ROME WATCH INTERNATIONAL

"FOR THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS" (1 Timothy 2:5)

"NEITHER IS THERE SALVATION IN ANY OTHER: FOR THERE IS NONE OTHER NAME (BUT JESUS) UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN AMONG MEN, WHEREBY WE MUST BE SAVED." (Acts 4:12)

SEX ABUSE BY PRIEST DRAWS $120 MILLION AWARD

A Dallas jury awarded nearly $120 million in damages after finding that the local Roman Catholic diocese had ignored evidence that a priest was sexually abusing boys and that it had then tried to cover up the scandal. A spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops said the award was "almost certainly the largest judgement that had been made against the church" in a sexual abuse case, but would probably be appealed. The damages are to be paid by the Diocese of Dallas and the priest, the Rev. Rudolph Kos, who has been suspended. Father Kos, 52, did not defend himself in the civil trial and still faces criminal charges of sexual abuse of two of the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs - 10 men and the family of another who committed suicide at the age of 20 - said the abuse occurred between 1977 and 1992, while Father Kos was a student at Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas and while he was assigned to three parishes. They charged that a reasonable investigation by church officials would have revealed that the seminary applicant had served a year in a juvenile detention centre for molesting a neighbour. The plaintiffs also pointed to a series of warnings and complaints about Father Kos`s proclivities that came from other priests throughout the late 1980`s, despite which he was made a pastor in 1988. Diocesan officials have stated that they suspended him promptly when the first complaint in 1992.

CATHOLIC CHURCH DROPS HARDLINE ON CHURCH WEDDINGS FOR COHABITING

MIAMI (AP) - With about half of all engaged couples seeking Roman Catholic weddings already living together, the church is dropping its policy of throwing the moral rule book at cohabiting couples. Now couples living together before marriage don`t have to worry about being denied church nuptials under new rules being adopted in the Archdiocese of Miami and elsewhere in the country. The old rules didn`t take cohabitation into account and left it up to priests to determine whether couples already living together could marry in the church, said Dawn Fleri, director of the Family Enrichment Centre of the Archdiocese of Miami. Miami`s new guidebook that takes effect June 15 emphasises that couples who abstain from sex before marriage are more likely to be faithful in marriage. The guidebook, Called to Marriage, was written by a committee of priests and married

Catholics, and says priests may invite engaged couples who are living together to move apart while spiritually preparing for the sacrament of marriage. But the new guidebook also explicitly says for the first time: "Cohabitation is not a canonical impediment to marriage. The minister need not delay and may not refuse the continuation of the preparation for the marriage if a couple continues to cohabit." The new rules are essentially a way for the church to play catchup. About half of all engaged couples seeking Catholic weddings already are living together, said Victoria Laskowski, director of Family Ministries for the Diocese of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, which is among dozens of dioceses nationwide revamping its rules. "It`s close to 50 percent, and that doesn`t even account for the ones sleeping together who aren`t living together," she said. Laskowski recently surveyed the nation`s 175 Roman Catholic dioceses, asking how they address cohabitation in their marriage preparation guidelines. Sixty responded, and more than a third of those have relatively new policies taking a "pastoral" rather than a "legalistic" approach to cohabitation, she said. Chastity before marriage is still the moral ideal. But officials now feel couples are better off if the church helps them create lasting marriages rather than exclude them. "If you tick people off by saying only "Thou shalt not do this" and "Thou shalt not do that", you will drive them away from church, and that, we know, increases the chances that their marriage eventually will fail," Laskowski said. Rick McCord, associate director of the US. Catholic Bishops` Committee on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., said the new cohabitation guidelines are a good trend. "The church needs to find a balance between its role as a teacher and upholder of moral standards drawn from the Gospel, and, at the same time, being a pastor, being a place to which people come not because they are perfect but because they are attempting to lead better lives," McCord said.
JOSEPH KENNEDY`S EX-WIFE APPEALS TO ROME TO DENY ANNULMENT

BOSTON - The ex-wife of Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass., joined 24 North American Catholic groups, Sunday, in an appeal to the Catholic Church to end the annulment of marriages and accept divorces outright. Sheila Rauch kennedy, whose 12-year marriage to Kennedy was annulled by church officials in Boston last year, wrote about her

Opposition to the process in the recently released book "Shattered Faith". In an open letter addressed to Catholic bishops in the United States and Canada, the groups representing tens of thousands of Catholics said that annulments in effect make a marriage invalid and unsacramental in the eyes of the church. Furthermore, until the 12^th century, divorce and remarriage were allowed in the Catholic Church. "What the bishops don`t tell you is that it was the tradition of the church to recognise divorce and remarriage," Charlie Davis, the principal author of the letter, told reporters at a press conference in Boston. Sheila Kennedy said that this weekend she faxed an appeal of her marriage annulment to the Vatican in Rome in the hopes that officials there would overturn Boston officials. The annulment has to be approved by two different courts or tribunals. "Today marks the beginning of my appeal`s life in Rome," she said. "What I`ve been told is that Rome adheres more strictly to the code of canon law. I think the marriage has a much better chance of being upheld in Rome than here." Two years after the couple divorced in 1991, Joseph Kennedy began pursuing an annulment of the marriage in 1993, the same year he remarried. Kennedy, the son of the slain former Attorney General, Robert F Kennedy, has said he intends to run for governor of Massachussetts. But his ex-wife`s battle against their annulment in a heavily Catholic State, and his brother Michael`s alleged affair with his family`s teenage baby sitter have hurt him in the polls. St.Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1997.ATHEISTS IN HEAVEN SAYS JESUIT

Atheists who secretly worry there might be an after-life after all were offered comfort by a leading Jesuit theologian who declared that non-believers would also enter Paradise after death, "provided they live and die with a clear conscience." Father Giovanni Marchesi, resident theologian on the Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica (Catholic Civilisation) said members of the other great religions, such as Buddhists, Muslims and Jews, could also hope for "eternal salvation". He said St. Augustine had been wrong to say that non-believers would burn in Hell for eternity. Father Marchesi said his text had been cleared by the Vatican before publication. "I prefer to describe atheists as those who believe that they do not believe," he said. "Both they and those who adhere to non-Christian religions may still hope for salvation, as long as they have earned it by the way they lived their lives." The Times, 18^th June 1997

A statue of the Virgin Mary has been crying tears of blood since Orangemen were allowed to march down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, Northern Ireland, on their way back from a church service at Drumcree Church of Ireland parish church. The statue is being taken from house to house in the rabidly Romanist and Republican Kilwilkee housing estate in Lurgan and apparently hundreds of Roman Catholics have turned out to see the strange sight.