A cross-party group of 79 MPs and Peers have called for delaying the commencement of the ‘abortion up to birth’ law change until an impact assessment and guidance, for police, prosecutors and healthcare professionals, has been published and approved by both Houses.

Clause 246 of the Crime and Policing Bill removes all criminal sanctions from women who self-induce abortions, at any time up to birth. It was controversially approved by the House of Lords last week after having been approved in the House of Commons after minimal debate.

A large number of high-profile MPs and Peers have joined the call including multiple signatories from Labour, the Conservatives, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.

The calls coincide with Baroness O’Loan, former Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, supported by a large cross-party group of Peers, tabling a Regret Motion at Third Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill in the House of Lords.

Even if agreed to, the motion will not stop or amend the legislation, but gives members an opportunity to put on record their dissent.

79 MPs and Peers call for ‘abortion up to birth’ clause impact assessment before it comes into force, as Peers table Regret Motion in House of Lords

A man suspected of links to an anarchist group has been arrested after throwing a petrol bomb at a March for Life in Lisbon.

Around 500 people were gathered outside the Assembly of the Republic in the Portuguese capital, including several minors and babies, when the petrol bomb was thrown.

The device, however, failed to ignite.

Police said the suspect was immediately intercepted at the scene, allowing for his swift arrest. “Several individuals who were allegedly part of a group with anarchist affiliations fled the scene; three members were later identified,” the statement added.

The Archbishop of Lisbon, Rui Valério, released a statement saying the attack was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“Violence is never the answer. It does not build, it does not dignify, it does not serve the truth. And it becomes even more painful when it threatens the most vulnerable, especially children, who should always be a beacon of hope and never exposed to fear,” he said.

Young people newly open to the Catholic faith must be engaged with and led to participate in the Church, a Bishop has said.

Bishop Michael Router, Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, was commenting on a recent report from the bishops called ‘The Turning Tide?’ which used polling data from the Iona Institute and the European Social Survey, showing that there is an ‘uptick’ in interest in faith among members of ‘Gen Z’.

The study by Professor Stephen Bullivant of Saint Mary’s University, London, and Emily Nelson of Queen’s University, Belfast, suggests more young adults are seeking meaning, belonging, and purpose. In many cases they are encountering faith through online engagement in podcasts and videos.

This search for faith and belonging provides the Church with an opportunity, the bishop said.

“Many young people and families are often absent from our communities not through disinterest but through a slow disconnection over time.  We need to create spaces of engagement to counter this, but belonging must not be reduced to mere activities or social gatherings.  It should lead young people and families into real participation in the Church’s mission and to discover their baptismal identity as co-responsible disciples”.

The number of Catholics formally disaffiliating from the Church in Germany has fallen for the third year in a row, while the percentage of Catholics attending Mass has risen for the fourth consecutive year.

However, the figure had been as low as 162,093 as recently as 2016, before it spiked in 2022.

Meanwhile, the percentage of baptised Catholics attending Mass which fell from 10.4pc in 2015 to a low of 4.3pc in 2021 during the covid pandemic, has gradually recovered to 6.8pc in 2025.

Last year also saw a slight rise in the total number attending mass, as well as first communions and confirmations. However, baptisms and ordinations were both down,

The Holy See has called for the complete eradication of surrogacy to protect women and children from exploitation.

An envoy told a UN panel the practice risks reducing children to “commodified products” and women to “service providers”.

“The issue of surrogacy is an urgent one — the technology and practice have run laps around law and ethics,” Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, told the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York last week.

Although prohibited as a form of human trafficking in most European countries, commercial surrogacy remains widespread in the USA, Asia, and Latin America, and so-called ‘altruistic surrogacy’ is even more widely practiced.

In his address, Archbishop Caccia said that the global “surrogacy industry” was fuelled by poverty. He said that the demand for children exceeded supply, and that many women were “pressured or even forced” by family members into acting as surrogates.

Women who agreed to be employed as surrogates could find themselves in a “perverse competition for commissioning parents”, he said, while a child diagnosed with a disability became “a flawed product or problem to be solved”.

The UK’s House of Lords voted by 185 to 148 to remove criminal sanctions when a woman induces her own abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason.

The controversial change had passed the House of Commons in June last year after just 46 minutes of debate, but was opposed by a wide swath of society, including major newspapers such as The Times of London.

Another amendment that would have reinstated in-person consultations prior to prescribing drugs for an at-home abortion, was rejected by Peers who voted by 191 to 119 against it.

The double blow  was met with dismay by pro-life groups.

Catholic Archbishop John Sherrington said the move is “likely to lead to more late-term abortions putting pregnant women and their babies at risk”.

He added: “Many women could likely also face even greater risks of isolation, coercion, and pressure”.

Plans to legalise ‘assisted dying’ in Scotland have been rejected by the Scottish Parliament.

MSPs voted by 69 to 57 to throw out the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, with one abstention, after several who previously supported it switched sides.

They were given a free vote on the Bill, meaning they could act in line with their consciences and were not whipped by their parties.

The Bill, tabled by Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur, would have given mentally competent people over 18 who have been diagnosed with a terminal condition the right to die by euthanasia.

Pro-Life groups welcomed the vote as a “major victory for the most vulnerable in our society”.

“After two years of debate, and the most intense scrutiny that the question of assisted suicide has ever received in Scotland, Holyrood, widely regarded as one of the world’s most socially and politically progressive legislatures, has come to the conclusion that introducing assisted suicide is unsafe and dangerous”, said Right to Life UK.

They added that it settled the issue in Scotland “for a generation” and likely struck “a mortal blow” to the assisted suicide Bill in Westminster.

The Government there has long been accused of complicity in the persecution by tacitly consenting to a campaign of ‘Islamisation’ and turning a blind eye to acts of terrorism. Many Christians have been killed by Islamists in Nigeria.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will visit the King and Queen on Wednesday and Downing Street on Thursday.

Parliament’s all-party group for international freedom of religion has written to the Government to put pressure on Mr Tinubu to uphold human rights in his country.

The group’s chairman, DUP MP Jim Shannon, said Nigeria needed to “take concrete steps to prevent the harassment, persecution and killing of Christians, while ensuring that perpetrators are investigated and prosecuted”.

The African nation is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for Christians, with Islamist terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, targeting Christians and their properties.

Priests in New York are reporting a big increase in the number of young Catholics attending mass or converting to the faith.

At one parish, St Joseph’s in Grenwich Village, near New York University, a resident priest says: “Our masses are full. At the 11:30am, there are people all over the balcony. For Ash Wednesday it was out the door, down the steps, down the sidewalk and around the corner to get into church”. The church is run by the Dominicans.

The number of adults seeking to join the faith has tripled in the last year.

St Patrick’s Old basilica, also near the university, and St Vincent Ferrer’s parish in the Upper East Side, has also report big increases in adult conversions.

While the numbers are small in absolute terms, they seem to back recent surveys showing growing interest in religion among a segment of ‘Gen Z’ young adults.

Asked if he had ever seen anything like it before, a priest said: “I’ve seen successful ministries, but a groundswell and not just in the parish here but across the American church and beyond, I’ve never seen anything like it”.
He continued: “This church is packed at every mass I went to, with young enthusiastic people who really, really want to practice their faith. And, in addition, the discussion group that meets after mass is such an opportunity to not only practice your faith, but actually learn about it”.