The fact that only 43 per cent of eligible voters for elections to the European Parliament cast their votes in the 27 EU member states shows that "a European civil society is still missing", said Bishop Adrianus van Lyun, president of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (Comece).
Mgr van Lyun said this is "all the more inexplicable as the European Parliament will stand to gain additional influence and competences when the Lisbon Treaty comes into force". He added that all European leaders, including Church leaders, should question themselves about the voter turnout, asking whether they had done enough to advance the project of European unity.
Archbishop accused of moral relativism
Michel Schooyans, a former philosophy professor at the Catholic University of Louvain and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences accused Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, of moral relativism.
He said the Vatican official had provided a justification for abortion in an article in L'Osservatore Romano in which Mgr Fisichella criticised a Brazilian bishop for his treatment of a controversial case there. Schooyans said: "Here we have total relativism".
Without sacrifice marriages break
"We have killed the plant that arises from suffering, which is love, and therefore in many human relationships, family relationships, a totally material relationship arises, in which, practically, the integrity of the person is not involved. "When this materialism takes over human relationships, then the man and the woman become objects of a sexual experience. This experience loses its stability, comes and goes, doesn't produce that joy of surrender because it does not come from suffering or sacrifice, and when a sickness comes or an economic problem or a fight... marriages break." Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani
Clergy need respect, support
Each and every one of the world's 408,000 priests should feel loved, respected, valued and supported in his vocation to bring the Gospel to an increasingly secular - but still open - world, said Cardinal Claudio Hummes. The Brazilian cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, said the 2009-2010 Year for Priests, which began last Friday, must recognise the new challenges and possibilities Catholic priests face.
Minister attacks Venezuela bishops
Venezuela's interior minister, Tareck el Aissami, has charged that the country's Catholic bishops have become a political bloc and are guilty of inciting hated.
He based his complaint on a report that during an ad limina visit to Rome, Archbishop Ubaldo Santana had said that the government of President Hugo Chavez - who has clashed repeatedly with the Catholic hierarchy - is "jeopardising peaceful democratic coexistence" in Venezuela.
Pope urges leaders to tackle hunger
Pope Benedict XVI has urged international leaders to turn their attention to the growing problem of world hunger as they deal with the global economic crisis.
Looking ahead to a UN financial summit in New York on Wednesday and Thursday, the Pope said the meeting should be carried out "in a spirit of wisdom and solidarity, so that the current crisis can be transformed into an opportunity". The goal should be to "promote an equitable distribution of decision-making power and of resources, with particular attention to the number of poor, which unfortunately is increasing", the Pope said last Sunday at the Vatican.
Compiled by Fr Joe Borg