Morning Catholic must-reads: 27/08/10

Missionaries of Charity pictured at the Mass in Calcutta celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth (AP Photo/Deshakalyan Chowdhury, Pool)

Nuns and slum dwellers gathered in Calcutta yesterday for a Mass marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa.

Benedict XVI sent a message of encouragement to the Missionaries of Charity as they celebrated their founder’s birthday (full text).

Hundreds of people gathered outside New York’s Empire State Building last night to protest against the owner’s decision not to acknowledge Mother Teresa’s birthday.

The number of priestly ordinations in Ireland has dipped below that of England and Wales for the first time in living memory, reports the Independent.

Garry O’Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, has accused Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin of evading “any intelligent questioning of himself or his current policies” (full text of letter).

Free Presbyterian Church leaders have taken a letter of protest to 10 Downing Street expressing their “dismay and abhorrence” at the Pope’s state visit to Britain.

Birmingham city council has earmarked sites to accommodate convoys of gypsies hoping to see the Pope on September 19.

Chilean miners are planning to create a shrine inside the mine where they may be trapped for the next three months.

Catholics and Muslims in India have urged the Pope to intervene to prevent an American church from holding a Koran-burning day.

Douglas Kmiec, the US Ambassador to Malta, is said to be in a good condition after he was involved in a collision that killed a religious sister and injured a priest.

An Australian Catholic school has issued an apology to parents after a young boy dressed as Adolf Hitler won a costume competition.

Jeffrey Tucker is puzzled by Catholic ignorance of the basic principles of economics.

And a German company has announced plans for a new massively multiplayer online strategy game called The Bible Online.