Britain’s Roman Catholic leaders have branded a proposed EU Equal Treatment Directive an “instrument of oppression”.

Only 11 per cent of children of primary school age are in child care, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said his country's ban on gay marriage would remain, despite moves within his Labor Party to have it overturned. Labor policy also opposes civil unions.

Religion is the most popular voluntary group activity, according to new figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Amnesty International Ireland head Colm O’Gorman has said opposition to same-sex marriage and adoption is "rooted in bigotry".

Choirs have been told they are no longer welcome to sing Christmas carols in areas of Parliament because it puts MPs off their lunch, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

Divorce or the death of a spouse severely damages a man or woman's long-term health even if they remarry, according to a new study of over 8,000 people.

The head of the British Government's watchdog on IVF has said that the longstanding ban on selling sperm and eggs should be reconsidered to address a shortage of donors.

A Sunday school teacher has been told she can’t put up a poster at her local library to advertise a church children’s event because it ‘promotes religion’.

Fathers and mothers each play a valuable but different role in raising children, according to research published by New Scientist magazine.

Ireland now has a marital breakdown rate of 27.5 per cent, based on figures from the Courts Service Annual Report for 2008.

A Catholic nurse in New York is taking legal action after her employers obliged her to assist with a late-term abortion.

Leading gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has welcomed the decision of the House of Lords to keep a free speech protection in a controversial ‘anti-hate’ law.

An experienced paediatrician is to lose her place on an adoption panel because she doesn’t think adoption by same-sex couples is best for children.

Charity shops are seeing an increase in the number of volunteers since the onset of the recession, as the newly unemployed seek to occupy themselves and retain some job skills during the downturn, according to a report in the Irish Times.

The number of people aged over 65 is on course to overtake the number of children under the age of five for the first time in world history, according to a study published yesterday.

Another 870,000 people turn 65 every month, according to the new figures. Thanks to rising life expectancy, their ranks will soon be growing by almost two million a month and, by 2040, their numbers will have doubled to 1.3 billion.

This will lead to a relative shrinking of the working population and create large new pension costs, which threaten to reduce the overall growth of the world economy, according to analysts.

The US Census Bureau predicts the world will soon have more pensioners than children under the age of five. The lines on the graph will cross within a decade, marking a decisive moment in the greying of the globe.

Richard Suzman, from the National Institute of Ageing in Maryland, which commissioned the study, said: "Global ageing is changing the social and economic nature of the planet.

"The fact that, within 10 years, for the first time in human history, there will be more people 65 and older than children under five in the world, underlines the extent of this change."

While the populations of Europe and North America have been steadily ageing for decades, this trend is now spreading to the developing world, especially Asia. Rising life expectancy and better health care, coupled with lower fertility rates, mean that some Asian nations must prepare for large rises in their pensioner population.

In China, the number of citizens above 65 will more than treble from 106 million today to 329 million by 2040. This will significantly increase the cost of pensions and impose a major constraint on the future growth of China's economy.

The proportion of South Koreans over 65 will also treble from 10pc to 29pc, while Singapore will see the most dramatic change, with the pensioner contingent rising from nine per cent today to 33pc in 2040.

Leaving aside Zimbabwe, where an Aids epidemic and general starvation means that most people die before the age of 40, life expectancy is rising strongly almost everywhere.

Consequently, in absolute terms, most people of pensionable age already live in poor countries. "Well over half of the world's people aged 65 and over now live in developing nations: 62pc, or 313 million people," said the Census Bureau report. "By 2040, this share is projected to exceed three quarters, with the absolute number of older people in developing countries topping one billion."

Handing over schools currently run by the Church to “complex State bureaucracies whose efficiency has certainly yet to be proven” is not the way forward for Irish education, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said.

A London teacher who was suspended and threatened with the sack for expressing his Christian beliefs at work will be back at work next term.

A prominent secular British MP has attempted to use the Equality Bill to force the Scout Association to scrap the age-old tradition of new entrants pledging allegiance to God.

Most unmarried couples who live together aren't trying to test their relationship, according to a new US study of dating and cohabitation.