Queensland Synod News

A Roman Catholic priest in Poland has been criticised for publicly humiliating parishioners who failed to pay for the upkeep of his church. "It’s hard to prescribe how a rector should act in such situations – everything depends on how well he feels he knows his flock and what he thinks he can do," a spokesperson for the western Poland ...

Leaders of the Uniting Church in Australia have expressed their condolences to families of the people killed and injured in the tragic rail crash at Kerang, in Victoria. The President of the Uniting Church in Australia, the Rev Gregor Henderson and the Moderator of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, the Rev Jason Kioa said Uniting Church members around Australia ...

Religious leaders from the Group of Eight industrial nations and from Africa have said the G8 countries need to do more to keep the promises they made in 2005 to developing countries, and particularly to the African continent. "These promises represented substantial commitments for poverty eradication. The G8’s record on delivering on these promises has, to date, been very disappointing," ...

A representative of the Russian Orthodox Church has ruled out any "compromise" with the Roman Catholic Church over the status of the papacy, which is one of the issues that continues to divide the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. "There can be no compromises whatsoever in this matter," said Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria.  Hilarion serves ...

Protestant churches throughout Germany will peal their bells for eight minutes on 6 June at the start of the G8 meeting taking place in their country to remind leaders of developed and powerful nations of their responsibility to fight global poverty. "With this specifically church form of activity we want to appeal to political leaders to demonstrate solidarity with the ...

Pope Benedict XVI has approved the beatification of 188 Japanese martyrs who were persecuted under the Tokugawa Shogunate government in the 17th century, the (Roman) Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan says. They include lay people, both male and female, adults and children, as well as members of religious orders and priests, and are part of more than 320 official beatifications ...

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has called for urgent action against the threat of climate change, while speaking in Tromso, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. "We hold the planet’s future in our hands. ‘I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and ...

The Uniting Church has expressed its extreme dismay at the Prime Minister’s comments that migrants and refugees with leprosy and HIV/AIDS should not be allowed into Australia. Rev. Elenie Poulos, National Director of UnitingJustice Australia said, “The Christian church is founded on the words and actions of Jesus, who reached out to those with leprosy and other diseases. He touched ...

Roman Catholic bishops in Latin America have ended a two-and-a-half week meeting by calling for a "great continental mission" to win back millions of faithful who have left the church to join the region’s burgeoning neo-Pentecostal movements. "Our initiative is not proselytising, because we are looking for believers who have been baptised in our own church," said Cardinal Claudio Hummes, ...

Many Christians in Scotland are irate that Edinburgh University has approved a request by the international Pagan Society for its annual congress to be held on campus grounds not far from the city’s Grassmarket. There, witches and heretics were burned to death in the 16th and 17th centuries. They are angry because only recently the same university vetoed a request ...