Pittsburgh OKs same-sex rites
PITTSBURGH — The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh says its clergy may sign marriage certificates for same-sex couples.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports the new rule is spelled out in a letter to the diocese from Bishop Dorsey McConnell.
The Episcopal Church approved a provisional rite for same-sex couples at its General Convention last year, subject to approval by local bishops.
In approving the rite for use in the Pittsburgh diocese last year, McConnell did not order diocesan priests to perform same-sex marriages, but simply gave them the option to perform them if their conscience dictated. That was before a federal judge in May struck down Pennsylvania’s law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, effectively making same-sex marriage legal in the state.
Judge: Prayer injunction stands
DANVILLE, Va. — A judge says he won’t dissolve an injunction barring Virginia’s Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from opening meetings with sectarian prayers.
An opinion filed by U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski says a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling doesn’t support dissolving the injunction.
In May, the Supreme Court upheld the practice of reciting prayers at the start of the Greece (N.Y.) Town Board’s meetings. The Pittsylvania County board cited the ruling in its motion to dissolve or modify Urbanski’s injunction.
Urbanski says the Pittsylvania County case is different. He says the board took an active role in leading the prayers and dictating their content.
Pro-Sandinista priest reinstated
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has reinstated a Nicaraguan priest suspended by the Vatican in the 1980s for participating in Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
The 81-year-old Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, Nicaragua’s foreign minister from 1979 to 1990, recently wrote to Francis asking to be allowed to celebrate Mass again before he died. The Vatican said Monday that Francis had agreed and asked D’Escoto’s superior in the Maryknoll order to help reintroduce him into priestly ministry.
The Sandinistas, who supported the “popular church” of liberation theology, overthrew the pro-American regime of Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
City drops lawsuit to get church land
ORLANDO, Fla. — The mayor of Orlando says the Florida city is dropping eminent domain proceedings against a church that was holding up construction of a new downtown Major League Soccer stadium.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said the city is instead buying an additional parcel of land that will allow it to move the location of the new stadium one block west of the original site, leaving Faith Deliverance Temple untouched.
Church officials said last month they didn’t want to sell their property, which sat in the middle of the planned development for the $100 million stadium.
The city filed eminent domain proceedings in May. It had offered the church as much as $4 million for its land.