Amid growing concern about the victimisation of travelling people across Europe, human rights activists have condemned the forced eviction of a community of some 400 Roma people in the Italian capital, Rome.

As the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation meets to discuss the food crisis in Rome today, debt campaigners have issued a call for a moratorium on debt repayments from afflicted countries.

The Jesuits, one of the largest and most powerful Catholic orders, is holding a meeting in Rome this month, at which it is to elect a new superior general to head its 19,000 members - whose influence is well beyond its numbers.

German Catholics and Mennonites gathered in September for a conference on the “Healing of memories”. Representative of the two Christian traditions are meeting again in Rome right now, and the agenda is once again peace and reconciliation.

Pope Benedict has used the occasion of the official receipt of the credentials for the new Italian ambassador to the Holy See to issue a defence of the alliance of church and state, an arrangement facing increasing criticism in a plural, post-Christendom Europe.

Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, has highlighted the links between human rights and human reconciliation in his 2007 New Year message, delivered at St Peter's Rome.