Acknowledging management is too-often “under-resourced”, leaders are proposing new measures to ensure each of England’s 42 Anglican cathedrals can access adequate expertise.

In a new report, which follows an investigation announced in April last year, they wrote: “Recent failures of governance and management within a small number of cathedrals have highlighted vulnerabilities and weaknesses across the sector, many of which have a financial basis.”

In December 2016, Premier reported on a “cash flow crisis” at Peterborough Cathedral (pictured) which prompted the Church of England paying more money to help ensure the landmark could pay its bill.

Under the proposals, each cathedral would establish a nominations and development committee to monitor governance and management.

Chair of the Church of England’s Cathedrals Working Group – which compiled the report – the Bishop of Stepney, Rt Rev Adrian Newham told Premier: “Cathedral congregations are growing, visitor numbers are remarkable.

“Cathedrals have this growing influence in society; they’re at the heart of national life.

“They contribute to the common good; they’re resonating with the spiritual search of contemporary society.

“These are just the most amazing structures… but the maintenance [costs] of them is incredibly severe.”

The working group’s report also said:…

Speaking on the “Washington Watch” radio program, Former Congressman Frank Wolf, said America used to do a better job of educating its citizens about Christians being persecuted around the globe.

He said: “Most churches used to have a Religious Freedom Sunday where they would bring in somebody from Sudan and China. And now, they are almost all gone.

“Unless there is change in the hearts and minds of people, I think the fundamental failure has been the Church.

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘If you don’t speak and you don’t act…’ I don’t see the Church speaking and I don’t see the Church acting.”

His comments came as the US celebrated National Religious Freedom Day earlier this week.

Mr Wolf, who served two decades representing Virginia’s 10th congressional district and now serves as a senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, is a staunch supporter of religious freedom.

He first introduced the IRFA bill to promote religious freedom as a foreign policy of the United States in 1997.

Mr Wolf recommended religious figures needed to be more like Martin Luther King Jr.

“I think we need some men like Martin Luther King,” he said.

“I think we need pastors to go to jail…They may very well have to go to jail to wake up this country.”

When asked if he thinks there is a “change on the horizon” following President Donald Trump’s administration’s vow to protect…

Among the topics to be discussed are valuing people with Down’s Syndrome, recognising Methodist Presbyters as ordained clergy in the Church of England, safeguarding, preparing for the inquiry into historic sexual abuse and relations with the wider Anglican community.

A motion affirming the dignity and humanity of people with Down’s syndrome will be discussed, just as a new form of pre-natal screening comes into practice in the NHS, able to identify when a pregnant woman may give birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome.

The screening means doctors will be able to tell a mother if there is a “high risk” her baby will be affected by the condition, knowledge which the Church welcomes, if it makes the mother more informed.

However, leaders want parents to be aware that the lives of people living with Down’s Syndrome has considerably improved in recent decades and cited the Christian comedian Sally Philips’ documentary ‘A World Without Down’s Syndrome?’ where she highlighted ignorance surrounding the condition.

The Church of England said mothers who ask for this screening must be given results in a neutral fashion, such as not saying: “I’m sorry, I’ve got bad news for you” or leading them on a path towards termination, without providing full information about life with a child with Down’s Syndrome.

Also to be discussed at the General Synod, will be the use of digital evangelism in the Church’s Easter and Christmas campaigns on social media – and how to build on…

David Turpin, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, starved their children to the point that their growth was stunted, chaining them to their beds for months at a time and forbidding them from showering more than once a year or using the toilet, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

“The victimisation appeared to intensify over time,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in announcing charges. “What started out as neglect became severe, pervasive, prolonged child abuse.”

The couple were charged with torture, child abuse, dependent adult abuse and false imprisonment. David Turpin was also charged with performing a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.

The litany of abuses was enough to invoke a house of horrors that apparently went unnoticed for years in California and Texas until Sunday, when a 17-year-old girl managed to escape and call the police.

The girl and her siblings had plotted the escape for two years, Mr Hestrin said. Another girl who escaped out a window with the teen turned back out of fear.

Mr Hestrin did not say what finally triggered the girl to act.

When officers arrived at the house on Sunday in Perris, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, they were shocked by what they found.

The children’s malnutrition was so severe that it was consistent with muscle wasting and had led to cognitive impairment…