MANILA --Dissatisfied with the lawmakers’ handling of the call for agrarian reform, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales is bringing the issue right on President Arroyo’s doorstep. Rosales is seeking a dialogue with Mrs. Arroyo on the issue of extending the life of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which expired last December.

MANILA --Two prominent Catholic church leaders welcomed the release yesterday of the remaining ten Ninoy Aquino-Rolando Galman convicts following a presidential decision to grant executive clemency last March 2.

VATICAN--Benedict XVI is encouraging young people to pray and live the sacraments, so as to be witnesses of hope and joy in a world that counts on them. The Pope affirmed this in a message published today for the 24th World Youth Day, which will take place April 5, Palm Sunday, on a diocesan level. The event theme is: “We Have Set Our Hope on the Living God.”

The mass media and the new (Information and Communication Technologies) ICTs have a very important role in the communications mission of the Church. The preferred use of the term, social communications, serves to remind us that there is a communicative dimension to every aspect of Church life and that we must not think exclusively in terms of our relations with the mass media or the new emerging media. It remains true that the mass media -- traditional and new alike -- provides us with a privileged way of bringing our message to ever greater audiences and in a variety of different ways. The voice of the divine word must echo even through the radio, the information highway of the internet, the channels of “online” virtual circulation, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, etc. It must appear on all television and movie screens, in the press, and in cultural and social events.

Naga City - La unidad del gobierno local (UGL) aquí, se unirá a otras ciudades y pueblos de todo el mundo en apagar sus luces durante una hora a las 8:30 pm el 28 de marzo, como una acción significativa contra el calentamiento global.

Referring then to the dangers of eugenics, the Holy Father noted how, despite its having been condemned in the past, “worrying manifestations of this odious practice,” still persist. “A new mentality is insinuating itself,” he cautioned, “one that tends towards a different view of life and of personal dignity founded on personal desires and individual rights.

LONDON, England-- Society of St. Pius X Bishop Richard Williamson has expressed regret to the Church and to Holocaust victims and their relatives for the harm caused by his remarks on Swedish television minimizing Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. He also apologized to those who took “honest scandal” from his comments.

MANILA--The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has accredited a church-based poll watchdog that would help them in the ongoing voters’ registration for the 2010 elections. The Comelec en banc approved, in a resolution dated Feb. 19, the petition by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) to be its citizen’s arm.

MANILA--The influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has added its voice in opposition to the revival of the mothballed nuclear power plant in Bataan. In a pastoral statement released yesterday, CBCP president and Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo appealed to lawmakers to reject the opening of the plant.

MANILA--President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said today that the signing of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) has opened new opportunities for Filipino health workers to work in Japan starting April this year.