Scottish Catholic Observer

Overseas aid shake-up: How the Department for International Development plans to change its spending abroad. China and Iraq among countries to lose direct aid. Above, Pope Benedict XVI greets a young man at the Vatican last December who was injured when the Syrian Catholic cathedral in Baghdad, Iraq, was attacked on October 31.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12606665

Winners and losers in the UK aid review.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/mar/01/winners-losers-uk-aid-review-reaction

Cafod reaction to UK review of overseas budget (audio): http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=466181

Traditionalist Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church rather than taking up Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican ordinariate are wasting their time and spiritual energy clinging to a dangerous illusion, said the Vatican’s delegate for the Australian ordinariate.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1100828.htm

Wear your ashes to witness to your Faith, says Bishop Kieran Conry, chairman of the Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis in England and Wales.

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Catholic-Church/Media-Centre/press_releases/Press-Releases-2011/Wear-Your-Ashes-To-Witness-To-Your-Faith

Pentecostal couple rejected as foster parents over homosexuality views.

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=17754

Appeal by Bishop Martinelli for the Eritreans in Libya: ‘yesterday 2000 came back to our church and buildings asking for help.’

http://www.fides.org/aree/news/newsdet.php?idnews=28440&lan=eng

Residents of Vatican City will no longer be automatically granted citizenship of the world’s smallest sovereign state, according to a law introduced yesterday.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1622871.php/Vatican-tightens-citizenship-rules

A Vietnamese Catholic priest known for publicly expressing views on democracy and human rights faces being imprisoned again on charges of spreading ‘propaganda’ against the state”, despite international concerns over his health.

http://www.bosnewslife.com/15741-vietnam-to-jail-frail-catholic-priest-dissident-detained

Priest drowns in native El Salvador.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/hill_country/priest-drowns-in-native-el-salvador

—Cross Wires is the Scottish Catholic Observer newspaper’s blog