Today’s Catholic must-reads: 23/03/11

Benedict XVI dedicated this morning’s general audience to St Lawrence of Brindisi, the 16th-century Doctor of the Church (video).

A Poor Clares convent in the Ivory Coast has been hit by heavy artillery.

President Barack Obama visited the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador yesterday.

Vatican has said it will require an extra year of study before seminarians can earn a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

The Vatican has invested $1 million in a company dedicated to adult stem-cell research.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem will inaugurate a new centre for inter-religious dialogue in the Holy City this Friday.

A report by the Public Religion Research Institute has found that 43 per cent of Catholics surveyed back same-sex marriage (PDF of report).

Tim Drake says that the conversion of Lutherans to Catholicism is “one of the most under-reported religious stories of the past decade“.

And Google has come under fire after it erroneously tagged reports about allegations against Fr John Corapi with the label “pedophile”.