Skyrocketing heating bills have sent shock waves through church institutions this winter. Extremely cold winter temperatures coupled with low supplies of natural gas are behind the higher costs at St. Mary’s Cathedral in St. Cloud, MN, December’s $7,553 bill for heating the church, school, and rectory was nearly three times what it was a year ago. Costs also rose in places that use other forms of heating. In Meire Grove, MN, where the church, school, and rectory at St. John the Baptist parish are heated with oil, costs rose from $2,405 for December 1999 to $3,952 for December 2000.

The body of Pope John XXIII has been removed from the grotto under St. Peter’s Basilica and will be placed within the basilica to make it easier for people to visit his tomb, the Vatican confirmed in late January. The narrow, winding staircases leading down to the grotto area made access difficult for many. Still, John XXIII’s tomb in the grotto - where other popes, including Paul VI and John Paul I, are buried - has long been one of the most visited. Many tombs of canonized popes are inside the basilica.

Human embryo experimentation. Members of Great Britain’s House of Lords voted January 22 to extend the types of research permitted on human embryos. The vote will permit scientists to clone human embryos and to use embryo experimentation in their quest for cures for diseases. Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham called the House of Lords vote "distressing." The therapeutic benefits and treatments rightly being sought can be pursued through the use of adult stem cells, "as recent medical research has confirmed," he said. Also in Britain, over-the-counter sales of morning-after pills began in early January; January 29 the House of Lords rejected proposals to halt sale of the pills, condemned by pro-lifers as abortifacients.

Women. The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Women in Society and in the Church will consult with more than 100 women who hold leadership positions in dioceses around the country March 11-13 in Chicago. Sheila Garcia, assistant director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women, and Youth, who is organizing the meeting, said the women, nominated by their bishops, will attend workshops on such issues as justice in the workplace, recruitment, the implications of working with fewer priests, evangelization of younger women, fostering unity in the church, and the impact of violence and economic injustice on women.

In the Christian faith, the diversity of colors and languages among people is not "reluctantly accepted" but is "cherished and celebrated" as a gift of God, Father Bryan Massingale, a moral theologian at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, said in a late-January speech at St. John’s University in Queens, NY. The United States, he said, is undergoing a demographic change that soon will make non-Latino whites a minority group. The nation will cease to be a microcosm of Europe, becoming instead a microcosm of the world. Massingale said, and the challenge for Christians will be to interpret the differences among people in a way that keeps pluralism from becoming tribalism.

A papal visit to Ukraine is planned for June 23-27, the Vatican announced in January. More than half of Ukrain’s 50 million people belong to one of the country’s three Orthodox churches. The Eastern Catholic Church counts about 5 million faithful, while the smaller Latin community is drawn mostly form the republic’s 150,000-member Polish minority.