The Church of England will continue to marry only opposite-sex couples in its churches under new proposals. However, same-sex couples will be allowed to receive a blessing in church.

This comes after MP and leader of the House of Commons Penny Morduant had lobbied her own Bishop for the Anglican

Church to change its teaching.

The proposals were developed by bishops, who form one of three parts of the Church’s governing body known as the General Synod, after the Church of England’s six-year consultation on sexuality and marriage – among other subjects – and will be put to the General Synod at a meeting next month.

The Church of England is central to the wider Anglican communion, which represents more than 85 million people in over 165 countries.

“Same-sex couples would still not be able to get married in a Church of England church,” the statement said, confirming a BBC report overnight that bishops had refused to support a change in teaching to allow priests to marry gay couples.

A plan for creating and policing so-called ‘abortion exclusion zones’ around hospitals and clinics that offer terminations will “hopefully” be published by Government later this year. Critics say such a law attacks freedom of speech, protest and assembly.

Detailed measures are being worked out as part of the Health Termination of Pregnancy Services (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2022.

Officials said advice on aspects of the legislation was being taken from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Office of the Attorney General.

The United Nations (UN) “expressed alarm” after a group of experts investigated the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan amid concerns about forced conversions and marriages of Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs by Muslims.

Voice of America reports, “The group of around 12 independent U.N rights experts includes the special rapporteurs on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, on violence against women and on minority issues, and on contemporary forms of slavery.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement saying, “We are deeply troubled to hear that girls as young as 13 are being kidnapped from their families, trafficked to locations far from their homes, made to marry men sometimes twice their age, and coerced to convert to Islam, all in violation of international human rights law.”

A US pro-life group has issued a white paper arguing that birth should be free to every mother in the USA.

Americans United for Life notes that mothers on private insurance may pay up to $5,000 for a healthy birth and up to $10,000 if there are medical complications. These expenses can provide the impetus to abort.

One answer to reducing abortions, the paper argues, is to ensure that every woman knows that she can give birth with no money out-of-pocket. The paper acknowledges that this would not be cheap, but it argues that doing this would, over time, reduce the total cost of births in the country.

The paper argues that free birth would go a long way toward promoting the general welfare.

The report has been issued by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) following the public consultation. It noted that the draft refers to ‘values’ several times and that the subject is clearly values-based, but does not state explicitly the values which underpin the updated SPHE course.

Some parents expressed strong criticism, with some pointing out “that gender identity is a highly contested and sensitive topic” which may lead to confusion and even harm for some adolescents.

They also alleged that the NCCA is seeking to promote ‘gender ideology’ by refusing to acknowledge the binary nature of gender.

The report said these respondents “are strongly of the view that we are born as either male or female and that sex is binary and immutable”.

Some parents were also “concerned about the lack of reference to morality, moral teachings or family values and would like to see the specification reflect a school’s right to teach topics in a manner that aligns with the school’s ethos and values”. Others “questioned the legitimacy of schools providing SPHE/RSE as they saw this as usurping the role of parents as educators of their children.”

Tory MP and Leader of the Commons, Penny Mordaunt, has urged the Church of England to approve same sex relationships and gay marriage ahead of a potentially historic vote by bishops, marking the first intervention by a Cabinet minister on the issue.

Ms Mordaunt, who represents Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to “recognise the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”. Mordaunt ran in the recent Conservative Party leadership elections. According to current canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples.

Ms Mordaunt’s interjection is the first time a serving Cabinet minister has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church.

Next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod on the status of gay relationships and the possibility of same-sex marriage.

Traditionalists hope bishops will veto any changes to the existing stance that marriage and church weddings are only for opposite-sex couples.

An attack on a church in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has left at least 17 people dead and injured many more.

The attack happened in Kasindi, in the Nord Kivu region near the Ugandan border, at 11am local time on Sunday as hundreds of Christians gathered for prayer and baptism.

The attackers, reportedly belonging to the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces terrorist group, set off a homemade IED in the attack.

The pastor of a nearby church told International Christian Concern (ICC) that he was midway through the Sunday service when he heard a loud blast.

“The area was chaotic since the believers were screaming, and smoke filled the whole place,” he said, adding that the attack was “gruesome”.

The law allowing medical practitioners to refuse to carry out abortions needs to be strengthened, a conference in Dublin heard on Saturday.

Doctors for Life chairman Dr Ronan Cleary told the meeting: “Recent reports have highlighted a focus of the Irish abortion review on the topic of freedom of conscience.

“It is important that we as doctors speak with one voice on the need to uphold and strengthen freedom of conscience, to ensure it applies across the board to all healthcare professionals and that nobody is compelled against their principles to perform an abortion.

“The vast majority of GPs in Ireland are not performing abortions. Even for those who do not describe themselves as pro-life, in their heart of hearts they know abortion is not healthcare.

“Any attempt to erode freedom of conscience and bludgeon doctors into violating their principles by providing abortions against their will would rightly prompt a massive reaction from doctors.”

Pope Francis has decried the fact that in many countries with a Christian majority the universal right to religious freedom is attacked.

“There can be no peace without religious freedom”, he said.

In his annual address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, he remarked, “it is worrying that people are persecuted simply because they publicly profess their faith, and in many countries religious freedom is limited. About one-third of the world’s population lives in such conditions”.

This conclusion coincides with data from the latest report on “Religious Freedom in the World” published by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which found that 62 countries out of 196 have very serious violations of religious freedom.

The Holy Father stressed that Christians are particularly affected by religious persecution. “Alongside the lack of religious freedom, there is also persecution for religious reasons. I cannot fail to mention, as certain statistics show, that one in seven Christians suffers persecution.”

However, Francis continued, there are also problems in countries where Christians are in the majority and should therefore be safe from intolerance. “We must not overlook the fact that violence and acts of discrimination against Christians are also increasing in countries where the latter are not a minority.

China’s population has fallen for the first time in more than 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low – 6.77 births per 1,000 people.

The population in 2022 – 1.4118 billion – fell by 850,000 from 2021.

China’s birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.

But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an “era of negative population growth”. The whole of East Asia has below replacement level fertility rates.

The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.

China’s population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth. Families that violated the rules were fined or lost jobs, forced onto contraception or even made to have abortions.. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio from the 1980s.

The population fell in 1961 because of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy which caused mass famine.