Newscast for 8 & 9PM tonight.
Click on link in the top box under Catholic Information Network at the right to listen. This will open up a new window with an embedded player.

--
(Roll Theme)
News, of the hour, on the hour, from Catholic Information Radio.
I’m Bryan Douglas in Philadelphia, and at this hour….
(Theme Out)

Lead:
The late Venerable Pope John Paul II always took penitence seriously, spending entire nights lying with his arms outstretched on the bare floor, fasting before ordaining priests or bishops and other forms of mortification, said the promoter of his sainthood cause.

Msgr. Slaw o mir Oder, postulator of the late pope's cause, said John Paul used self-mortification both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself.

Earlier in the day, two Italian news sites reported that an October date had been set for the late Pope’s beatification, but Msgr. Oder said nothing could be confirmed until physicians, theologians and cardinals at the Congregation for Saints' Causes accept a miracle credited to the late pope's intercession and Pope Benedict formally signs a decree recognizing it.

Msgr. Oder's book, published only in Italian, is based largely on what he learned from the documents collected for the beatification process and from the sworn testimony of the 114 people who personally knew Pope John Paul and testified before the Rome diocesan tribunal investigating his holiness.

He also said the pope, who had a notorious sweet tooth, was extremely serious about maintaining the Lenten fast and would lose several pounds before Easter each year, but he also fasted before ordaining priests and bishops and for other special intentions.

I’ll be back with more after this. (insert PSAs)

Story 2:
As the Diocese of Fairbanks Alaska emerges from bankruptcy, Bishop Donald Kettler has agreed to personally meet with and offer apologies to any of the nearly 300 abuse victims who want to meet with him. Under the terms of a settlement, the bishop will also offer an apology at every parish where abuse occurred and will post a list of suspected abusers on the diocesan web site for the next decade.

The Alaska apostolic vicariate-- raised to the dignity of a diocese in 1962-- was governed by Jesuit ordinaries and bishops from its founding in 1888 until 2000. The diocese has 15,600 Catholics, 46 parishes, and 20 priests. A Los Angeles Times photographer who documented the extent of abuse in the diocese was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.

Story 3:
Thousands of Pakistani Christians attended the January 25 funeral of Shazia Bashir, a 12-year-old Catholic girl who had been brutally beaten, raped, and murdered three days earlier. The girl had worked as the servant of a prominent Muslim attorney in Lahore.
Seeking justice, Christians protested outside the regional parliament building on January 23. It took local authorities 18 hours to register the murder case. After the national government intervened, six arrests were made.

0.7% of the nation’s 159.6 million people are Catholic.

Story 4:
Following the siege of a parish in Hanoi, the brutal beating of religious, and the desecration of a crucifix, thousands of Vietnamese Catholics gathered on January 24 at the Redemptorist monastery in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam to pray for the end of the persecution of the Church in the Asian nation. Earlier in the day, thousands of Catholics gathered at the cathedral in Hanoi to pray for the nation
.
This is Catholic Information News.

Story 5:
Replacing and repairing the infrastructure of the church in Haiti will take years, according to Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio, head of the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee for the Church in Latin America.

The archbishop said quote, "the reported tragic loss of so many priests, sisters, seminarians and laity is irreplaceable. unquote" The bishops' annual Collection for the Church in Latin America was taken up the weekend of Jan. 23-24 in many dioceses but others will hold the collection over the next few weekends.

Story 6:
Catholics in the Diocese of Austin rejoiced this morning to hear the words “Habemus episcopum! after it announced that Auxiliary Bishop Jose Vásquez of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is to be Austin’s new shepherd. Bishop Vásquez is the first Mexican-American to lead the diocese.

The Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi, made the announcement in Washington D.C. this morning. The installation ceremony will take place in Austin on March 8, 2010.

(roll theme and establish)
And that’s top news of the hour.
I’m Bryan Douglas, CIR NEWS, for Catholic Information Radio.