a government policy of enforced assimilation.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the leader of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he was moved by the apology given by Harper in Ottawa on 11 June in the lower house of the Canadian parliament on behalf of the government, followed by apologies from other party leaders.

“I was very encouraged by their determination to make sure that this apology is seen as a beginning, and that it will be accompanied by actions that will significantly improve the quality of life for First Nations people in this land,” Hiltz said in an interview with the Anglican Journal after the prime minister’s statement.

A law passed by the government of Canada in 1920 made it compulsory for aboriginal children aged 7-15 to leave their communities and live in residences at schools run by churches including the Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and United Church of Canada. The last of the schools closed in 1996.

During the 1980s former students began making allegations of sexual and physical abuse inflicted on them in the schools. In 2006, a class action suit on behalf of a group of students resulted in the awarding of the largest financial settlement in Canadian legal history.

“The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history,” Harper said in his parliamentary speech. “Today, we recognise this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country. The government of Canada sincerely apologises and asks the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly.”

The moderator of the United Church of Canada, the Rev. David Giuliano said his denomination hoped the apology would spark a substantive grass-roots response. “The 11 June apology offers the opportunity to begin the process of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation,” said Giuliano.

The 2006 settlement included provision for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first time the model used after the demise of apartheid in South Africa has been applied in a stable democracy.

The commission, headed by an aboriginal judge, Justice Harry S. LaForme, has a five-year mandate to travel throughout the country to meet former students. LaForme, a member of the Mississauga tribe, is joined by commissioners Jane Morley, a lawyer, and Claudette Dumont-Smith, an aboriginal nurse from the Algonquin tribe.

“We know what occurred,” said LaForme. “What we now want to hear are the stories from themselves not so we can punish, but so we can walk forward into the future and build a new relationship.”

In Geneva on 13 June the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, the Rev. Ishmael Noko welcomed the Canadian government public apology to the First Nations, as a significant indication of the willingness to confront painful legacies of injustice against Indigenous Peoples.

“Honest examination of past wounds is a necessary step to the healing of memories. I pray that these apologies represent the beginnings of an open process of deeper reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-indigenous peoples,” said Noko, who is a Zimbabwean.
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[Rome] Le baptême par le pape Benoît XVI d’un journaliste italien musulman d’origine égyptienne – connu pour être un virulent critique des restrictions à la liberté religieuse dans les pays musulmans – suscite des interrogations de la part de responsables musulmans en Italie.

Magdi Allam, chroniqueur et rédacteur en chef adjoint du quotidien milanais Corriere della Sera, était l’une des sept personnes de cinq pays différents à avoir été baptisées par le souverain pontife pendant la messe de la veille de Pâques à la basilique Saint-Pierre, au Vatican, le 22 mars.
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[Rome] Pope Benedict XVI’s baptism of an Egyptian-born Muslim Italian journalist, known for being a strident critic of restrictions of religious freedom in Islamic countries, has been questioned by Muslim leaders in Italy.

Magdi Allam, a columnist and deputy editor of the Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper, was one of seven people from five countries baptised by the pontiff at the Easter Vigil Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on 22 March.
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[Toronto] A Canadian church magazine has become the first North American sponsor of a travelling exhibit of the life and work of natural scientist Charles Darwin, whose theory of the evolution of species has long been a source of conflict between scientists and Christians who take the Biblical account of creation literally.

The exhibit, which opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on 8 March, had failed to find support from the museum’s usual sponsors. Museum officials said none disagreed with Darwin’s theories but cited concerns about a potential backlash from Christians opposed to the idea of evolution.
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[Warsaw] The bishop in charge of recruitment for Poland’s Roman Catholic clergy says he does not believe recent scandals are to blame for a sharp fall in vocations, after the church noted a 24 percent reduction in admissions to the country’s 84 Catholic seminaries.

“Decisions about vocations aren’t taken under the influence of short-term events,” said Bishop Wojciech Polak, who heads the church’s National Council for Vocations Ministry. “Today’s culture discourages firm life-long commitments. But we’re not yet seeing any radical, drastic drain in priestly callings, or feeling any tangible shortage of clergy.”
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[Nairobi] Réunis au Kenya, des responsables issus de toutes les principales traditions chrétiennes et provenant de différents pays – de l’Arménie au Zimbabwe – ont promis d’organiser des réunions aux niveaux international, régional et local afin d’aller plus loin dans la réconciliation et la compréhension.

“Reconnaissant que l’unité est le tout premier don de Dieu à travers l’oeuvre du Saint-Esprit, nous nous engageons à promouvoir davantage de compréhension et de coopération entre chrétiens, tout en respectant la diversité de nos identités, traditions et dons individuels”, ont déclaré les responsables dans un communiqué publié à l’issue de la réunion, qui s’est tenue du 6 au 9 novembre.
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[Nairobi] Leaders meeting in Kenya belonging to all main Christian traditions, and from countries ranging from Armenia to Zimbabwe, have pledged to convene international, local and regional meetings to deepen reconciliation and understanding.

“Recognising that unity is first and foremost God’s gift through the work of the Holy Spirit, our commitment is to press on in promoting ever greater understanding and cooperation among Christians, while respecting the diversity of our identities, traditions and individual gifts,” the leaders said in a statement issued at the end of the 6-9 November meeting.
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[Nairobi] Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders attending a world Christian forum in Kenya that has brought together many of Christianity’s diverse strands, say it offers new opportunities, but they also warn of possible difficulties ahead.

“When you share your journey and discover how other people have travelled and find similarities in the journey, that helps you to travel together,” commented the Rev. Richard Howell of the Evangelical Fellowship of India.
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[Nairobi] Un éminent représentant du Vatican a déclaré que l’Eglise catholique romaine saluait le Forum chrétien mondial, qui est un rassemblement sans précédent des divers courants du christianisme.

“Lorsque les chrétiens sont divisés, la proclamation de l’Evangile souffre et c’est là une douleur que nous devons tous ressentir”, a déclaré l’évêque Brian Farrell, secrétaire du Conseil pontifical pour la promotion de l’unité des chrétiens.
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[Nairobi] A senior Vatican official has said the Roman Catholic Church welcomes a new Global Christian Forum intended to bring together the diverse strands of Christianity as never before.

“When Christians are divided, the preaching of the gospel suffers and this is a pain we all have to feel,” said Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressing a 6-9 November meeting of the forum near Nairobi.
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[Port d’Espagne] L’Alliance réformée mondiale (ARM) a accepté de s’unir au Conseil œcuménique réformé (COR) pour former une nouvelle “entité mondiale” qui rassemblerait près de 87 millions de chrétiens réformés.

“Il s’agit d’un moment vraiment très important”, a déclaré le pasteur Clifton Kirkpatrick, président de l’ARM, après la décision unanime prise le 22 octobre par le Comité exécutif de l’Alliance, réuni à Trinité-et-Tobago, de s’unir avec le COR, dont le Comité exécutif avait accepté la proposition en mars.
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[Port of Spain] The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has agreed to unite with the Reformed Ecumenical Council to create a new “global entity” that will group 80 million Reformed Christians.

“This is a truly, truly important moment,” said WARC president the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick after the alliance’s executive committee, meeting in Trinidad, voted unanimously on 22 October to unite with the REC, whose executive committee had agreed to the proposal in March.
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[Toronto] A new Canadian television series, “Little Mosque on the Prairie” has attracted worldwide media attention since its debut on 9 January. Coverage of the show has made the pages of newspapers such as The New York Times, the Jerusalem Post and the Saudi Arabian daily newspaper, Arab News, and further afield.
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Des responsables d’Eglise de Jérusalem ont averti les factions palestiniennes en conflit qu’elles risquaient de déclencher une guerre civile et, proposant de jouer les médiateurs, ils les ont exhortés à mettre fin à la violence afin de pouvoir se concentrer sur la priorité absolue de leur peuple : l’indépendance.

“En tant que responsables des Eglises chrétiennes à Jérusalem préoccupés par la situation actuelle dans les territoires palestiniens, nous tenons à exprimer nos craintes pour nos populations, qu’elles soient chrétiennes ou musulmanes, en raison de la détérioration des relations entre les leaders du Fatah et du Hamas et entre leurs forces armées,” ont-ils déclaré.
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Church leaders in Jerusalem have warned warring Palestinian factions they could trigger civil war and, offering to play a mediating role, they are urging an end to violence in order for them to focus on the true priority of their people – independence.

“As leaders of the Christian churches in Jerusalem concerned at the present situation in the Palestinian Territories we feel we must voice our anxiety for all our people – Christian and Muslim alike – at the deteriorating relations between Fatah and Hamas leaders and the armed forces,” they said.
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Inspired in part by the Jubilee 2000 campaign against debt and by the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, a unique alliance to harness the collective energies of the worldwide church to promote justice and peace issues has been launched in Geneva.
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A week after publishing a document which casts doubt on the validity of Protestant Christianity and asserts Roman Catholic superiority over all other churches, the Vatican continues to draw criticism both from other churches and from within its own ranks.

The general secretaries of two organizations representing major wings of Protestantism have publicly lamented the harm done to ecumenism by Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published on Sept. 5 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document declares that churches that do not have a “valid Episcopate [bishops] and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not churches in the proper sense.”

Another document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in an Italian magazine this month orders Catholic bishops not to use the term “sister church” in reference to Protestant churches. This too has also caused dismay in ecumenical circles.
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Prominent ecumenists have declared that the Millennium World Peace Summit of about 1,000 religious leaders, held in New York at the end of August, may well have a good result. But they also criticized the event as too cumbersome and too vague.
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Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), has criticized key elements of the Millennium World Peace Summit in New York—a major gathering of 1000 religious leaders at the United Nations headquarters from August 28 to 31.
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‘Bitter differences’ lead to dead-end, Polish ecumenist says by Jonathan Luxmoore, Ecumenical News International [WARSAW] High-level talks between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches which ended in the United States recently were marred by “methodological deficiencies” and a “polemical atmosphere,” leaving relations between the two Christian communions at a dead-end, according to an expert on
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In one of his first major sermons since becoming general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ (USA), clergyman and former politician Robert Edgar renewed his call for America’s faith community to tackle the issue of poverty.
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by Stephen Brown, Ecumenical News Service [GENEVA] A special commission set up by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in a bid to resolve complaints by its Orthodox member churches is scheduled to hold its first meeting in December. The scheduling of the meeting follows a series of delays and apparent unwillingness by some Orthodox
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GENEVA – The ecumenical movement of the 21st century must focus less on church institutions and more on the church as “the whole people of God,” the moderator of the World Council of Churches‘ (WCC) central committee said on August 26. At a press conference following his report to the 158 members of the central
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by Jonathan Luxmoore, Ecumenical News International [WARSAW] Minority churches in Poland plan to celebrate the new millennium by joining Roman Catholics in a mutual recognition of baptism. The churches are also considering a joint acknowledgment – with the Roman Catholic Church – of “guilt and forgiveness” for past wrongs. “Many people have warmed to these
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Canada’s largest Protestant church, the United Church of Canada (UCC), has launched a challenge to the nation’s multi-billion dollar gambling industry, and to the federal and provincial governments which receive massive revenue by taxing gambling. The Canadian Council of Churches and other faith groups are being approached to support the campaign for an inquiry into gambling.
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Dr. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, has renewed his call for the main Christian churches to start, in the year 2000, a process to lead to a universal Christian council uniting all churches and Christians. He requested the bodies of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican and Pentecostal churches to make a solemn promise not to rest until such a council has been achieved.
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US nun calls for ‘responsible dissent’ on Vatican doctrine New York (ENI). A leading Roman Catholic nun and theologian in the United States has called for “responsible dissent” to the Vatican statement that Pope John Paul II’s teaching against the ordination of women is infallible. [ENI-96-0070, 476 words] Bahrain’s Christians urged to pray for end
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Turkey’s biggest church faces critical shortage of clergy Istanbul (ENI). Turkey’s biggest Christian church Orthodox Church, is facing a critical shortage of clergy. The church’s membership in Turkey is 82,000, 60,000 of them in Istanbul. However, the Istanbul diocese has only 28 priests, 10 of them aged over 60, for its 38 churches. Over the
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