A Christian preschool in Sweden has banned children from saying grace at mealtimes, talking about the Bible, or saying “Amen.” The decision to forbid children at the school in Umea to engage in religious practices was reached after a school inspection. The municipality’s supervisors in charge of education noted that the Christian activities violate Sweden’s educational policies, Swedish National Broadcaster STV reported.

Sweden’s Education Act prohibits schools from having confessional elements during school time and says children should be able to opt-out of religious practices.

Inspectors believed the preschool, run by the Salvation Army, didn’t give children a choice as to whether they wanted to participate in elements of the day such as saying grace before a meal.

Pope Francis told his public audience on June 28 that “the proclamation of the Kingdom of God always involves opposition,” and “the confession of faith always takes place in a climate of hostility.” Reflecting on the words of Jesus, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves,” the Holy Father remarked that in a sinful world the message of the Gospel will always encounter resistance. He reminded his audience that the term “martyr” refers to a witness to the Gospel. Martyrs endure through opposition, he said, and “whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

One key sign of authentic Christian witness is poverty of spirit, the Pope said; the Christian who proclaims the Gospel is detached from any worldly power and left to rely solely upon God. The Pope cautioned that while Christians are called to be prudent and “even at times cunning,” they must never stoop to the use of violence or other immoral means. “To overcome evil, one cannot share the methods of evil,” he said.

Pope Francis has instructed a Vatican commission to draft a new doctrine for excommunicating Catholics convicted of corruption or mafia-related crimes.

More than 50 prosecutors, bishops, United Nations representatives and victims of organized crime came together for a Vatican conference this week to hammer out the Church’s new legal doctrine concerning “the question of excommunication for corruption and mafia association.”

“Our effort is to create a mentality, a culture of justice, that fights corruption and promotes the common good,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s retired ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, who was one of the conference participants.

While Pope Francis has bluntly called for the excommunication of mobsters before, it is the first time mafia and corruption crimes are being considered together – not worthy of pardon because they are habitual criminal ways of life, as opposed to a single act of sin.

Within the mafia clans of Italy, but also inside the narcos culture of the Mexican and Colombian cartels, pseudo-religious rituals rich with Catholic imagery and references are an integral part of the cultural tradition.

Pope Francis railed against the mafia’s “adoration of evil and contempt for common good” in a high-profile visit to the region plagued by the brutal ‘Ndrangheta mafia organisation in 2014, declaring mobsters automatically excommunicated. Nonetheless, his remarks have failed to halt the “padrino” system of naming children after mobster godfathers or detours of religious processions in front of the homes of known mob bosses as a sign of honour.

Excommunication, which bans Catholics from participating in the sacraments or communion, is one of the most several penalties within the church. It has been used in the past to isolate a number of religious sects, such as the ultra conservative followers of French archbishop Marcel-Francois Lefebvre.

Cardinals living in Rome should inform Pope Francis when they leave the city and provide him with their address when they are abroad, a leaked letter reveals.

The request is revealed in a letter sent by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who informs the prelates that it is a “noble tradition” for them to keep both the Pope and the Holy See’s Secretariat of State up to date with their movements.

“Pope Francis has recently requested of the Dean of the Cardinalatial College to fraternally remind each single Cardinal the opportunity of keeping that practice, even more so in the case of an extended absence from Rome,” read the letter dated 31 May but revealed today by Francis Rocca of the Wall Street Journal.

Those living in Rome are in charge of Vatican departments, but many are frequent travellers who fly around the world giving talks and attending major Church summits.

Throughout his papacy, Francis has sought to govern the Church collegially with his fellow cardinals, and to that end set up a cardinal-advisory body – the C9 – which is meeting in Rome.

One of those often on the road is Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is threatening to formally correct Francis for watering down teaching on giving communion to divorced and remarried Catholics.

Sources close to the cardinal say he always tries to accept invitations to speak abroad. In March while speaking in Springfield, Virginia, the cardinal used the opportunity to restate that he will “simply have to correct the situation” regarding allowing the remarried to receive the sacraments.

Last year, another cardinal seen at odds with Francis’ papacy used a trip to London to call for priests to face east when saying Mass. Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is in charge of the Vatican’s liturgy department, was later publicly rebuked by the Pope.

The Danish parliament has repealed an anti-blasphemy law at a time when such laws are still used around the world.

“I am glad they are dropping the law. But the law was almost never used in the last 46 years, so it is only a small step,” Paul Marshall, Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University, told CNA. He thought it significant that it had not been used in recent instances of blasphemy against Christian.

The Danish People’s Party had also supported repealing the law, while the Social Democrats were supportive of the legislation.

In the history of the law, only eight cases were brought under it. Only two sets of convictions have resulted. A 1938 conviction punished four people who hanged up public posters and printed in newspapers mockeries of Jewish belief. In 1946, two people were convicted for mock-baptizing a doll during a masked ball in Copenhagen.

One such law was used in the case against Lars Hedegaard, a Danish Marxist historian and journalist who has made strong criticisms of Islam. In 2011 he was fined on evidence of a recording of his remarks at home which criticized Islamic society, including claims of familial rape. The fine was thrown out in a 2013 decision by the Danish Supreme Court.

“In practice these function as quasi-blasphemy laws, or are ways of silencing unpopular views,” Marshall said.

Until recently the dossier was under the radar of journalists from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who have been making inquiries on the Swiss Leaks scandal, a vast system of tax evasion promoted by the Swiss subsidiary of the British HSBC bank and which was revealed in 2015.

But now Le Monde published an article on its website on Wednesday, May 31 implicating high-ranking leaders of the Catholic Church in Mali. These include Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, the 73 year old prelate who was named as a cardinal by Pope Francis on May 21.

The accusations concerning Archbishop Zerbo date back to the period when he was the head of the finance commission of the Bishops Conference of Mali (CEM). It was then chaired by Bishop Jean-Gabriel Diarra, 71, currently bishop of San and who was also named in the Le Monde article.

The accusations have stunned the Christian community of Mali, which represents less than 3% of the nation’s 17 million inhabitants.

“At a time when we are celebrating the elevation of Archbishop Zerbo to the cardinalate, we learn that the Church may have bank accounts in Switzerland. Even if we take this with a pinch of salt, it is a shock for many people,” comme-nted Théodore Togo, secretary-general of Caritas Mali.

“Everything decided by the Conference is done transparently and regularly evaluated,” said Fr Edmond Dembélé, current secretary-general of the CEM.

“And to my knowledge, we do not have a bank account in Switzerland.”

“I would like to believe that the Malian bishops have not done anything legally reprehensible,” comments Jean Merckaert, editor in chief of Projets magazine, which is published by a French Jesuit and lay team.

Ancient frescoes depicting the early Christians and some scenes from the Bible were uncovered in Rome’s oldest catacomb located near the Appian Way.

The frescoes, estimated to be 1,600 years old, revealed a “fusion” of pagan symbols and images related to the Christian faith, indicating recent conversion from paganism to Christianity, project head Barbara Mazzei said, according to The Telegraph.

“It’s a fusion of older pagan symbols with new Christian images. The family had only recently converted to Christianity,” project head Barbara Mazzei said. Painted from the catacombs’ ceiling are colourful artworks showing famous biblical scenes, such as Jesus feeding the five thousand, Daniel and the lions and Noah’s Ark.

An image of Jesus Christ, seated on a throne with a man on his right and another on his left, could be seen at the centre. The men were believed to be either the apostles Peter and Paul or St Nerius and St Achilleus.

These images were not always visible, as the catacombs’ ceilings used to be completely black. “When we started work, you couldn’t see anything – it was totally black. Different wavelengths and chromatic sele-ction enabled us to burn away the black disfiguration without touching the colours beneath,” Mazzei said. The frescoes had been covered with algae, smoke stains from oil lamps and calcium deposits for centuries. They were restored through the use of laser technology that effectively peeled off the grime, revealing the fascinating artwork beneath.

One of the results of attending church is that you have better health and live longer than those who do not, according to a recent study by Vanderbilt University professor Marino Bruce.

“We found in our study that actually attending church is actually good for your health, particularly for those who are between the ages of 40 and 65,” Bruce, the associate director of Vanderbilt’s Centre for Research on Men’s Health, says in a video posted to YouTube by the university.

Middle aged adults who attend church reduce their mortality by 55 percent, Bruce says, adding, “For those who did not attend church at all, they were twice as likely to die prematurely than those who did who attended church at some point over the last year.”

The professor’s study, “Church Attendance, Allostatic Load and Mortality in Middle Aged Adults,” published in the Plos One journal, used publicly available data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey involving 5,449 participants, both men and women. It looked at participants’ worship attendance, mortality and allostatic load, which is a physiological measurement, and social support.

The study had 89,708 women aged 30 to 55 years from across the United States as participants. It was published in July in JAMA Psychiatry.

In the conclusion, the authors of that wrote: “Our results do not imply that healthcare providers should prescribe attendance at religious services. However, for patients who are already religious, service attendance might be encouraged as a form of meaningful social participation. Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that psychiatrists and clinicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate.”