Turkey's top Roman Catholic bishop has publicly accused Turkish ultra-nationalists and religious fanatics of being behind the slaying of the country's senior bishop.

As if we didn't need another reason to criticize either the Catholic Church or former Nazi Youth member, Pope Benedict XVI.

While on his first state visit to England, and the first papal visit to the United Kingdom in 28 years, Pope Benedict's address didn't contain a single reference to the Vatican's massive conspiracy to cover-up hundreds of counts of alleged sexual abuse from within its ranks. Instead the pontiff focused on bashing secularism in a very secular nation.

If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn't really do that.

The Vatican's decision to declare the attempted ordination of women a "grave crime" has been fiercely condemned by women's church groups in the UK.

Pat Brown, of the group Catholic Women's Ordination, said she was deeply shocked and called the change to Church law "a slap in the face to women".

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI's oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume i …