Scottish Catholic Observer

The Scottish Legal Action Group is urging the Scottish Government to create a clear division between church and state by ‘ending religious instruction and denominational schools’ paid by the taxpayer.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Legal-group-seeks-to-close.6764459.jp

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass for over 300,000 in Venice.

http://www.radiovaticana.org/EN1/Articolo.asp?c=485436

Video link on message on migrants: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13327799

Rerum Novarum panel says encyclical on labour and the rights of workers approaching its 120th anniversary is needed now as much as ever.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1101818.htm

Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson has dedicated his party’s win in the NI Assembly election to murdered Catholic police officer Ronan Kerr.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-13320482

The editor of an influential Catholic magazine has called on the newly-appointed Archbishop of Wales to learn Welsh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13323053

Egypt threatens death penalty for inciting sectarian strife after violence at the weekend an arson attacks on churches.

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/428540

Melbourne Archdiocese in Australia is defrocking every priest convicted of sexual offences against children.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/church-acts-to-defrock-all-paedophile-priests-20110508-1eebo.html#ixzz1Lm9zdOjS

History was  made at Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral yesterday when, for the first time, the most senior Catholic prelate in the city Archbishop Diarmuid Martin read the gospel at the enthronement of his Church of Ireland counterpart Michael Jackson as Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0509/1224296493084.html

COMMENT

Pope Benedict XVI: In no one’s shadow

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/06/benedict-xvi-in-no-ones-shadow

In Rome and in Catholic circles around the world, a question is quietly circulating which only Pope Benedict XVI can answer: What to do about Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Pope John Paul II’s former Secretary of State, who still holds the post of Dean of the College of Cardinals?

http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/what-do-about-sodano

Disabled infants are being denied medical treatment, Vatican newspaper warns

http://tinyurl.com/5wnhsop

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