NOTES ON RELIGION

Journalist Receives First European Religion Award

GENEVA

ANDREW BROWN, religion correspondent of the London Independent newspaper, has been named 1994 John Templeton European Religion Writer of the Year by the Conference of European Churches and the Templeton Foundation.

The award - for excellence, enterprise, and versatility in reporting religion in the secular press - is being presented for the first time in a ceremony today in Geneva. The prize brings more than $3,000. Brown's entry was a front-page news story on the controversial British politician Enoch Powell's book on St. Matthew's Gospel.

Anglicans leave church over women priests

LONDON

Many priests who leave the Church of England over the ordination of women leave the active ministry rather than serve in another church, a survey says.

A survey of 50 priests who have left the church - out of a total estimated 300 - has confirmed that the Roman Catholic Church is the principal destination (56.5 percent) for those who switch faiths. But the survey also found that 21.7 percent of priests were leaving the ministry entirely.

Fabio Sani and Stephen Reicher of Exeter University conducted a series of interviews with clergy and laity over the ordination of women into the Church of England. ''Opponents see women priests as not just dissonant, but so dissonant as to change the essence of the Church of England,'' he says. ''Supporters, too, see the issue as affecting the essence of Christianity - that women priests allow the essence to be more fully accomplished.''

WCC ups contribution to development bank

GENEVA

THE World Council of Churches, one of the world's largest international church bodies, agreed to invest 10 percent of its general funds, by the year 2000, in a church-sponsored ''development bank.''

Currently the WCC, with more than 300 member churches worldwide, invests only 0.77 percent of its funds in the flagging development bank, called the Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society (EDCS). The WCC established EDCS in 1975 to provide loans, guarantees, and investment capital to the poor.