Church Denies Hiding War Crimes Suspect

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 21 — The Church denied that it was sheltering a top Croatian war crimes suspect, after an allegation by a United Nations prosecutor that the suspect was hiding in a monastery and that the Vatican had refused pleas to help find him.

Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the United Nations criminal tribunal for the war in the former Yugoslavia, made her allegations in an interview published in a British newspaper, The Telegraph. She said General Ante Gotovina, 49, is accused of murder — 150 Serbian civilians are alleged to have been killed during an operation to control the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995 — and the deportation of thousands of people.

In a Sept. 20 statement, the Vatican said that its foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, had asked Del Ponte to provide more detailed information about her allegations, but that she had not responded.

Once the information is provided, Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls said, the Holy See can aid in the search for Gotovina.

Cardinal Decries Legal Status for Unmarried Couples

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Sept. 19 — Giving legal recognition to unmarried couples in Italy would eclipse the nature and value of traditional families and cause grave harm, Cardinal Camillo Ruini told the Associated Press.

Cardinal Ruini said he did not believe most unmarried couples, both heterosexual and gay, want legal recognition. In a rare concession, however, he suggested that common law norms might be applied to offer some protection in certain cases — but not to homosexual couples.

The comments by Ruini, the president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and the Pope's vicar for Rome, came amid a renewed debate over whether Italy should grant de facto couples some form of legal recognition.

Cardinal Ruini said Sept. 19 that de facto unions, while on the rise in Italy, “don't automatically imply any requests for legal recognition.”

He said that heterosexual couples are either looking to marry, or else “want to remain in a situation of anonymity, without any bonds.” As far as gay couples go, Cardinal Ruini said, “They are not always looking for legal recognition: On the contrary, many run away from it on principle, and want it to remain an exclusively private matter.”

Christians Under-Represented in EU, says Vatican

CHRISTIAN TODAY, Sept. 16 — The Vatican has urged that more weight be afforded for churches and Christians in the arrangement of Europe, Christian Today reported.

Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican's foreign minister, said Europe's Christians must work against the pressures to push faith as a private affair into the social background. He stressed the enormous contribution of the Church to the social and cultural life of Europe in the areas of health and education: “It would therefore be political error if Europe were to reduce the phenomena of church or Christians to an internal aspect of human experience, and thereby to a purely private affair.”

Archbishop Lajolo contended that Christians, which comprise four-fifths of European Union citizens, were underrepresented in political committees, the media and in cultural institutions.

He urged that Christians should not allow their potential to influence to be simply pushed out or ignored “under the pretext of the so-called laicization of political society.”