A girl enjoys the atmosphere at the St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Tuesday. Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin emphasized that the island's 4 million Catholics must pray on St. Patrick's Day for an end to Irish Republican Army dissident attacks that claimed three lives this month in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

DUBLIN — Half a million Irish natives, immigrants and tourists jammed into Dublin’s city center Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a boisterous national holiday that has been darkened this year by recession and violence.

“To hell with the recession! Let’s dance!” shouted a leprechaun-dressed street entertainer in the vanguard of the parade. The 10-deep crowd roared with laughter at his lewd jig — and, for an earsplitting hour featuring bands from India to Indiana, forgot its troubles.

But Ireland faces its sternest challenges in decades. Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, the government is increasing taxes and cutting spending to combat the worst budget deficit in Europe, and people are worried by rising emigration and renewed bloodshed.

From their pulpits, cardinals and bishops said the island’s 4 million Catholics must reorder their priorities away from finances and toward family and community.

“Today I believe Patrick is calling the Irish to reconsider aspects of the culture and values upon which society has been built in recent years,” Cardinal Sean Brady said in his annual sermon honoring Ireland’s patron saint, who brought Christianity to the pagan Gaels in the 5th century.

“Like Patrick, can we not admit that we have been negligent in relegating God to the sidelines? Where is this preoccupation with personal wealth and success leading us? What has the breakup of family and community done to our happiness?” Brady asked.

He and other church leaders called for communities, in both the Irish Republic and the British territory of Northern Ireland, to isolate the gunmen who are spreading fear and dread. Irish Republican Army splinter groups killed three people this month in Northern Ireland and eight people have been gunned down in Dublin criminal feuds this year.

Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said both parts of Ireland should “send an urgent and unambiguous message that as one community, north and south, without distinction of belief or of political allegiance, we are united against anyone who takes the path of violence.”

But tensions in Northern Ireland forced authorities to cancel the parade in one town, Lurgan. Catholic youths in the town rioted over the weekend after the area’s alleged senior IRA dissident was arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers.

Politicians from the Irish Catholic community canceled the parade for fear that the youths might use it to provoke more conflict with police and Protestants.

And in Belfast, several hundred students living beside Queen’s University engaged in drunken street scuffles with police, who donned riot gear to protect themselves from barrages of beer bottles and other alcoholic drink containers.

The trouble — in a tree-lined district of student-rented housing — has been a perennial problem on St. Patrick’s Day. But these clashes involved far greater numbers of students and a greater level of destruction than in previous years, including broken trees, smashed windows, and vandalized telephone booths. Police blocked off both ends of one road after students ransacked a car and tried to set it on fire.

Dublin’s parade — the climax of a six-day festival featuring fireworks, street theater and children’s rides — was entirely peaceful as it attracted an exceptional range of foreigners who, for the day at least, branded themselves Irish.

Children of all colors and accents painted their faces the green, white and orange of the Irish flag, donned Viking horns and leprechaun hats, and pressed shamrock tattoos on their cheeks.

But Dublin Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byrne warned that, as the economy sours, the city of 1.3 million faces a growing risk of racist violence. Many natives resent the 200,000-plus Eastern Europeans, Asians and Africans who settled in Ireland during its Celtic Tiger boom of 1994-2007.

“It’s been a difficult — for some devastating — year. And now more than ever, we need to rebuild our communities and our sense of solidarity,” Byrne said.

The mayor said Ireland’s national holiday posed the question of “what it is to be Irish in the 21st century (and) how we blend our old and new cultures.”

A player of the Gaelic Athletic Association carries the figure of an Irish Wolfhound on his back during the annual St Patrick's Day Parade, as he walks through the streets of Dublin, Tuesday March 17, 2009. The two-hour spectacle will see street theatre troupes, artists, giant puppetry, dancers and marching bands from Ireland and further afield weave across the Irish capital.

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On the Web

Catholic Church history on St. Patrick: www.catholicbishops.ie

St. Patrick’s Festival 2009: www.stpatricksfestival.ie

Pope Benedict XVI

AP Photo PPC102, VAT104, VAT103, VAT101, PPC103, CMR104, CMR102, CMR103

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON

Associated Press Writer

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

Benedict had never directly addressed condom use. He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Some priests and nuns working with those living with HIV/AIDS question the church’s opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa.

Benedict’s first papal trip to Africa will take him to Cameroon and Angola. Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic Church, though it competes with Islam and evangelical churches.

The pope also said Tuesday that he intends to make an appeal for “international solidarity” for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn.

He said that while the church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give “spiritual and moral” suggestions.

Describing the current crisis as the consequence of “a deficit of ethics in economic structures,” the pope said: “It is here that the church can make a contribution.”

On the plane, Benedict also dismissed the notion that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to ultraconservatives that led to his lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.

“The myth of my solitude makes me laugh,” the pope said, adding that he can count on a network of friends and aides whom he sees every day.

In a letter to Catholic bishops released last week, the pope made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes and turmoil in his church over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson.

While acknowledging mistakes were made in handling the affair, Benedict said he was saddened that he was criticized “with open hostility” even by those who should have known better.

AP-WS-03-17-09 0832EDT

Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the Karmapa Lama, plays video games to disperse "bad energy."

SIDBHARI, India – Like his 16 previous incarnations, this Karmapa Lama has spent his life immersed in the Tibetan Buddhist arts of meditation, study and prayer. Unlike them, he likes to relax playing war games on his PlayStation.

This blend of ancient spiritual authority and modern-day tastes is fueling expectations that the 23-year-old monk, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the No. 3 lama in Tibetan Buddhism, will emerge as the public voice for the next generation of Tibetans in their struggle for freedom from China.

The Tibetans desperately need somebody. Their relations with the Chinese have, over the past year, gone from bad to terrible amid outbreaks of violence and deadlocked talks.

And with the Dalai Lama now 73 and increasingly frail, Tibetans must face that he will eventually die – leaving them without an icon to plead their case before the world and keep them united.

It’s a role that the Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyu sect, one of the four streams of Tibetan Buddhism, is now willing to take.

“If given the opportunity, I will do my best,” he said this week in a rare interview with a small group of Western journalists.

But to do so, he will have to surmount bitter sectarian disputes and geopolitical rivalries between China and India, Asia’s two superpowers.

He will also have to come to terms with his own contradictions – the holy man spreading the wisdom of Buddha and the restless young man who zones out to hip-hop on his iPod.

Born in 1985 to a nomadic family in the vast Tibetan plateau, he was enthroned as the 17th Karmapa at the age of 7 after mystical signs identified him as the reincarnation of the 16th Karmapa, who died in exile in India in 1981.

Other monks of the sect championed another boy as the true reincarnation, but Dorje’s status was recognized by the Dalai Lama and also by Beijing, which hoped he might emerge as a more malleable authority they could use to weaken the Dalai Lama.

But Chinese hopes were dashed when he escaped Tibet at age 14, saying he could not get the religious education he needed.

After jumping from the window of his monastery room, he made a treacherous eight-day journey by Jeep, foot and horseback past Chinese border posts, across a 17,650-foot-high Himalayan pass into Nepal and finally by helicopter to India, the Dalai Lama’s home in exile.

He was the most important Tibetan figure to defect since the Dalai Lama fled with the previous Karmapa and thousands of Tibetans after an abortive anti-Chinese uprising in 1959.

While Beijing claims Tibet has been part of Chinese territory for centuries, Tibet was a deeply isolated theocracy – ruled by a series of lamas who reincarnated after death into a new leader – until 1951, when Chinese troops invaded Lhasa.

Tibetans in exile say their unique culture and religion is on the verge of extinction under Chinese rule, while Beijing has long said it brought modernity to a region where monks and wealthy landowners had long ruled over huge tracts of land worked by slaves and serfs.

The Karmapa’s daring escape made him a hero to the exiles, particularly the younger generation, which has grown weary of the Dalai Lama’s insistence on dialogue and compromise with China. He is also still revered inside Tibet.

But Beijing, not surprisingly, was unhappy with his escape.

“His reincarnation was recognized by the central government. But he left without saying ‘goodbye’ and has failed to live up to the expectations religious circles had for him,” said Zhou Yuan, a historian at the government-backed Chinese Center for Tibetan Studies in Beijing.

While much has been made of the fact he had China’s blessing, Dorje downplays it, saying he has no current contacts with Beijing.

“Now I’m in India. I am a free man. I have no reason to connect myself to China,” he said.

Yet he is not entirely free.

India, which gives sanctuary to the Tibetan exiles, was fearful of further antagonizing China, its giant neighbor to the north, at a time when relations were improving after decades of animosity following a 1962 border war where China routed Indian forces.

At first, the Karmapa was restricted to the top floor of a monastery in Sidbhari, a small village near the Dalai Lama’s headquarters in Dharmsala.

While India gradually loosened the restrictions, he is still barred from traveling to the Rumtek Monastery, his order’s seat in exile, located near the Chinese border.

Discussing his confinement, he displayed his growing diplomatic skills – praising India for hosting the Tibetan exiles.

However, he also showed a rare candor, expressing his “very personal” frustrations.

“Sometimes I feel like a prisoner,” he said. “Under house arrest.”

To deal with his frustrations he likes to play war games on his PlayStation, he says, twiddling his thumbs as if on a game console.

Like the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama, he opposes violence. But the games, he says, help to get rid of “bad energy.”

His emergence has taken on an added importance for the Tibetans in recent years as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama’s hectic globe-trotting has been interrupted by a series of minor health issues, including two bouts of exhaustion.

If the Karmapa does emerge as a central force among the exiles, it could signal a change in the direction of the struggle – though it is unclear whether he might push for full independence, as some younger Tibetans would like, or be more conciliatory with China, as some speculate.

“His Holiness The Dalai Lama has been very successful in laying the foundation for the Tibetan struggle in exile,” was all the young lama would say. “It is for the next generation to build on this and take it forward.”

More than 200 people showed up Sunday for the 6th annual Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk that started on Alvernon Way and headed west on River Road .

About 250 people participated in the 6th Annual Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk in Tucson on Sunday, officials said.

The event began at 2 p.m. at Congregation Or Chadash, 3939 N. Alvernon Way, with a ceremony, followed by a walk to Al Huda Islamic School, 2800 E. River Road, where a Thai dinner was served.

This year’s theme was water, because it is vital for life, said Fayez M. Swailem, an event organizer.

Children learned to write “water” and other words in both Hebrew and Arabic. They also made a stop at the Tucson Hebrew Academy, 3888 E. River Road, to sing Jewish songs.

The goal of the event is to promote mutual understanding and to talk about “what’s going on,” said Rabbi Thomas Louchheim, 52, of Congregation Or Chadash.

“It’s good for Tucson,” he said, explaining that his personal goal is for understanding in the Tucson community. “I’m not looking to have a greater impact.”

Farid Farooqi, imam at the Islamic Center of Tucson, took this as an opportunity to also promote understanding.

“If you have differences, that’s fine.” he said. “It’s just like a brother and sister in a home.”

It was also a chance for Ebtisam El-Sharkawy, 18, of Phoenix, to get involved and promote peace.

“It is a wonderful experience,” she said. “I meet people and I learn new things every time.”

Her father is Muslim but she became a practicing Muslim about three years ago after researching her options.

“Islam was the way for me,” said the senior at Arizona Cultural Academy, a private Islamic school in Phoenix. The Phoenix area does not have a similar event, she said.

“We’re fortunate in Tucson that Jews and Muslims are getting along,” said Laurie Soloff, who attends Congregation Chaverim in Tucson.

The event also attracted many who were not Jewish or Muslim.

Art Harvey, 64, learned about the event three years ago at his church, Saint Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church. He walked for the first time three years ago and he helped organize the event the following two years.

“There is so much going on that you just want to help,” he said.

The retired educator splits his time between Tucson and Michigan and said this is one event he looks forward to.

“We walk in each other’s shoes,” he said. “We share stories and get a better picture of where we’re coming from.”

Fayez M. Swailem, 67, who attends the Islamic Center of Tucson said the event has helped the community.

He said the walk was a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Since that day there has been much more dialogue and understanding between Jews and Muslims in Tucson.

Ezra Lyons, 9, who is Jewish, has been coming coming for about three years.

This year he came with a friend’s family. Ezra’s favorite part of the day is “meeting new people and making new friends.”

Rabbi Thomas Louchheim of Congregation Or Chadash blows a shofar at the 6th Annual Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk on Sunday.

People stand outside of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Ill. Sunday after a man killed a pastor and injured others at the church.

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – A man was charged with murder Monday for allegedly shooting a southern Illinois pastor through the heart during Sunday services.

Terry Sedlacek, 27, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery, said Stephanee Smith of the Madison County state’s attorney’s office.

Prosecutors didn’t comment on a motive.

Sedlacek (SEHD’-lak), of Troy, allegedly strode toward the Rev. Fred Winters shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday, exchanged words with him, then fired a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol until it jammed. Winters, 45, died of a single shot to the heart, the coroner said Monday.

After the shooting, the gunman pulled out a knife but was tackled by two worshippers, and all three were stabbed, police said. The gunman suffered “a pretty serious wound to the neck” while one worshipper had lower back wounds, said Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent.

Sedlacek, who suffered self-inflicted knife wounds after the shooting, was hospitalized in serious condition in St. Louis, and the judge ordered him held without bond.

Churchgoers knocked the gunman between sets of pews, then held him down until police arrived, said member Don Bohley, who was just outside the sanctuary when the shooting began.

A 39-year-old congregant, Terry Bullard, also remained in serious condition Monday morning. The third victim, Keith Melton, was treated and released.

Authorities said they didn’t know whether Winters, a married father of two, knew the gunman.

Several visitors stopped by the church Monday — one with tear-reddened eyes who dropped off a card. All declined to comment, as did a church receptionist.

None of the 150 worshippers attending the Sunday service seemed to recognize the gunman, and investigators did not know details of Winters’ conversation with him, Trent said, but they planned to review an audio recording of the service.

Winters deflected the first of the gunman’s four rounds with a Bible, sending a confetti-like spray of paper into the air in a horrifying scene worshippers initially thought was a skit, police said.

“We just sat there waiting for what comes next not realizing that he had wounded the pastor,” said Linda Cunningham, whose husband is a minister of adult education at the church.

Winters had stood on an elevated platform to deliver his sermon about finding happiness in the workplace — titled “Come On, Get Happy” — and managed to run halfway down the sanctuary’s side aisle before collapsing after the attack, Cunningham said.

Autopsy results showed that Winters was hit with one bullet that went straight through his heart, Madison County Coroner Steve Nonn said Monday. Nonn would not comment on the distance between the gunman and the pastor.

Trent said investigators found no immediate evidence of a criminal background for the suspect.

First Baptist had an average attendance of 32 people when Winters became senior pastor in 1987; it now has about 1,200 members and three Sunday services, according to the church’s Web site.

Winters was former president of the Illinois Baptist State Association and an adjunct professor for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, according to the site.

He hosted Pizza with the Pastor dinners in his home, and the church organized bowling parties for fathers and daughters, karate classes and a golf league.

The church sits along a busy two-lane highway on the east side of Maryville, a fast-growing village of more than 7,000 about 20 miles northeast of St. Louis. A farm sits directly across from the church, but subdivisions of newer homes can been easily seen from every side.

“Things like this just don’t happen in Maryville,” Mayor Larry Gulledge said. “We’ve lost one the pillars of our community, one of our leaders.”

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ON THE WEB

First Baptist: www.fbmaryville.org

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.

In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

Christians who aren’t Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.

In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, largely explains the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.

The report from The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., surveyed 54,461 adults in English or Spanish from February through November of last year. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. The findings are part of a series of studies on American religion by the program that will later look more closely at reasons behind the trends.

The conflict between Islam and Christianity in the 15th century is the topic of the next lecture in the “Celebrating the Retablo Lecture Series” at the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

Cynthia Robinson, an associate professor of Medieval and Islamic Art History at Cornell University, will address the topic at 5 p.m. Friday in the UAMA Retablo Gallery.

Robinson’s topic, “Pomegranates and Pietàs: Conflict and Contact between Islam and Christianity in the Age of the Retablo de Ciudad Rodrigo,” is the latest in a series of lectures celebrating the 49-panel, floor-to-ceiling altarpiece that once adorned a cathedral in Ciudad Rodrigo, in west-central Spain.

UAMA, at Park Avenue and Speedway Boulevard, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

For more information, call 621-7567 or visit artmuseum.arizona.edu.

Pope Benedict XVI

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Monday formally rescinded the promotion of an ultraconservative priest who came under fire for suggesting that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina.

The Vatican announcement confirmed a previous decision by the priest, Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, to give up the promotion.

In January, Benedict promoted the 54-year-old Wagner to the post of auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria’s third largest city.

The move sparked an outcry from Austrian Catholics and church groups who argued that the decision could motivate people to leave the Catholic church.

Wagner had questioned whether the “noticeable” increase of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina — which devastated New Orleans in 2005 — was a result of pollution caused by humans or the result of “spiritual pollution.”

Wagner also has characterized Harry Potter novels as satanic.

Following the controversy, Wagner said last month that he was giving up the job as auxiliary bishop.

He said he considered his decision to be in the interest of the church and that he looked forward to continuing his job as pastor in the Upper Austrian town of Windischgarsten.

The Vatican’s brief announcement Monday said the pope had “exonerated … Wagner from accepting the office of Linz auxiliary bishop.”

The Vatican’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters that Wagner had put forth his request to give up the job to the Vatican, and that the pope had accepted it.

Linz Diocesan Bishop Ludwig Schwarz said the Vatican’s confirmation “officially brings to a close a turbulent period for the Linz diocese and the Austrian church.”

Wagner’s promotion was one of two recent controversial decisions by the Vatican that led to unusually open criticism of Vatican policy, even from top Roman Catholic churchmen.

The other involved lifting the excommunication of a bishop who had said that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.

Later, the Vatican distanced itself from British Bishop Richard Williamson’s remark and demanded that he recant it.

Lifting the excommunication of Williamson and three fellow members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X had been part of the pope’s effort to reach out to ultraconservatives.

Not just cowboys attend church north of Casa Grande

The Rev. Morris Pruit started the Pinal County Cowboy Church north of Casa Grande about two years ago.

CASA GRANDE – The cowboy way of life. Laid back, informal, open and fun.

The Rev. Morris Pruit started Pinal County Cowboy Church, north of Casa Grande, about two years ago and is now actively involved in the community all the while trying to attract new people to his Tuesday night service.

“It’s not just cowboys who come here. I would say half of the people have nothing to do with the cowboy industry,” he said. “They just like that we are laid back and comfortable.

“Cowboy is a frame of mind over an attitude.”

The church organizes two monthly community outreach events. Family Fun Day features cowboy coffee and doughnut for breakfast, plus a free lunch. Pony rides, dummy roping, horseshoes and barrel rolls are part of the fun. Family Fun Days are held the second Saturday of each month. In addition, the church hosts a barrel racing event the fourth Saturday of the month.

These monthly meetings, while a lot of work, are done to promote the church and to remind people in the neighborhood and throughout Casa Grande that the church is there and is open to new members.

He said more than 150 people came to the last team roping day, from as far away as Tucson, Queen Creek, Arizona City and Coolidge.

What will Pruit do once the cowboy church outgrows its current space?

“We’ll just add a second service,” he said, adding he doesn’t plan on moving facilities or adding on.

Pruit says everyone is welcome to his church.

“Most churches are fairly formal,” he said. “But a lot of the people here are coming straight from work. We don’t care if you have grease on your clothes or dirt on your knees. Everybody is welcome.”

Every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. the Cowboy Church holds a worship service. Thirty minutes prior, a parishioner makes dinner and people are able to gather for fellowship and friendship.

Jumper and Mary Simmons prepare the weekly meals. One week the couple made macaroni and cheese with ground beef, peppers, tomatoes and onions and a chocolate cookie pie for dessert.

Cowboy Church is a family affair for the Pruit family. Wife Carol performs all the church secretarial work and she handles child care during the service.

Pruit, who was a pastor in a traditional church in Texas for many years, said he loves the Cowboy Church.

“I grew up in the cowboy culture. My daddy was a working cowboy and my childhood was spent outside on horses,” he said. “The Cowboy Church is the best part of the business.”

Pruit said he wants both of the monthly outreach events to grow and to include more people each time they’re held. He said organizing the events takes many hours, but seeing community members laughing and enjoying themselves is worth all the effort.

MINNEAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Transportation says US Airways didn’t discriminate against six imams when it removed them from a Phoenix-bound flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in 2006.

Imam Omar Shahin, who ran the Islamic Center of Tucson from 2000 to 2003, was one of the men removed from a US Airways flight before it departed Minneapolis for Phoenix. They were seen praying at the airport gate, unnerving fellow passengers who complained to the pilot.

Shahin was president of the Tucson Multi-Faith Alliance. He denounced Al Qaida and calls for a holy war and in 2001 stopped donations to the Holy Land Foundation after federal authorities accused that group of supporting terrorists.

He was instrumental in building ties to the local Jewish community before leaving Tucson in 2003.

The department’s assistant general counsel, Samuel Podberesky, informed the Council on American-Islamic Relations of the department’s conclusion in a Jan. 14 letter.

However, the department did fault the Tempe-based carrier for refusing to book the men on another flight after the FBI cleared them.

The letter is among several exhibits entered last week in a lawsuit the imams filed against the airline and the airport in federal court in Minneapolis. The trial is scheduled for August.

The men claim they were discriminated against because they appeared Middle Eastern and some of them prayed before boarding the flight.

Pope Benedict XVI

VATICAN CITY – In a message aimed at easing the rancor over a bishop’s denial of the Holocaust, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday called the slaughter of 6 million Jews a crime against God, and the Vatican said he would make his first visit to Israel in May.

The pope met with about 60 American Jewish leaders on Thursday and assured them the Catholic Church was “profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism,” issuing his strongest condemnation yet of Holocaust denial.

The furor blew up after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a traditionalist bishop who denied the Holocaust, sparking outrage among Jews and Catholics alike. The Vatican said Benedict did not know about the views of Bishop Richard Williamson when he agreed to lift the excommunication.

“The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity,” Benedict told thet visiting leaders, using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust. “This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the Holy Scriptures.”

“It is beyond question that any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and altogether unacceptable,” he said during the meeting in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

Jewish leaders applauded his comments, saying the crisis with the church that had been sparked by Bishop Richard Williamson’s comments was over.

The Vatican also said that the pope’s visit to Israel — the second official visit by a pope —would take place in May. Its date had not previously been announced, and as the outrage over Williamson increased, some had questioned whether the trip would take place.

“We never had an issue with the pope but with the bishop who belittled the Holocaust,” said Oded Weiner, director general of Israel’s chief rabbinate.

He said theological talks between Israel’s chief rabbinate and the Vatican, which had been suspended in the wake of the Williamson affair, are now planned for March 12.

Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor and the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the Vatican should excommunicate Williamson again because of his remarks.

“Every moment that he stays in the church gives him credibility,” he told reporters after the meeting.

“Today’s statement was important but it did not bring closure,” he said. “You cannot condemn Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism and reinstate somone who to this day continues to be an anti-Semite and deny the Holocaust.”

In an interview with Swedish state TV broadcast Jan. 21, Williamson denied that any Jews were gassed during World War II. He said only about 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed, but none of them gassed.

The Vatican stressed that it did not in any way share Williamson’s views. But confronted with mounting Jewish outrage, the Vatican demanded Williamson recant before he would be fully admitted as a bishop into the church.

Williamson has apologized for causing distress to the pope, but has not recanted. He said he would correct himself if he is satisfied by the evidence, but insisted in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that examining it “will take time.”

Benedict lifted the excommunication of Williamson and three other bishops who were consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent in 1988. Lefebvre founded the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X in 1969, opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly its outreach to Jews.

Benedict’s trip in May, which had been planned before the Williamson affair surfaced, would be the second official visit by a pope to Israel.

Pope John Paul II made the first official visit in 2000.

The only other visit by a pope, in 1964, reflected the strained nature of the relationship in those years. Pope Paul VI spent only part of one day in Israel, and never ventured into Jewish west Jerusalem. He never uttered the word “Israel” in public.

A Queens University archaeologist inspects the ground were a mass grave of unbaptised babies close to Milltown Cemetery, West Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday. Northern Ireland archeologists began a search Tuesday for unmarked mass graves containing hundreds of stillborn babies and infants, whom the Catholic Church long buried in anonymous plots on the edge of a Belfast cemetery.

DUBLIN – Archaeologists began searching Tuesday for unmarked mass graves containing hundreds of unbaptized babies and infants buried by the Catholic Church on the edge of a Belfast cemetery.

Unlike many other Christian churches, the Catholic Church teaches that baptism is essential for a soul to enter heaven and therefore the ritual must take place as near to birth as possible. For decades, newborns and infants who die before baptism were deemed ineligible for salvation and were not buried on consecrated, or holy, ground.

Individual priests in Belfast began loosening that restriction in the 1980s as families demanded the right to bury their youngest loved ones in marked family plots.

“We’re coming out of what we can only regard as a mistaken theology of a hundred years ago,” said the Rev. John McManus, a Belfast priest who has been working with local families demanding that their children’s resting place be mapped, marked and preserved. “People have been carrying the grief and burden of losing a child for decades. It’s important we get this right.”

Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the Church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI reversed centuries of that teaching by approving a report by the International Theological Commission, a Vatican advisory panel, that said there were “serious” grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.

The report stressed that none of its findings should be taken as diminishing the need for parents to baptize infants.

The records of Milltown Cemetery in overwhelmingly Catholic west Belfast indicate that hundreds of unbaptized newborns and infants were interred in unmarked mass graves on the western edge of the cemetery — land that the church sold nearly a decade ago to a nature reserve.

Since October, mothers and other relatives of a few dozen of the dead infants have protested at the cemetery fence.

The families,under the umbrella name Relatives for the Milltown Babies, are demanding that church leaders apologize, identify the grave sites, and return the land to the cemetery with new grave markings.

Their pressure spurred Catholic authorities to ask the government’s Environment Department to intervene with archaeological experts from Queen’s University of Belfast. Church leaders have declined to make any formal public response pending the archaeologists’ findings.

The search is expected to cover an acre (0.4 hectares) of woods and grassland within the nature reserve, called the Bog Meadows, and run through Friday. The archaeologists – some of whom previously helped search for hidden graves of Irish Republican Army victims, an issue in Northern Ireland’s peace process — are using ground-penetrating radar to identify grave sites and will not disinter any remains.

The Ulster Wildlife Trust – which in 2001 acquired the supposedly unused land from Milltown Cemetery in a 999-year lease deal – says it will transfer any land found to contain graves back to the cemetery.

The Northern Ireland Environment Agency’s assistant director of built heritage, John O’Keeffe, cautioned families of the dead that the search would not lead to any positive identifications of specific remains.

“We will not be able to provide any greater degree of certainty than already exists about the precise location of specific individuals thought to have been buried here,” said O’Keeffe, who asked media to stay away from the search operation “given the sensitivities around this, particularly for the families involved.”

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ON THE WEB

Bog Meadows, www.ulsterwildlifetrust.org/nature+reserves/Bog+Meadows

VATICAN CITY — The vicar for clergy in the Diocese of Phoenix was named by the Vatican on Thursday as the new bishop for the Diocese of Gallup, which encompasses parts of northwestern New Mexico and most of northeastern Arizona.

Monsignor James S. Wall, 44, will become the fourth bishop in the Gallup diocese’s history.

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Gallup’s bishop, Donald Pelotte, who had been recovering from head injuries in an apparent fall at his home.

Pelotte, who was ordained in 1972, became the first Native American bishop in 1990. His father was a member of the Abenaki tribe.

The pope had appointed Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted in December 2007 as apostolic administrator of the Gallup diocese until a successor could be installed.

“We are very proud of a priest from the Phoenix diocese being named the bishop of Gallup,” Olmsted told a news conference in Gallup to introduce the new bishop.

Olmsted and Wall said April 23 is under consideration for Wall to take over, and the ceremony probably will be at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup. The Diocese of Phoenix said the bishop-elect will continue to serve the Phoenix diocese until his consecration.

“I’m a little nervous because being appointed bishop is not something that happens every day,” Wall told reporters, adding that he was “gratefully humbled to be appointed.”

There are about 58,290 Roman Catholics in the diocese, which encompasses more than 55,000 square miles.

Wall was born in 1964 in Ganado, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation. He said his parents, both teachers, moved in 1962 to Chinle, Ariz., also on the reservation.

His parents, who met at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, converted to Catholicism after coming into contact with two Franciscan priests, he said.

Olmsted alluded to that in a lighthearted introduction, saying that when Wall was conceived his parents were not Catholic, but they were when he was born.

Wall graduated from high school in Chandler, Ariz., and has a bachelor of arts degree in history from Arizona State University. He earned a master of divinity degree from St. John Seminary in Camarillo, Calif.

He was ordained a priest in Phoenix on June 6, 1998, and has served in various parishes in that diocese.

Between 2003 and 2007, Wall was a member of the National Advisory Council of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference. He most recently has been assigned to the diocesan pastoral center in Phoenix.

Pelotte’s retirement last spring came a few months after the Vatican granted him medical leave.

He had been found seriously injured in his home on July 23, 2007, and spent months being treated out of state. Gallup physicians initially called police about his injuries, which included heavy bruising across his chest, arms, knuckles, legs and feet, but the bishop told authorities he had fallen.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Thursday he will establish a White House office of faith-based initiatives that will show no favoritism to any religious group and adhere to the strict separation of church and state.

Addressing the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama spoke of how faith has often been a divisive tool, responsible for war and prejudice. But, he said, “there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being,” and all religions teach people to love and care for one another. That is the common ground underlying his faith-based office, he said.

In personal terms, he talked about the role of faith in his life, from his Muslim-born father and a mother skeptical of organized religion to his own embrace of Christianity as a young man.

“In a world that grows smaller by the day, perhaps we can begin to crowd out the destructive forces of zealotry and make room for the healing power of understanding,” Obama told the gathering of lawmakers, dignitaries and world leaders. “This is my hope. This is my prayer.”

Dogged throughout the presidential campaign by rumors that he was a Muslim, Obama described his background in a household that wasn’t religious.

“I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known. She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done,” he said.

Obama planned to sign an executive order later in the day creating the White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. It would expand and refocus the faith-based office founded by former President George W. Bush.

Obama said the organization will not favor any one religious group over another, will work with communities and will act “without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state.”

The president will also appoint Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister who headed religious outreach for Obama’s Senate office and later his campaign, to lead the partnerships office and name 25 religious and secular leaders to a new advisory board.

During his presidential campaign, Obama said he wanted to expand White House faith-based efforts begun under Bush. But while he endorsed Bush’s initiative to give religious groups more access to federal funding, he also promised to make some changes to the office.

Obama’s advisers want to be certain tax dollars sent to the faith-based social service groups are used for secular purposes, such as feeding the hungry or housing the homeless, and not for religious evangelism. The administration doesn’t want to be perceived as managing the groups yet does want transparency and accountability.

Obama pledged during the campaign to allow taxpayer-funded religious institutions to hire and fire based on religion — but only for the activities run on private funding.

One question is whether the faith-based office will issue grants under the Bush rules while the hiring policy is worked out.

The Obama administration is set to announce a diverse set of advisers to a revamped White House office that will steer government money to religious and neighborhood groups doing social service work. They include a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, a rabbi active in Washington and a pioneering female African-American bishop.

The advisory council is scheduled to be introduced Thursday with the formal announcement of the new White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, according to a religious leader familiar with the details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been announced.

Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister who headed religious outreach for the Obama campaign, is to head the office, a senior administration official confirmed last week on the same condition.

The White House press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.

According to the religious leader, the advisory group is a mix of leaders from the religious and secular world who have experience in social services. The group will convene at least twice a year. Members include:

• The Rev. Joel Hunter, an Orlando, Fla.-area evangelical megachurch pastor who was consulted by the Obama campaign and prayed privately with Obama over the phone the night he was elected. Bishop Vashti McKenzie, the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

• The Rev. Frank Page of Taylors, S.C., the most recent past president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

• Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, a public policy arm of Judaism’s liberal Reform branch.

• Judith Vredenburgh, president and chief executive officer of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America.

The religious leader with knowledge of the advisory group said representation from the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is also anticipated.

“Certainly, they’ll be encouraged to voice their individual voices,” the leader said.

By far, the most sensitive issue surrounding the initiative is Obama’s campaign pledge to allow religious institutions taking part in the program to hire and fire based on religion only in the non-taxpayer funded portions of their activities.

Where there are state or local laws prohibiting hiring choices based on sexual orientation in the federally funded portion of the programs, Obama has said he would support those being applied.

It remains unclear whether the Obama administration will rescind executive orders from then-President George W. Bush that allowed religious groups that get government money to hire only those who share their religious beliefs.

However, the religious leader knowledgeable of the plans for the revamped office said: “You can do a lot of things without rescinding those orders. That’s not a necessary step to make changes.”

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said he and other religious leaders have conveyed their concerns about the hiring issue in conference calls with the transition team and the Obama White House. One concern is that churches or other faith groups would be required to change their bylaws or hiring practices to qualify for the grants.

“I believe it’s not practical and it’s not going to happen — and the president knows the backlash from the faith community would be egregious,” Rodriguez said. “To push the envelope on that, to say, for example, ‘You’re going to have to hire gays and lesbians’ … that would be unprecedented.”

Obama said during the campaign that he wanted to expand and reform the White House faith-based efforts that began under Bush. As a candidate, Obama pledged to increase spending on social services, increase training for charities applying for funding, pour $500 million a year into a summer learning program for children and elevate the program’s status within the White House.

The new office is scheduled to be unveiled on the same day as the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, which Obama is expected to attend.