Queensland Synod News

The Dalai Lama has disclosed that he considers himself a Marxist sympathiser and that he once asked to join the Chinese Communist Party. "Communists care most of all about equality and the rights of the destitute," the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has said in an interview with the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine. "This is very similar to ...

Pope Benedict XVI says he has "full and unquestionable solidarity" with Jewish people and he has warned against any form of Holocaust denial. The Pope’s statement comes after outrage at his recent reinstatement of an excommunicated bishop, who has said the genocide of Jews in gas chambers never took place. The German-born pontiff was speaking at his weekly audience on ...

Religious beliefs have a profound influence in shaping men, including their sense of masculinity and sexuality, members of an interfaith panel have said at a gathering promoting positive masculinity held in Georgetown, Guyana. Religious institutions prescribe boundaries, impose sanctions and affirm identity, the panellists said. Thirty-five pastors, church leaders, theological students and lay persons from Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, South Africa, ...

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has been elected as the new head of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Orthodox Church after serving a period as interim leader and following an election in which he got an overwhelming majority of votes. Church officials said after the election on 27 January that the 62-year-old Kirill garnered 508 votes in a secret ...

U.S. and British Jewish groups say they are shocked by a decision of Pope Benedict XVI to overturn the excommunication of a British bishop who has said the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust had been exaggerated. The move is "a serious blow for Jewish-Vatican relations and a slap in the face of the late Pope John Paul II ...

The Archbishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church has selected a short list of three candidates from among its ranks to succeed Patriarch Alexei II, who died last month after leading the church through the post-Soviet era. Prayers for the repose of Patriarch Alexei’s soul marked the opening of the Archbishops’ Council on 25 January. The Synod of Bishops met ...

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, have joined in British condemnation of a decision by their national broadcaster not to air a charity appeal for aid to Gaza. Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, said on 25 January he fully backed Sentamu, who said, "This is not a row about impartiality ...

The way society deals with its sewage is indicative of its commitment to sustainability, a South African academic has told a gathering of theologians in Brazil in advance of the World Social Forum, a global event questioning exploitative globalisation. "Our thinking about sustainability must deal with sewage because we have to live with our waste. It cannot leave the globe. ...

Uniting Church in Australia Aid-worker has today been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for her contribution to international relief and development. Fiona Dixon-Thompson has coordinated the United Church of Zambia Orphans and Vulnerable Children project in Mwandi, Zambia, since 2005. It is a program of Uniting Church Overseas Aid. The project feeds some 250 children six days ...

Calls for a return to basic banking and an economy propelled by values other than greed have been made in London, one of the world’s financial capitals, at a conference of Christian thinkers examining the current economic crisis. "We face today a choice between a political economy based on greed and consumption and a way of life which is based ...