Sunday, Mar 15th
Last update07:49:54 AM GMT
Special Interest Glance
Police investigating claims of child abuse by Belgian clergy have told the BBC they are probing death threats against witnesses and magistrates.
"There are some threats against certain people around the case, and the prosecutors office is investigating that," he told the BBC.
John Sidney Denham, 67, was sentenced to 19 years and 10 months after pleading guilty to a range of charges, including multiple counts of indecent assault against boys aged five to 16.
Denham was found guilty of abusing 39 boys at schools in Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales between 1968 and 1986.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - After years of difficult negotiations, the U.N. General Assembly voted on Friday to set up a body that will seek to improve the situation of women and girls around the world.
The new body will be known officially as the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, although officials say it will be referred to as U.N. Women (www.unwomen.org). It will consolidate four separate U.N. divisions now dealing with women's and gender issues.
The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm.
But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets reports in its August 2010 issue.
Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed. The legend of his execution is based on the traditions of the Christian church and artistic illustrations rather than antique texts, according to theologian Gunnar Samuelsson.
He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted as there are no explicit references the use of nails or to crucifixion - only that Jesus bore a "staurus" towards Calvary which is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a "pole".
Belgian authorities have raided the offices of the country's most senior Catholic prelate as they investigate child sex abuse claims. A spokesman for the Brussels prosecutors' office confirmed that the palace of the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels had been sealed off.
Officials were searching for evidence concerning abuse allegations, he said. Belgium is one of several countries in which a stream of abuse claims have shaken the Roman Catholic Church.
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