VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican plans to issue a new document on bioethics that addresses human cloning, stem-cell research and other issues, informed sources said.The Vatican instruction, prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was scheduled to be published Dec. 12, the sources said. A Vatican press conference is planned for its release.The document was designed to examine ethical issues in biological research and health care that have emerged in recent years. When members of the doctrinal congregation met in a plenary session last January, U.S. Cardinal William J.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Christians of Iraq were shocked when Muslims started trying to drive the Christians of Mosul out of their homes in early October, an Iraqi bishop told Vatican Radio after meeting Pope Benedict XVI.Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad met the pope Nov. 26 at the end of the pope's weekly general audience.The pope told the bishop, "Iraq is in our hearts.

SEATTLE (CNS) -- The Catholic bishops of Washington state have asked Gov. Christine Gregoire to commute the death sentence for Darold Stenson and give him life imprisonment without parole.In 1993 Stenson, now 55, was found guilty of aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of his wife and a business partner. His execution by lethal injection was scheduled for Dec. 3."As we continue to pray for those that have suffered due to Mr.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Peace in the Middle East and religious freedom for all the region's inhabitants will not be achieved without respect for other religions and self-determination for the nations involved, Pope Benedict XVI said.Meeting the Lebanon-based Armenian Catholicos Aram of Cilicia Nov.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Christian martyrdom is the fullest expression of human freedom and reflects the supreme act of love, said a top Vatican official at a Mass beatifying 188 Japanese martyrs."It is not the punishment or the torture that creates a martyr," but rather the fact the person suffered and died for Christ, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, former prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Saints' Causes, said during the beatification Mass in Nagasaki, Japan, Nov.

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- The current lack of global arms regulations makes it is easier to obtain weapons "than food, shelter and education," said Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's apostolic nuncio to the United Nations.Illicit arms trades have turned tensions into armed conflicts and have compromised peace and development, he said.In a Nov. 19 address to the U.N. Security Council, the archbishop praised the U.N.

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Several U.S.

PORTLAND, Maine (CNS) -- Allowing same-sex couples to marry would strip marriage of its essential component -- the creation of new life -- and render it meaningless and "open it up to endless revision and redefinition," Bishop Richard J.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- As world health professionals urged an international response to a public health crisis in Zimbabwe, where state hospitals are barely functioning and more than a million people are at risk, a Jesuit priest working in the country told of the effects on ordinary citizens."Unless the United Nations and individual governments provide a robust and immediate response, massive loss of life will occur," the international advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights said in a Nov. 19 statement.

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Catholic communities in four Southern California counties rushed to the assistance of dozens of parish families who were left without their homes by a week of wind-driven brush fires that began Nov. 13.Three wildfires scorched 42,000 acres and destroyed nearly 1,000 residences in Southern California. At least two of the three fires were contained by Nov. 19, and that same day local officials said the third fire, in Los Angeles County, was close to being contained.News reports said that one of the fires might have been started accidentally by some college students.