Vatican Library Employs Computer-Chip Technology

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 11 — Officials in the Vatican Library have started implanting computer chips into the 1.6 million volumes in its collection. The chips communicate via wave radio with handheld monitors so librarians can tell if a book is missing.

“That is no small thing, because a book that's out of place is as if the book is lost,” said Ambrogio Piazzoni, the library's deputy prefect.

While the technology has been around for a while, the Associated Press reported, the Vatican believes its “Pergamon” system — named for the ancient city in modern Turkey that housed one of the Old World's greatest libraries — is the first time it is being used on such a large scale.

Pope Would Mediate if Needed in Azerbaijan

BAKU TODAY (Azerbaijan), June 12 — Pope John Paul II can mediate between the countries of Azerbaijan and Armenia to help settle a 16-year dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan.

The Vatican ambassador to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, said the Pope is ready to mediate if either side asks him to do so, Baku Today newspaper reported.

The archbishop also on June 10 told Interfax News Agency that Catholics in Azerbaijan and the Baku mayor's office have begun work on a project for restoring a Catholic church in Baku.

He said the new building will be similar to the Baku Catholic church that was destroyed by Soviet authorities in the 1930s. The money to restore the church, he said, was taken from the Holy Father's personal funds.

Presbyterian Leader: Pope Is Not the ‘Anti-Christ’

THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH (Northern Ireland), June 14 — It's official now in the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland: The Pope is not the anti-Christ.

According to the new Presbyterian moderator, the Rev. Dr. Ken Newell, Presbyterians are not required by church doctrine to regard the Pope as an anti-Christ, the Belfast Telegraph reported.

Newell confirmed that in 1988 the General Assembly had fully accepted that one of the claims of the Westminster Confession of Faith that the Pope is “the anti-Christ” was “not evidently manifest in Scripture,” the newspaper said.

Newell was replying to Free Presbyterian Church critics of his personal invitation to Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh to the Presbyterian General Assembly in early June.

Vatican's U.N. Nuncio Says Mass for Religious Order

THE EXPRESS-TIMES (Pennsylvania), June 15 — Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Vatican nuncio to the United Nations, joined priests in Nazareth, Pa., for a Mass on June 18 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Society of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

The order has had a chapter in Nazareth since 1913, the Pennsylvania Express-Times newspaper noted. The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart was founded in 1854 in France. The order has more than 2,000 missionaries worldwide.

As part of the order's anniversary project, the paper noted, it is participating in an AIDS outreach program in Africa.

Archbishop Migliore has been permanent observer to the United Nations for the Vatican for two years.