American Byzantine, the highly acclaimed television documentary, will have its national cable television premiere on EWTN, (The Eternal Word Television Network) this month. The one-hour documentary will be broadcast Sunday, March 7 at 7:00 p.m. and rebroadcast Saturday, March 13 at 12:30 p.m. This award-winning documentary film tells the story of the building of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC and the creation of a remarkable new work of art, The Universal Call To Holiness. The film also gives the viewer a glimpse into the Byzantine inspiration for the shrine with filming in Ravenna, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey.

The Catholic church’s practice of presuming marriage is valid unless serious proof is offered for its annulment was defended January 29 in Pope John Paul II’s annual speech to the Roman Rota, a Vatican court dealing mostly with marriage cases. To assume that all failed marriages were invalid from the beginning ignores the fact that "according to human experience marked by sin, a valid marriage can fail because of the misuse of the spouses’ freedom," the pope said. He said also that the growing number of instances when an annulment does seem justified must lead priests and those preparing couples for marriage to take more seriously their obligation to ascertain the individual’s ability to give consent and to fulfill marriage’s obligations.

Boston, Massachusetts religious leaders, including Catholics, mainline and evangelical Protestants, Jews and Muslims, have urged lawmakers to amend the Massachusetts state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. A statement released Feb. 7 was endorsed by more than 3,000 religious communities within the state. The state Supreme Judicial courts ruled in November that gay marriage is constitutional and in an advisory opinion Feb. 4 declared "civil unions" to be insufficient and discriminatory.

The group’s statement was endorsed by four Catholic dioceses, 100 Orthodox churches, the Islamic Council of New England, the Black Ministerial Alliance, and a variety of other religious leaders including three rabbis.