The Catholic Church in Germany says it employed slave laborers during the Nazi regime. Following revelations July 20 in a TV program, including interviews with former slave laborers who worked at church institutions, church spokesman Rudolph Hammerschmidt said initial investigations had shown that the church employed slave laborers. He said there would be more investigations and that the bishops would decide at a late-August meeting whether the church should contribute to a slave labor compensation fund recently set up by government and industry.

Religious educators in the Diocese of Saginaw, MI, are using Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which is modeled on the Montessori method, to teach children. The method encourages self-education and emphasizes training of the senses and guidance rather than a rigid activity structure for children. Susan Piescik, educator at St. Paul Church in Glastonbury, CT, is training the Saginaw teachers. Piescik said the program shows the tremendous religious potential that children have. "Children are already in relationship with God. Our responsibility as adults is to foster that relationship and their growth in faith," Piescik said. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd was developed in Rome by Sofia Cavalletti using the "self-teaching" principles of Maria Montessori and the theological moorings of Hebrew scholarship, Scripture studies, and Catholic liturgy and doctrine.

Auxiliary Bishop Curtis Guillory of Galveston-Houston was named bishop of Beaumont, TX, June 2. Guillory, 56, is one of 12 active black Catholic bishops in the United States. Guillory, the eldest of 16 children of Louisiana sharecroppers, is a member of the Divine Word order. He will be the sixth black bishop currently leading a U.S. diocese.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet presented the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN, with an unrestricted gift of $20 million. The order founded the college in 1905. The gift is believed to be the largest unrestricted contribution ever made to a Catholic women’s college. "With our investments performing so well, we have been able to establish our Sisters of St. Joseph Ministries Foundation, provide for our retirement, and give this gift to the College of St. Catherine," St. Joseph Sister Christine Ludwig, one of three members of the congregation’s provincial leadership team, said. Among other sources, money for investment came from the 1991 sale of St. Mary’s Hospital, Minneapolis.

Four consultants to aid the committee of bishops charged with developing U.S. procedures for granting, withholding, or withdrawing the mandatum needed by Catholics teaching theology in Catholic higher educational institutions have been appointed by Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, committee chairman. The committee also will address procedures for handling appeals by theologians if the mandatum is not granted or is withdrawn. The mandatum to teach is called for in norms by the U.S. bishops (approved in May by the Vatican) for applying Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education. The four consultants are: Jesuit Father James Conn, professor of canon law at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore; Dominican Sister Maureen Fay, president of the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit; Daniel Finn, professor of theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, and Terrence Tilley, chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of Dayton, OH.