PESHAWAR, Pakistan (CNS) -- Catholic education administrators in Pakistan's Punjab province say their schools face huge additional security costs as the security situation in the country deteriorates. Under provincial government guidelines in the wake of recent terror attacks, schools must provide eight-foot boundary walls, surveillance cameras, metal detectors and scanners, a barbed wire perimeter, and at least two armed guards, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News. "The government is providing security arrangements for its own schools.

ROME (CNS) -- Dissident theologian Father Hans Küng criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his recent opening to discontented Anglicans, charging the pope was "fishing" for the most conservative Christians to the detriment of the larger church. Father Küng said the invitation to traditionalist Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church went against years of ecumenical work on the part of both churches, calling it instead "a nonecumenical piracy of priests." The pope's basic message is: "Traditionalists of all churches, unite under the dome of St.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- During a special synod dedicated to peace and justice in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI named African Cardinal Peter Turkson as head of the Vatican's justice and peace council. When the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, announced the appointment Oct. 24 at the start of a synod press conference, the 61-year-old cardinal smiled broadly and giggled as journalists applauded.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- At a Mass to close the Synod of Bishops for Africa, Pope Benedict XVI urged the church to be a model of unity and a force of reconciliation throughout the African continent. To accomplish this goal, Catholics must preach Christ as the one savior and, like him, walk the "path of service" toward the suffering populations in Africa, the pope said during the liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica Oct. 25. "The church is the family of God in which there can be no divisions based on ethnic, language or cultural groups," he said.