Over 5.1 million babies were born in the European Union (EU) in 2016. In eight of the 28 Member States, the majority of babies were born outside marriage, while in eight other member States two-thirds of babies were born to married parents.

With six in every ten babies born to unmarried parents, France had the largest proportion (59.7%) of live births outside marriage in the EU in 2016. France was closely followed by Bulgaria and Slovenia (both 58.6%). More than half of births also occurred outside marriage in Estonia (56.1%), Sweden (54.9%), Denmark (54.0%), Portugal (52.8%) and the Netherlands (50.4%).

In contrast, fewer than 1 in 10 babies were born to unmarried parents in Greece (9.4%). Births outside marriage also accounted for a quarter or fewer of all babies born in Croatia (18.9%), Cyprus (19.1%) and Poland (25.0%), and for under a third of babies born in Lithuania (27.4%), Italy (28.0%), Romania (31.3%) and Malta (31.8%).

Compared with the situation in 2000, the proportion of live births outside marriage rose in all Member States, albeit to different extents.

On the one hand, the propor- tion of babies born out of wedlock has grown significantly in Mediterranean Member States. It has increased eightfold in Cyprus (from 2.3% in 2000 to 19.1% in 2016). It has tripled in Malta (from 10.6% to 31.8%) and Italy (from 9.7% to 28.0%), while it is now about 2.5 times higher in Spain (from 17.7% to 45.9%), Greece (from 4.0% to 9.4%) and in another southern Member State: Portugal (from 22.2% to 52.8%).

With faith, people can confront and help to overcome the evil of racism, Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl said in an April 17 talk at The Catholic University of America.

“The elimination of racism may seem too a great task for any one of us or even for the whole church,” he said. “Yet we place our confidence in the Lord, because in Christ, we are brothers and sisters, one to the other. With Christ, we stand in the spirit of justice, peace and love.”

Wuerl, who as the archbishop of Washington is Catholic University’s chancellor, was invited by its president, John Garvey, to speak on his recent pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Racism Today.”

Speaking at the university’s Pryzbyla Centre to an audience consisting mostly of seminarians and other students, the cardinal compared racism to a residue that has contaminated streams that flow into the societal well from which people drink. He warned that the unhealthy contaminants causing racism in our culture can be subtle and ubiquitous. “We have the possibility to be that fresh stream of water flowing into the societal well,” he said. Noting that the U.S. bishops in their 1979 pastoral letter “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” identified racism as a sin, the cardinal said that evil has spanned continents and centuries and continues in today’s world.

A man standing for election to a village council in the southern Philippines has been criticized by a church leader for using the nickname “Jesus Christ” on his certificate of candidacy.

The Commission on Elections upheld the use of the name by 40- year-old Charlie Bucao Talledo.

But Father Bobby Puracan, chancellor of Surigao Diocese in Mindanao, cautioned against using the name for political purposes.

“The term ‘Christ’ is a title that means ‘Messiah’ or ‘the anointed one’ from the Greek ‘Christos’,” he said. “He is the central figure of Christianity, so we must be careful in using it.”

Father Puracan said he knows Talledo, who always attracts the attention of people every time he attends Mass.

“During the singing of the Lord’s Prayer, he would go to the middle of the church and raise his arms, getting unnecessary attention,” said the priest. There were also incidents when Talledo walked around the city dressed like Jesus while carrying a crucifix attached to a baton.

Two Catholic Priests and at least 17 worshippers have been killed in an attack by herdsmen on St Ignatius Catholic Church in Ukpor -Mbalom community in Gwer East Local Government of Benue State in Nigeria.

Then-Deacon Juan Miguel Contreras Garcia in vocations video. The priest was murdered outside Guadalajara.

A priest on the outskirts of Guadalajara has been murdered, the second priest in a week killed in Mexico. Father Juan Miguel Contreras Garcia, 33, was shot dead late on April 20 in Tlajomulco de Zuniga by unidentified attackers in his parish office, reportedly while hearing a confession. “We make an urgent call to build a culture of peace and reconciliation. These lamentable events call all of us to a much deeper and sincere conversion. It is time to look honestly at our culture and society, and to ask ourselves why we have lost respect for life and for the sacred,” said Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, the Archbishop of Guadalajara.

The cardinal asked the Catholic faithful to accompany their priests with prayer and in the pastoral service to the communities entrusted to them.

A Catholic priest brought Britain’s Got Talent judges to tears, following his audition on the national TV talent show.

Fr Ray Kelly, a parish priest from Ireland, went through to the next round of the competition after receiving the coveted four ‘yeses’ from the judging panel, after singing a rendition of REM’s Everybody Hurts. The judges praised his performance at the auditions, including judge Simon Cowell, who described it as one of his ‘favourite auditions ever.’

The 65-year-old priest of almost 30 years has been a parish priest in Oldcastle and Moylagh, Co Meath since 2006, and has already become a hit online with his musical performances.

The Catholic Church in Latin America must recognize and appreciate the role of women and end the practice of using them solely as submissive labourers in the parish, said members of a pontifical commission.

In addition, at the end of their plenary meeting March 6-9 at the Vatican, members of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America proposed that the church hold a Synod of Bishops “on the theme of the woman in the life and mission of the church.”

“There still exist ‘macho,’ bossy clerics who try to use women as servants within their parish, almost like submissive clients of worship and manual labour for what is needed. All of this has to end,” said the final document from the meeting.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, reported April 11 that the theme of the four-day meeting, “The woman: pillar in building the church and society in Latin America,” was chosen by Pope Francis.

In addition to 17 cardinals and seven bishops who are members of the commission, the Pope asked that some leading Latin American women also be invited; eight laywomen and six women religious participated in the four- day meeting and in drafting its pastoral recommendations, the newspaper said.

St Matthew Monastery, a Syriac Orthodox monastery overlooking the Nineveh Plains towns of Bashiqa and Bartella, in between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. Christians in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East are being wiped out on an unprecedented scale due to ethnic cleansing campaigns by the likes of the so-called Islamic State (IS), the Gatestone Institute reports on its website.

It said the IS has killed over 1,130 Christians and destroyed 125 of their churches in recent times, with many of the murders apparently going unreported in Western mainstream media.

Eighty-one percentage of Iraq’s Christians have now disappeared from the war-torn country, according to a new report from the Iraqi Human Rights Society.

The society described the status quo as a “slow genocide” with minorities including Christians, Yazidis and Shabaks facing alarming levels of religious and ethnic persecution.

The Gatestone Institute quoted French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia as likening the situation to the Holocaust as he appealed to Europe and other Western countries to defend non-Muslims in the region.