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DUBLIN -- The head of the Irish church's child protection watchdog said he considered resigning over his irritation at a lack of church cooperation.

Ian Elliott, chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, told Catholic News Service May 11 that he had asked himself "on several occasions" if he should quit, but decided to stay because he believes he is "making a difference for children."

Elliott has worked in the field of child safeguarding for almost 40 years, but he said his current role with the church is "the most challenging situation I have ever been in."

At a news conference to release his board's third annual report, he also said that he has repeatedly expressed his frustration to the pope's apostolic visitors, who are currently undertaking an inquiry into the crisis in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

"I am hopeful that when the report of the apostolic visitation is made available later this year, our discussions will have had a major impact," he said.

Elliott said each Irish parish now has a trained child safeguarding representative, "the essential backbone" of the church's efforts in the sphere.

ROME -- Because the Roman Catholic Church was a driving force behind the development of a common English translation of basic prayers used by many Christian churches for 40 years, more recent Vatican rules for translating Mass prayers "came as a bombshell," said an Anglican liturgist.

"I do not contest for a moment the prerogative of churches to change their liturgical texts," said the Rev. David Holeton, a professor at Charles University in Prague.

But he said other Christians were "both stunned and dismayed" when the Vatican abandoned the English texts of prayers Catholics had developed with them since the Second Vatican Council and when the Vatican discouraged Catholics from consulting ecumenically on the new translations.

The Anglican liturgist spoke May 5 at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Rome's Pontifical Liturgical Institute.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- I first met Anne Suze Denestant in January. A resident of one of Port-au-Prince’s tent cities, she struck me as quiet, a bit shy but also confident and, when need be, steely.

She has to be. Denestant lost her right arm in the devastating January 2010 earthquake, and while she spoke softly and hesitantly of her experiences adjusting to a physical disability, her voice rose when she expressed clear exasperation and anger that so little had been done for her and other survivors by Haitian authorities in the intervening year since 2010.

Had the government done anything? "Not in the slightest," she said. "Everything that we've gotten, we've gotten from the NGOs"

When I saw Denestant again, during Holy Week, she said: "We’re still not where we want to be," and expressed a note of caution about newly elected president and one-time Carnival singer Michel Martelly -- known affectionately by fans, and a bit dismissingly by critics as "Sweet Micky," his stage name.

DUEKOUE, Ivory Coast -- The priest directing a mission where at least 30,000 refugees remain said he feared an outbreak of cholera if more aid is not received soon.

Food, water, medicine and sanitation facilities are in short supply for those who took refuge at a Salesian-run mission in Duekoue after armed fighting March 29 left at least 800 dead in this multiethnic city of 47,000.

"There is no food, people are sleeping on the ground, there is nowhere else to go, there are no toilets or washing facilities and we have no drinking water," Salesian Father Vicente Grupeli, director of the St. Therese of the Child Jesus Mission in Duekoue, told the Salesian news agency ANS.

The Salesian mission office in Madrid launched an urgent appeal for food, water, medical supplies and other needs.

The mission, the site of a vocational training center, a home for children and a youth center, suspended all activities to care for the refugees who have overwhelmed the facility, Father Grupeli told ANS.

AMMAN, JORDAN -- Jordan, like Syria, had viewed itself as immune from the political ferment sweeping the Middle East, but in both cases those assumptions have proved to be wrong. Since January, a number of large demonstrations have been held in Jordan, with participants calling for constitutional reform, an end to corruption, and measures to curb rising food prices and unemployment. The broad-based protests have included Islamists, lawyers and trade unionists in addition to students.

“More interesting than the demonstrations is that the king has received a petition signed by many of the tribal leaders demanding an end to corruption, and specifically they were pointing a finger at his wife,” said Murhaf Jouejati, a professor of Middle East Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. “This is unprecedented. In Jordan, the monarch is the arbitrator of conflicts and one major pillar of his power are the tribes. When these tribes complain, he listens.”