A US-based group, the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which monitors allegations of religious oppression in China, said Bishop An Shuxin was freed this week.

Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday.

"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine.

A conservative and sometimes controversial Roman Catholic order with a growing presence in Westchester County will now have to contend with the disciplining of its beloved founder by the Vatican because of sex-abuse allegations.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted at its biannual meeting for a new translation after a brief but vigorous debate over several small changes in wording. The 173-29 vote on the Order of the Mass was aimed at satisfying Vatican calls for a translation that's closer to the Latin version.

Before Mass changes at the parish level, the Americans' version must go to offices in the Holy See for final approval. The bishops' leader on the issue said that process could take years.

THE secretive Opus Dei sect is launching a recruitment drive to set up its first network in Wales.

Catholicism's ultra-traditional arm has been thrust out of the shadows by Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code best-seller, which portrays it as a sinister cult willing to murder to defend a 2,000-year-old cover-up that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, whose descendants walk among us today.

But as the hype builds towards Friday's release of the blockbuster movie starring Tom Hanks, Opus Dei leaders warned the myth was nonsense - and declared plans to set up their first Welsh base.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his "deep displeasure" over the appointments.

The rift comes as Beijing and the Vatican are engaged in talks with the aim of re-establishing relations, which were severed more than 50 years ago.

Excommunication is automatic under Church law for bishops who are illegally ordained, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

The teenager had claimed that Anthony Childs, 69, had sex with him and indecently assaulted him on several occasions. In court he confessed to lying to police and jurors, and accepted that he had previously made false allegations of a similar nature.

Father Ma Yingling is to be ordained as bishop of Kunming on Sunday.

The Chinese Church does not recognise the Vatican's right to name bishops, although recent appointments have been made with the agreement of both sides.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, a scholar and prolific author or editor of 44 books and hundreds of articles, talked about her life's work April 23 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre in Hollywood. Her lecture, attended by about 50 people, was sponsored by the Immaculate Heart Community as part of their annual Anita Caspary Lecture Series.

"I'm obviously interested in maintaining a critical presence, a Catholic presence in the Catholic Church of reform Catholics including Catholic feminists," said Ruether, who noted that most of her professorial positions have been at Protestant institutions. "You have to have a combination of certain kinds of autonomy, and institutions that protect you, while at the same time find ways to stay in communication."

Struggling to restore public confidence after it was exposed for moving abusive priests to new parishes instead of reporting them to authorities, the archdiocese had to close move than 60 churches to raise money and was pressured to reveal its finances.

Church leaders called the latest report the most comprehensive public financial account in the history of the Boston church and said a growing budget deficit had put its programs and ministries at risk.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New figures released Thursday by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops show the unrelenting toll of the clergy sex abuse crisis: 783 new credible claims last year, most of which date back decades, and costs of nearly $467 million.

While researchers who analyzed 50 years of data on molestation claims concluded the number of new cases is declining, the church is still paying a heavy price for predatory clergy.

The abuse problem was already known to have cost dioceses more than $1 billion since that 1950, including some expenses paid last year. Still, Teresa Kettelkamp, director of the bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection, said the total abuse-related expenses shelled out in 2005 were likely the largest ever for a single year.