Christmas this year marks the first time in its history that the European Parliament set up a Nativity scene at its headquarters in Brussels. Until now, officials of the European institution had considered it “potentially offensive.” The move was hailed by the EPP, the largest political grouping in the Pariament.

Isabel Benjumea, an MEP from Spain, was instrumental in the decision. First elected in 2019, she tried that year to prepare the groundwork for a gift of a Nativity scene to the parliament. However, she ran into bureaucracy and deadlines.

The following year she was told by the office of the President of Parliament that a crib could not be installed because it was “potentially offensive” to nonbelievers.

Nevertheless, she persisted as “it seemed unacceptable to me to ignore the Christian roots of Europe,” the parliamentarian told Spanish newspaper ABC.

Finally, this year the effort had the support of the Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, although the Nativity scene has only been “authorized as a special exhibition,” which may or may not be renewed in the future.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized the EU for excluding any mention of God or the continent’s Christian roots in the institution’s declarations on the 50th anniversary of its founding.

Jailed secondary school teacher Enoch Burke walked free from Mountjoy Prison last night after his release was ordered by the High Court. Burke refused to use the new gender pronouns of a pupil at his school and a dispute arose between him and the principal leading to him being barred from the premises. He refused to obey this and was held in contempt of court.

Mr Justice Brian O’Moore issued the ruling after a hearing earlier yesterday.

Mr Burke was not present at the court as he had told the judge he could not participate in the process as to do so would be to agree that he was lawfully incarcerated.

Mr Burke said what he wanted from the court was not temporary release, but a just upholding of his constitutional rights.

At the hearing, Mr Justice O’Moore said it was “intolerable” that taxpayers were paying Mr Burke’s salary, as well as the costs of his incarceration in Mountjoy Prison, and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Burke was exploiting his imprisonment for his own ends.

He said the only plausible interpretation of Mr Burke’s actions was that he saw some advantage in his continuing imprisonment.

The judge said the court would not enable someone found in contempt of court to garner some advantage from that defiance.

He said because of this Mr Burke’s release should be open-ended and not just for Christmas, but he would be sanctioned again by the court if he once more breached High Court orders.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) is urging mothers-to-be to get tested for syphilis to reverse the recent trend of babies being born with the disease.

The DOH says congenital syphilis occurs when a pregnant person with syphilis passes the infection on to the baby during pregnancy. It can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births, low birth weight, or death shortly after birth.

According to the DOH, so far in 2022, there have been 12 confirmed cases of births with congenital syphilis in Pennsylvania, excluding Philadelphia, along with two stillbirths, making it the highest number of cases since 1990.

The number of congenital syphilis cases across the U.S. has risen steadily over the last eight years, growing from 334 in 2012 to 2,184 in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There is a “grossly anti-family tax system” in Britain that is in need of reform.

That’s according to Frank Young, the editorial director at the Civitas think tank

“The UK tax system unfairly judges parents – mostly mothers – who want to stay at home and look after children rather than spend their life as a workhorse in an office. Eight in ten mothers of children below school age want the tax system to help them spend more time with their children, rather than being pushed into work,” he wrote.

Yet, only about one in seven mothers with children under ten is not in work so as to care for their child full-time.

“We’re constantly told not to ‘judge’ different family types, but the state is not neutral, with single-earner couples heavily penalised for taking time away from the workforce to look after children. The UK tax system is based on individuals, rather than households or families. This puts single-earner couples, where one partner works and another takes on caring responsibilities, at a significant disadvantage”.

He suggested looking at Germany for a solution: “There, families benefit from ‘income splitting’, where ‘the tax of a married couple is determined by taxing half of their combined incomes and then doubling the amount to result in the total tax payable’”.

Russia had been one of only three countries in Europe, along with Belarus and Ukraine, that allowed international commercial surrogacy. Georgia, another former Soviet state, is also used as a destination by some Europeans.

It follows the example of other countries around the world, such as Thailand and India, who also banned international surrogacy arrangements. This year, India banned commercial surrogacy entirely.

Initially for women aged 17 to 25, the scheme was launched on September 14 of this year. It will include women aged 17-30 by September 1, 2023.

Eligible women are able to visit GPs and other medical facilities such as family planning clinics for consultations regarding the best contraceptive options from them.

Funding is also provided through Budget 2023 to expand the scheme for 16-year-olds also, subject to consultation across Government, legal advice and legislative amendment.

Total funding of approximately €32m has been allocated in Budget 2023 to support the scheme.

A charity worker in the UK has been arrested and charged on four counts after she confirmed to police she “might” be praying silently as she stood on a public street near an abortion facility.

Police approached Isabel Vaughan-Spruce within an abortion exclusion zone in Kings Norton, Birmingham. She was carrying no sign and remained completely silent until approached by officers. Police had received complaints from an onlooker who suspected that she was praying silently.

“It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind. Censorship zones purport to ban harassment, which is already illegal. Nobody should ever be subject to harassment. But what I did was the furthest thing from harmful – I was exercising my freedom of thought, my freedom of religion, inside the privacy of my own mind. Nobody should be criminalised for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK,” said Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, following her arrest for silent prayer.

“It is truly astonishing that the law has granted local authorities such wide and unaccountable discretion, that now even thoughts deemed “wrong” can lead to a humiliating arrest and a criminal charge,” said Jeremiah Igunnubole, Legal Counsel for ADF UK.

As part of her conditions for bail, Vaughan-Spruce was told that she should not contact a local Catholic priest who was also involved in pro-life work – a condition that was later dropped.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are turning to religion in the midst of the brutal war Russia has unleashed on their nation.

The number of people in Ukraine asking for Bibles has more than doubled since the Russian invasion in February, according to figures released by the Ukrainian Bible Society.

“People usually ask ‘if God loves the world why did He allow this to happen?’ Many of them saw a lot of brutal behaviour from the Russians, torturing other people, killing civilians,” said Anatoliy Raychynets, deputy general secretary of the Ukrainian Bible Society.

“I expected that they would be blaming God or don’t want to receive Bibles but it’s totally the opposite. They have difficult questions, but they want to be close to God.”

Priests in the capital Kyiv have separately confirmed a resurgence in faith such that congregations had not dwindled despite an exodus of regular churchgoers overseas.

Abbot Lavrentiy, deacon of St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, said that he was now seeing people of a kind he had never encountered in 23 years of service.

“They address precisely such spiritual questions: how to cope with all this now?” he said, adding that new attendees were either seeking divine guidance or protection during the war or had decided to turn their backs on the Russian Orthodox church after the invasion.

People who had not been believers, “realised that human power is not enough to solve urgent problems,” he said.

A Massachusetts court has ruled that the state constitution gives no protection to doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to mentally competent patients with terminal illness.

While it found no right to assisted suicide, it said the state Legislature is free to enact laws in the area.

“Although we recognize the paramount importance and profound significance of all end-of-life decisions, after careful consideration, we conclude that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights does not reach so far as to protect physician-assisted suicide,” the Supreme Judicial Court wrote in its decision. “We conclude as well that the law of manslaughter may prohibit physician-assisted suicide, and does so, without offending constitutional protections.”

The suit was originally filed in 2016 by Dr. Roger Kligler, a retired physician with stage 4 prostate cancer, and another doctor who feared prosecution on manslaughter charges if he prescribed a cocktail of fatal drugs to terminally ill patients.

The decision was lauded by organizations opposed to physician-assisted suicide.

“Patients should be able to trust their doctors to support and care for them,” said Chris Schandevel, senior counsel for the nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. “Offering terminally ill or disabled patients a ‘quick exit’ through death-inducing drugs destroys that trust.”

Catholic schools have dominated a survey of top performing schools in the North, taking the top three spots and five out of the top 10, the Irish Catholic reports.

St Mary’s Grammar School, Magherafelt, Co. Derry, took top spot for the second year running in the 30th edition of The Sunday Times ‘Parent Power’ poll, which identifies the highest-achieving schools in the UK.

Principal of St Mary’s Paul McLean expressed “delight” at the news, saying students leave the school “with a value system that sets pupils up for life”.

“There are so many challenges and competing priorities in young peoples’ lives that the safety and support of parents and schools working closely together is a necessary element to each pupil reaching their potential,” Principal McLean said.

More than 1,600 schools were studied for the survey, with rankings based on grades achieved in the schools.

“The quality of Northern Irish grammar schools shines through yet again in the national rankings, with seven schools in the top 50” across the UK, the release states.