Catholic

Arsonists struck Sts Peter and Paul Catholic Church in St Andrew a second time in October 2017, setting the pulpit alight and destroying a lectern and monitors, a month after a fire that caused $100,000 in damage.

Portsmouth Catholic Church in Dominica, destroyed by a 2004 earthquake, was rebuilt for more than $2 million from church, government, bank and parish funds and dedicated in 2017, with the priest declaring it debt-free.

The Archdiocese of New York deconsecrated about a dozen churches for potential sale after earlier deals worth up to US$50 million, including a parish turned into multimillion-dollar condos, prompting parishioners to accuse it of worsening the affordable-housing crisis.

Roseau’s Our Lady of Fair Haven Cathedral in Dominica received a 60-tonne, UK-made hurricane-resistant steel roof in 2017, part of an EC$12.4 million restoration that took 15 years of preparation and fundraising.

Growing too fast for its downtown home, St Joseph Catholic Church in Athens, Georgia, handed its six-acre Prince Avenue site to developers and moved to a 47-acre campus, with the 1912 church to become a restaurant.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia broke ground on St. John Neumann Place II, 52 affordable apartments for independent seniors on a former Catholic high school campus, backed by a $12 million tax credit allocation.

When Education Minister Ruel Reid threatened to take over schools breaching funding policy, Catholic deacon and columnist Peter Espeut argued in the Gleaner that church and trust schools do not belong to the Government and urged owners to review their partnership terms.

A closed Catholic church in Taiwan’s Taitung County was turned into a museum by a local Indigenous association, with its priests’ dormitory now a backpacker hostel whose income supports the museum.

Most major Christian traditions actively encourage organ donation, not the reverse. What the Catholic Church, the Church of England, Lutherans and others actually teach.

Most major Christian traditions actively encourage organ donation, not the reverse. What the Catholic Church, the Church of England, Lutherans and others actually teach.

Five years after the earthquake destroyed Port-au-Prince’s Catholic cathedral, the archdiocese was worshipping in a 1,500-seat transitional cathedral beside the ruins and running about 60 rebuilding projects, with the cathedral costed at US$30–40 million.

The Catholic College of Mandeville, which moved to a nine-and-a-half-acre Williamsfield campus in 2013, opened a science lab, launched agriculture and sports programmes and is seeking donations for more buildings, with diocesan grants helping students.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said he made no apologies for a $500,000 government gift to the Roseau Catholic Cathedral restoration, telling critics it was the Lord who gave the money, as an evangelical pastor called the idea misguided.

The Sisters of Mercy announced they would stop housing boys at Kingston’s Alpha Boys’ Home by June 2014, citing severe behavioural problems, the high cost of care and funding said to be less than a quarter of what state homes received.

The Vatican removed Limburg’s Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst after about $43 million in church funds went on his residence, including a $4 million private chapel, and an inquiry found he alone bore full responsibility.