Picture perfect

Beijing, June 29 (Reuters): A photographer whose pictures of China’s paragon of Communist sacrifice are plastered across the country’s textbooks and schoolrooms has won the right to profit from his work after 40 years, Xinhua news agency said today.

Zhang Jun, who chronicled the works of his fellow soldier Lei Feng in the early 1960s, was granted copyright of the black and white photos by the Liaoning provincial government. Born in 1940, Lei Feng joined the People’s Liberation Army at age 20 but was killed two years later when a truck knocked over a pole and crushed his head. Mao Zedong turned him into a household name equated with self sacrifice in 1963 by urging China to “Learn from Lei Feng”.

the beginning, I didn’t mind people using my photos because I thought the photos were common treasure for the whole of humanity,” Xinhua quoted Zhang, 77, as saying. State media had used the photos for decades without giving Zhang compensation or obtaining his authorisation.

Church vows

Vatican City (Reuters): Pope John Paul said on Saturday that despite a recruitment crisis in the priesthood he had no intention of scrapping the Church’s celibacy rule — a key issue in the debate over recent sex scandals. “Celibacy is esteemed in the whole Church as fitting for the priesthood,” the pope said in an extensive document about Catholicism in Europe. “A revision... in this regard would not help to resolve the crisis of vocations to the priesthood being felt in many parts of Europe,” he added in part of the 134-page document called Ecclesia in Europa.

The numerous sex scandals that have hit the Catholic Church have led to calls for a change in the rule on celibacy.