c. 2008 Religion News Service

Top UCC leaders defend Obama’s church

(RNS) Top leaders of the United Church of Christ are supporting Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which has been under fire for sermons delivered there by Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who led Trinity for 36 years, has been heavily criticized for preaching sometimes inflammatory sermons that denounce the U.S. government. Small clips from sermons have been widely circulated on the Internet.

Obama credits Wright with bringing him to Christianity and has attended Trinity for nearly two decades.

At a meeting this month, the UCC’s 90-member executive council defended Wright, saying the media had “taken out of context and repeatedly broadcast certain controversial and prophetic statements” by Wright, who is now retired.

The council also said that each UCC church is “free to interpret God’s message,” affirmed the longstanding “prophetic role” of its pastors and asked members to pray for Trinity Chicago.

_ Daniel Burke

Bishop bans sports hymn from cathedral

LONDON (RNS) The hymn “Jerusalem,” the unofficial national anthem for England’s sports teams, has been banned from one of the Church of England’s grandest cathedrals on grounds that it is not “to the glory of God.”

The hymn, composed during World War I, has drawn the fire of a number of religious leaders for the military tenor of its lyrics, which speak of arrows, spears, bows of burning gold and chariots of fire.

The latest is the Very Rev. Colin Slee, dean of London’s Southwark Cathedral, who has ordered the ditching of “Jerusalem,” with its poetry by William Blake and music by Sir Hubert Parry.

In a statement to journalists, Southwark Cathedral said the dean, who has the final say on what material is used in its liturgy, “does not believe (the hymn) is to the glory of God and it is therefore not used” in most of its services.

Although “God Save the Queen” is Britain’s official national anthem, “Jerusalem” has been taken to the hearts of sports fans and is particularly popular each April 23, St. George’s Day, in honor of England’s own patron saint.

The Church of England itself has officially accepted that “Jerusalem” is a “widely loved hymn” that is “fixed in generations of hymn books and has its rightful place in Church of England worship.”

Even Britain’s Scottish-born prime minister, Gordon Brown, has chosen it as his favorite hymn.

This is not the first time the hymn has come under religious attack. St. Margaret’s in London’s Westminster, the parish church of the British Parliament, once refused to allow “Jerusalem” because, the church said, its lyrics contrasting “dark, satanic mills” with “England’s green and pleasant land” discriminated against city dwellers.

_ Al Webb

Padre Pio’s body goes on display

VATICAN CITY (RNS) In an event inspiring both devotion and controversy, the body of Italy’s beloved saint, Padre Pio, went on display Thursday (April 24) at his shrine in southern Italy.

At least 6,000 of the faithful, including brown-robed Capuchin friars and ailing people in wheelchairs, honored the popular Catholic saint at an open-air Mass, celebrated by a Vatican cardinal and 26 bishops in front of the Church of St. Pio in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo.

Shortly thereafter, the first pilgrims filed past St. Pio’s body in an underground crypt in the adjacent friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where the mystic spent more than half a century of his life. Italian state television broadcast the event live.

Pio’s body, which was exhumed last month, 40 years after his death, is held in a casket with walls of bullet-proof glass. The saint’s face is covered by a silicone mask reportedly produced by a firm that supplies Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London.

Approximately 750,000 pilgrims have already made reservations to view the body, which will remain on display at least until the end of this year. The total number of visitors is expected easily to top 1 million.

Not all of Pio’s devotees are happy about the display. Calling his exhumation contrary to the saint’s wishes and the “simplicity and humility” that he exemplified, two groups organized a counter-demonstration for Thursday in a town near Rome.

Born Francesco Forgione in 1887, Pio acquired an international following during his lifetime. Among the signs of sanctity attributed to him were the stigmata _ duplicates of the wounds inflicted on Jesus’ hands, feet and side during the Crucifixion.

Critics have charged that Pio’s wounds, which are reportedly no longer present on his body, were self-inflicted.

Pope John Paul II canonized him as St. Pio of Pietrelcina in 2002, before a crowd of more than 300,000 in St. Peter’s Square.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Aleksei D. Zorin of Stary Oskol, Russia

(RNS) “We deplore those who are led astray _ those Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, evangelicals, Pentecostals and many others who cut Christ’s robes like bandits, who are like the soliders who crucified Christ, who ripped apart Christ’s holy coat.”

_ The Rev. Aleksei D. Zorin, the chief Russian Orthodox priest in Stary Oskol, Russia, in a televised sermon that denounced Protestant “sects.” The New York Times reported that anti-Protestant sentiment has led to restrictions on Protestant churches across Russia.

KRE/CM END RNS