Unfunny April Fooling

CHRONICLE.COM, April 7 — Officials at the Jesuit-run University of Scranton, Pa., pulled the April 1 issue of its student-run newspaper, The Aquinas, and suspended its publication after complaints the paper had published libelous material.

Officials declined to comment on the issue, the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, but The Tribune, a local paper, reported the April Fool's edition contained a reference to a priest “caught fooling around with” a woman during a screening of The Passion of the Christ.

The issue also reportedly contained a spoof of MTV's “Celebrity Death Match” with current and former university presidents wearing priestly collars.

Georgetown and Kerry

CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, April 7 — When pro-abortion presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic, spoke at Jesuit-run Georgetown University on April 7, pro-lifers were there to protest.

The American Life League led a “peaceful protest” outside during Kerry's speech and called on Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to speak out against Kerry's pro-abortion views, the news service reported.

The group also called on bishops around the country to follow St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's example of denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians.

BC Takes a Stand?

THE BOSTON GLOBE, April 8 — A candidate for a prestigious endowed chair at Boston College has charged the school's president, Father William Leahy, with rejecting him because of his homosexual orientation.

A top choice for the English department's Rattigan Professorship said department members told him his selection had been “undercut” by Father Leahy and that the chair would not be filled. Other candidates for the chair, who are also homosexually oriented, also were denied the position.

A school spokesman said Father Leahy wasn't aware the candidates were homosexually oriented until after the fact.

The Globe said Father Leahy has been a vocal opponent of homosexual marriage, however, last year he granted recognition to a “gay-straight student alliance.”

Signs of Faith

THE DAILY NEBRASKAN, April 7 — While some students at secular schools often go about their daily lives without thinking of faith, others base their lives on it.

The newspaper of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln examined such students in a recent three-part series. In Part 2, the paper interviewed Marian Sister Karen Marie Wilson of the Diocese of Lincoln, who decided to take classes at the university to apply her faith to her middle-education major.

Father Brian Kane, who works at the Newman Center, attended the university from 1991 to 1994 and then joined the seminary.

Being involved with the Newman Center, he said, “made me aware of the possibility of becoming a priest, which I had never thought about before.”

Studying Peace

NATIONAL CATHOLIC STU DENT COALITION, April 5 — Catholic students from seven U.S. states and Canada met at the United Nations from March 18 to 20 to discuss the relationship between Catholic social teaching and the United Nations.

According to a press release from the coalition, the second annual “Study Session on Peace and Development” focused on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, designed to cut world poverty in half by 2015, stop the spread of AIDS and achieve universal primary education.