A "tsunami of secularism" has washed across the world, Cardinal Donald Wuerl said in his introductory address in Latin to the synod of bishops on the new evangelisation yesterday. Catholic ethicists have hailed yesterday's Nobel Prize in medicine award as an "important milestone" for supporters of adult stem-cell research. The number of parishes in the Archdiocese of Vienna will fall from 660 to 150 over the next decade, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has announced. Sixty-three American former Catholic priests have given their joint backing to plans to legalise same-sex marriage in Washington state. The Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship has ruled that "dance or drama within the Sacred Liturgy" is, in most cases, an abuse of "the liturgical law of the Roman Rite". Marshall Connolly argues that pious Catholics are helping to finance African wars. And Joe Heschmeyer explains why the doctrine of the Trinity is like "a hard sudoku puzzle". Follow me on Twitter @lukecoppen for updates throughout the day