Covenant House California hosts Youth Awards Gala
LOS ANGELES --- Covenant House California (CHC) honored Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group's president of marketing Valerie Van Galder and real estate developer Lawrence Bond at its seventh annual "Covenant With Youth Awards Gala" at The Beverly Hilton Hotel. The event was hosted by Emmy-winning actor- writer Robert Wuhl, and chaired by Elizabeth Callender. Since 1988, Covenant House California (CHC) has opened its doors to more than 145,000 homeless youth. Their mission is to "protect and safeguard all children of the street" with "absolute respect and unconditional love."

Catholic-Lutheran dialogue discusses death, judgment, resurrection
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- Catholic and Lutheran scholars discussed death, judgment and resurrection at a four-day session of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue. The April 20-23 meeting in Phoenix was the second session of the 11th round of the dialogue. The theme for this round is "The Hope for Eternal Life." Among questions the group plans to address in future sessions are Catholic-Lutheran differences over issues relating to life after death, including purgatory, indulgences and Masses and prayers for the dead. "The members of the dialogue team have established solid foundations for further discussion and development," said the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran co-chair of the dialogue. Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba of Milwaukee, Catholic co-chair, said, "One of the more illuminating and instructive aspects of the meeting was the manner in which both Lutheran and Catholic scholars were able to reflect on the developing history of their own respective practices since the Reformation."

Vatican official says papal Turkey trip
will support Christians there
ROME (CNS) --- Pope Benedict XVI's November trip to Turkey will include stops in Ankara and Ephesus before his arrival in Istanbul to participate in the Orthodox Church's celebration of the feast of St. Andrew, said Cardinal Walter Kasper. The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told an Italian Catholic newspaper that the trip would be "an occasion to support the patriarch, the Catholics and all the other Christians in Istanbul and Turkey who live their faith in a situation that is not easy." The Orthodox celebrate the feast of St. Andrew Nov. 30; the Vatican has not released the dates for the trip or the official itinerary. In the interview published May 23 in Avvenire, Cardinal Kasper said the Catholic Church's relationships with individual Orthodox churches continue to improve. "Now there is a new climate of trust," he said. "And I think that building trust is always the most important thing."

Vatican newspaper criticizes Italy's new government
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- The Vatican newspaper criticized members of Italy's new government for signaling openness to legally recognizing civil unions and further use of the abortion pill. "The care with which the new ministers are rushing to declare their intentions on particularly delicate matters is disconcerting," said a May 23 article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. "Yesterday," it said, "was the turn of the health minister, Livia Turco, who in essence declared support for experimentation with RU-486, the abortion-provoking drug." On May 22, L'Osservatore took to task Rosy Bindi, the new minister for the family, for what the newspaper described as her "acrobatics" to grant legal recognition to cohabiting heterosexual and homosexual couples without calling it marriage or a solidarity pact --- positions rejected in the center-left coalition's election platform. Both criticisms in the newspaper occurred less than one week after Prime Minister Romano Prodi announced his slate of government ministers.

South African cardinal says Zuma trial is setback to AIDS battle
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) --- Attitudes revealed in former Deputy President Jacob Zuma's rape trial are a serious setback to the country's battle against the spread of AIDS, church leaders said. In early May Zuma was acquitted of charges of raping an HIV-positive family friend at his Johannesburg home last November. Zuma is the former head of South Africa's AIDS council, and his "behavior was not caused by ignorance" of how HIV is contracted, said Cardinal Wilfrid F. Napier of Durban, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference. "This has very serious implications," he said in a May 18 telephone interview from Durban. "Here we are thinking our AIDS rate is so high because of ignorance --- and running extensive education campaigns to inform people --- but it seems it is not ignorance but an unwillingness to change behavior" that is driving the epidemic. Zuma, 64, told the Johannesburg High Court judge that he and his 31-year-old accuser, whom he knew to be HIV-positive, had consensual sex.

In Poland, pope's prayers at death camp
are meant to evoke peace
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- The prayers that German-born Pope Benedict XVI will recite May 28 at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland will evoke peace and reconciliation, but also the obligation to remember what the Nazis did, the Vatican newspaper said. While Pope John Paul II made an important visit to Auschwitz in 1979 and paid homage to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, Pope Benedict's visit will be "something more," said the newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, May 23. "After 60 years the German language will resound again in the camp, not to give death orders, but to raise to God a prayer for peace, reconciliation, love and hope," said the lead article in two pages devoted to the Auschwitz visit. The newspaper said the papal visit is an affirmation that no one can ignore or forget "the terrible tragedy" that took place in Auschwitz and the other Nazi camps.

Rice says protests show democracy alive at Boston College
BOSTON (CNS) --- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the protests over her commencement appearance at Boston College are a sign that democracy is alive on the campus of the Jesuit-run college. Being able to protest "is what democracy is all about," she told two Boston College publications. What is "anti-democratic" is "to insist on a monopoly of your views," Rice said May 21, the day before she delivered the commencement speech and was given an honorary degree by the college. "That's the bargain of democracy: You get to say what you think but others get to say what they think too," she said. Rice expressed her views in a joint interview with the Boston College Chronicle, an official publication for faculty and staff, and the Heights, an independent campus newspaper published by undergraduates. The decision to invite Rice was opposed by about 200 professors who said the invitation and honorary degree meant the Catholic college supported the Bush administration's Iraq War. College officials said Rice's career justifies an honorary degree and that the invitation did not automatically mean support for U.S. policy in Iraq.

Roberts, Scalia offer advice to law graduates,
give insight on court
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- In separate speeches in Washington, the chief justice of the United States and an associate Supreme Court justice offered advice to graduating law students and members of Congress, while providing a glimpse into the court's workings. In a brief, mostly lighthearted address that dealt primarily with the role of consensus and disagreement within the court, Chief Justice John Roberts, a Catholic, told Georgetown University law graduates May 21 that in a society governed by the rule of law, being a lawyer is a special calling. He urged the graduates to "protect rule of law while resisting temptation to substitute the rule of lawyers," adding, "There is a difference." At a luncheon earlier in the week hosted by the National Italian American Foundation, Justice Antonin Scalia, also a Catholic, took Congress to task for trying to shape how the court makes its decisions, particularly with legislation dealing with the influence of foreign court rulings on U.S. jurisprudence.