New York, 21 April (ENI)--Pope Benedict XVI, head of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, capped a six-day visit to the United States, his first as pontiff, with a public Mass at New York's Yankee Stadium in which he declared the need for US Catholics to be obedient to church authority. At the 20 April gathering of more than 50 000 people, the Pope praised the US legacy of freedom but also used his homily to remind the Catholic faithful of church tradition, obedience and papal authority.

While the 15-20 April visit is likely to be remembered for the Pope's public declarations of shame about the sexual abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in the United States, the trip also provided an opportunity for Benedict to meet a range of US Christian leaders. At an 18 April service in New York, attended by 250 leaders representing Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, evangelical and Pentecostal traditions, Benedict voiced concern about what he described as, "fundamental Christian beliefs and practices" being altered on the basis of interpretations "not always consonant" with Christian tradition and biblical teaching.

"Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body," said the Pope, in remarks seen by some as a rebuke to the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church that in 2003 consecrated an openly gay bishop. However, Mark S. Sisk, the Episcopal bishop of New York and an Episcopal representative at the 18 April event, demurred. He said reporters were "reading too much into" the Pope's remarks, as well as the fact that the denomination's presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, did not attend the service and gathering because of a prior commitment

Sisk told Ecumenical News International that the tone of the service was "very conciliatory", and described the Pope as "a vital person … engaged and engaging". The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and a president of Christian Churches Together in the USA, a new church grouping that includes Roman Catholic representation, told ENI the event was a "remarkable gathering" that "came off in a very powerful way".

Asked if it takes a figure like the Pope to bring together such a divergent group of US Christian leaders, Granberg-Michaelson said that while CCT, among others, had done a good job of gathering US religious leaders together, "You can't help but say that the Pope has a tremendous convening power. When he invites, people come." [419 words]

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New York, 18 April (ENI)--Pope Benedict XVI has met privately and prayed with several survivors of sexual abuse by clergy during his visit to the United States, in a move that is believed to be the first time a pontiff has met with abuse survivors. The unannounced meeting on 17 April, reportedly at Benedict's request, was held at a chapel at the papal nuncio's residence in Washington.

Bernie McDaid, an abuse survivor who was at the meeting, said in an interview with the CNN television network that he told the Pope "it wasn't just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse". "And then I told him that he has a cancer growing in his ministry, and needs to do something about it," said McDaid, who was abused by a cleric as an altar boy. John Allen, who writes on Vatican affairs for the National Catholic Reporter, described the meeting as "an unexpected and essentially unprecedented move".

Benedict's six-day trip is the first visit by a pope to the United States since the resignation in 2002 of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop of Boston after allegations that he and other archdiocesan officials had allowed known abusers to continue in their jobs or had transferred them from post to post. The meeting between the Pope and abuse survivors came after remarks by the pontiff to journalists on his flight to the United States, in which he said he was "deeply ashamed" of the scandals, and that that paedophiles would not be allowed to continue as priests or to be ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood. Observers said that the condemnation and the meeting with survivors appeared to be a clear signal by Benedict that he is taking the sexual abuse issue seriously.

All five victims who met with Pope Benedict were from the Boston area. A Vatican spokesperson said the Pope and a small group of survivors were joined by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who now heads the Boston archdiocese. In a statement, Joelle Casteix, a regional director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called the meeting "a small, long-overdue step forward on a very long road". She said the meeting was not likely to change much, as action "produces reform, and reform - real reform - is sorely needed in the church hierarchy". The address and meeting with abuse survivors came the same day that Benedict celebrated his first public Mass on his US visit, at a baseball stadium in Washington.

"I acknowledge the pain which the church in America has experienced as a result of the sexual abuse of minors," the Pope said in his homily. "No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse." In his homily, Benedict also praised what he said was a legacy of US optimism and hope, though he descried what he said was a tradition of exclusion for some.

The promise of the United States, he said, "was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves". In a speech before US Catholic educators, Benedict addressed the issue of academic freedom at Catholic educational institutions. In his address, the Pope said that while he sought to "reaffirm the great value of academic freedom", divergence from church teaching "weakens Catholic identity, and, far from advancing freedom, inevitably leads to confusion, whether moral, intellectual or spiritual". [591 words]

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London, 4 April (ENI)--Tony Blair has told an audience of 1600 people at Westminster Cathedral that his faith foundation, to be formally launched in May, will aim to bring together people of all major religions in pursuit of the United Nations' millennium development goals for improving conditions in the developing world by 2015. Speaking on 4 April in his first detailed public speech on religion since his conversion to Roman Catholicism after stepping down as Britain's prime minister in 2007, Blair made no mention of the Iraq war and argued that religions of all kinds should be rescued from extremism to help meet a "profound yearning within the human spirit" at a time of unprecedented global turbulence.

"For religion to be a force for good, it must be rescued not simply from extremism, faith as a means of exclusion; but also from irrelevance, an interesting part of our history but not of our future," said Blair. "Faith is reduced to a system of strange convictions and actions that, to some, can appear far removed from the necessities and anxieties of ordinary life. It is this face that gives militant secularism an easy target." Blair's foundation will focus on the Abrahamic faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - as well as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism, and help followers "who stand up for peaceful co-existence and reject the extremist and divisive notion that faiths are in fundamental struggle against each other".

Blair, who was an Anglican while prime minister, said he had underestimated the extent to which the global centre of gravity, economically and politically, was shifting from West to East. "China and India together will industrialise the bulk of their populations, presently employed in subsistence agriculture, probably within two decades," said Blair. "The strong historical and cultural influences of religion in both East and West could help both hemispheres unite around common values rather than undergo a battle for domination."

Before Blair's 45-minute speech began the Catholic peace group Pax Christi held a silent vigil, and as the audience left demonstrators bearing placards, banging drums and blowing whistles called for the former prime minister to be prosecuted as a war criminal. Former Iraq hostage Norman Kember, who took part in the Pax Christi vigil, told reporters that what had happened to him was a minor blip compared to the suffering of the Iraqi people. He felt it was partly Blair's fault, and that he should confess that he had made an error and repent.

Blair took questions submitted in advance but none of those he answered referred to the Iraq war. His lecture was one of six in the Faith and Life in Britain series organised by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales. He explained why he had not been explicit about his religious beliefs while he was prime minister noting, "there is a reason why my former press secretary Alastair Campbell once famously said: 'We don't do God'. In our culture, here in Britain and in many other parts of Europe, to admit to having faith leads to a whole series of suppositions, none of which are very helpful to the practising politician," said Blair. "First, you may be considered weird. Normal people aren't supposed to 'do God'." [573 words]

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Oxford, Ohio, 2 April (ENI)--Ted Turner, who once called Christianity "a religion for losers" has launched a joint initiative with Lutherans and Methodists in the United States to raise US$200 million to fight malaria in Africa. Best known globally for creating the Cable News Network, the 69-year-old Turner on 1 April launched the anti-malaria project through his United Nations Foundation. Other partners in the campaign are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the United Methodist Church.

The CNN founder made the announcement at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, while flanked by Methodist and Lutheran leaders. Turner said he had become more tolerant of religion and regretted anything he may have said concerning it in the past that was negative. "Religion is one of the bright spots as far as I'm concerned, even though there are some areas, like everything else, where they've gone over the top a little in my opinion," Turner told the Associated Press. "But I'm sure God, wherever he is, wants to see us get along with one another and love one another."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also provided a $10 million grant that will help promote the campaign in churches. The Rev. John Nunes, president and chief executive of Lutheran World Relief, told journalists, "This will be the largest campaign of its type ever for Lutherans." Texas Bishop Janice Huie, president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, said her denomination would raise more $100 million over several years for the project.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, with their humanitarian arm Lutheran World Relief, will raise between $75 million and $100 million. Turner told his UN audience the initiative "will take our malaria prevention efforts to an entirely new level". The United Methodist Church has nine million members in the US and 12 million worldwide. The church has been involved in missionary work and poverty alleviation around the world for more than 160 years.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod together have eight million members in the United States and 70 million worldwide. Each year, malaria kills more than one million people, who are mostly women and children under the age of five in Africa. [393 words]

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