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Martin LohmannShe is no. 1 in Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women. She is clever, cool and confident, but how Christian is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union? The answer, ahead of next month’s election, proves elusive Free
From the editor’s desk
| Justice mocked Free How could the need for justice for the still-grieving relatives of the 270 who died in Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 ever be reconciled with the showing of merciful compassion towards a dying man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? He was not the key player ... | The prodigal daughter |
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Features
 Can politics regain its bearings?Julia LangdonWith public regard for Parliament at its lowest for 70 years or so, a new proposal by the think tank Compass on capping ‘fat-cat’ pay, which has gained wide support from the Left and Centre, could help reinvigorate debate, argues this long-term observer of the
political scene... |  The man who reached the unreachableThomas NortonCletus Babu is one of the most influential Catholics in southern India, despite leaving the priesthood. His social development organisation
helps more than half a million rural poor. And, as he told Thomas Norton, his ideas have been exported around the world... |
 Just add waterRichard AbbottIt is reputed to cure everything from leprosy to ulcers but reports of miracles attributable
to water at Holy Well in the Malvern Hills are thin on the ground these days. The last in
our series sees an attempt to discover just what makes Holy Well ‘holy’... | Rise of the super-parishRichenda PowerPortsmouth, like many other dioceses in Britain, has been preparing itself for a future
with fewer priests and fewer practising Catholics. The changes involve the creation of new pastoral areas that cluster current parishes in increasingly closer union...
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For God in othersDaniel McCarthyWe are nourished in the liturgy so that we may minister to God in people, writes Daniel McCarthy. This prayer implies that Christ stands in the world to call us from the Communion we have just received, to serve him in our sisters and brothers...
| Be still ... Hush ... ListenNicholas HenshallThe silence that churches offer is one of their most undervalued and underused gifts to the faithful. In silence we encounter God, and God gets to grips with us. Pastor and congregation need to do everything they can to help this process...
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Triumph and tragedyMichael Sean WintersEdward Kennedy, who died this week, was the last in the generation of a New England dynasty that brought American Catholics into mainstream US politics, and whose life mirrored its subsequent roller-coaster ride...
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Columnists
 Catherine Pepinster‘Marx was wrong: it wasn't Communism, but its downfall, that proved inevitable'  Peter Stanford‘The Megrahi case shows how far many are from understanding compassion'
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Books and arts
Frittering away our food Free
Waste: uncovering the global food scandal
Tristram Stuart
In memory of Gudrun", reads the dedication. "Who might she be then?" one asks at the outset: a recently deceased aunt? A quirkily eccentric grandmother? Halfway through, the author ... |
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Is the Church too slow in recognising that academies are the future for Catholic schools?
Christopher Lamb
According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ... Goodwin the scapegoat
Elena Curti
There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ... The pain of being a coeliac Catholic
Sr M, guest contributor
"Whoever comes to me, I shall not turn (him) her away" (John 6:37). Many readers will recognise ...
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