LITTLE ROCK — Stamps to finance Vatican colonnade
VATICAN CITY - For the first time, the Vatican is seeking funds directly from pilgrims, collectors and tourists to pay for the ambitious restoration of the 17th-century Bernini colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square.
The Vatican’s Philatelic and Numismatic Office, which sells commemorative coins and stamps featuring popes, saints and the like, is offering two $13 stamps affixed to a certificate.
One features Pope Benedict XVI’s coat of arms and the other the seal of Pope Alexander VII, who entrusted the Italian baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini with the colonnade in 1657.
If the full 150,000-print run is sold, some $3.9 million could be raised, said office director Mauro Olivieri.
The Vatican launched the restoration in 2009, aiming to secure and clean the colonnade’s 284 columns, which embrace the square in a dual inner and outer row, and the 140 statues that surround and top them. Also being restored are the piazza’s central obelisk and two fountains.
The Vatican initially estimated it would take four years.
The job is now not slated to be finished before 2015 and Olivieri said the cost is estimated at $18 million.
- The Associated Press
Church reconsiders female bishops
LONDON - The Church of England has taken a tentative step toward trying again to get its governing General Synod to approve female bishops.
The church said Wednesday that the Archbishops’ Council agreed that the issue needed to be resolved “as a matter of urgency.”
A brief statement from the church did not indicate when another vote could be taken.
Church legislation authorizing female bishops failed last week when laity in the General Synod couldn’t muster the necessary two-thirds majority.
Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed his disappointment and last week urged the church to “get on with it.”
He said it was a matter for the church to resolve, but some lawmakers have suggested forcing the issue by abolishing the church’s exemption from the law against sex discrimination.
- The Associated Press Dutch will scrap blasphemy law
AMSTERDAM - The Almighty will have to defend his own name from now on: Dutch parliament has accepted a motion that will scrap a law making it a crime to insult God.
A majority of parties said Wednesday the European Union nation no longer needs the law, which hasn’t been invoked in the past half-century.
The movement to decriminalize blasphemy gathered strength in the last decade amid a national debate about the limits of freedom of speech.
The climax came at the 2011 trial of far-right politician Geert Wilders, when judges ruled he had the right to criticize Islam, even if his opinions were insulting to many Muslims.
It still remains illegal under Dutch law to insult police officers or Queen Beatrix, the country’s monarch.
Religion, Pages 12 on 12/01/2012