PEOPLE

Episcopal Bishop John Bryson Chane of Washington National Cathedral and the Venerable Gyumed KhensurRinpoche Lobsang Jampa, a senior monk at the Guhyasamaja Buddhist Center in Washington, blessed dogs and cats at a Washington animal shelter Nov. 3, the eve of the 11th annual National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. The Humane Society of the United States, a cohost of the blessing ceremony, has a program called Animals and Religion, “to engage the religious community in critical animal protection issues,” explains a Humane Society press release.

The White House announced Nov. 5 that Mary Ann Glendon, a law professor at Harvard University, will be nominated as the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. She will succeed Francis Rooney, a businessman who has held the post since October 2005. Glendon, has been a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences since its founding in 1994 and its president since 2004. She represented the Vatican at the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in 1985.

Francis Collins, director of the National Genome Research Institute, received the Medal of Freedom at the White House Nov. 5. “I am very fortunate to be in a career that is part science, part ethics and part medicine,” Collins told his hometown newspaper, the Staunton, Va., News Leader. “We finally have the power tools to unravel these mysteries.” He wrote a book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief to address the often contentious relationship between faith and science.

Among the other seven people receiving the Medal of Freedom Nov. 5 was Brian Lamb, founder of the public affairs cable TV channel C-Span, for “reviving the town hall meeting” in American politics.

National Catholic Reporter, November 16, 2007