Those interested in working with young people in initiatives of the Catholic Church in Germany will be required to obtain clearance from police checks and undergo psychiatric tests when necessary.

“The new guidelines now extend to clerics, order members and other employees in the Church’s service,” said Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, the bishops’ representative for sex abuse issues.

He said the new text went further in preventing cover-ups, as well as in encouraging victims to report abuse and enhancing child protection.

‘Not a miracle’

Many Chileans are saying the survival of 33 miners trapped in the San Jose mine in Chile is a miracle. But the Catholic Church has been more cautious. Bishop Gaspar Quintana Jorquera of Copiapo, Chile, who has spent several days at the mine offering support to the families and celebrating Mass, declined to call it a miracle. “It was a great event, “but not a miracle”, he said.

Belgian newspaper defames cardinal

The Belgian newspaper De Standaard was accused by Fernand Keueleneer, the lawyer representing Cardinal Godfried Danneels that it had deliberately defamed Mgr Danneels.

The paper published selected excerpts of a conversation between the cardinal and a victim of sexual abuse. The lawyer said Cardinal Danneels had asked the young man to postpone action as he needed time to reflect on the man’s report before taking action.

The cardinal’s lawyer pointed out that just two weeks after the meeting between Mgr Danneels and the abuse victim, Bishop Joseph Vangheluwe, who was accused of the abuse, resigned.

“Cardinal Danneels had also come to the conclusion that that was the only adequate way of proceeding,” Keuleneer said.

Christian village flooded deliberately

According to the Catholic news agency Fides, the Christian village of Khokharabad in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab has been deliberately flooded, killing at least 15 and leaving 377 residents – most of them subsistence farmers – homeless and without means of livelihood.

Local residents say a local politician oversaw the construction of dams and other barriers to save his land from flooding, which in turn destroyed of the village. The politician, in turn, attributes the flooding to the local agriculture department.

Residents were not warned of the impending flood.

12th century mystic a model for today

Pope Benedict XVI said St Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century German mystic, used her gifts to build up the Church at a time of trouble similar to today.

The Pope said St Hildegard is relevant today because of “her love for Christ and his Church, which was suffering in her time, too, and was wounded also then by the sins of priests and lay people”.

She also is a good model because of her “love for creation, her medicine, her poetry and music that is being recreated today”.