News Briefing: global

A Chinese Catholic bishop excommunicated by the Vatican participated in the ordination of a new bishop in China last week, sparking protests at the service and jeopardising the likelihood of an imminent agreement between Rome and the Communist Government in Beijing on the appointment of new bishops.

The ordination of Bishop Joseph Tang Yuange for Chengdu Diocese on 30 November took place under heavy security at the cathedral in the southwestern city of Chengdu. He was ordained with the approval of the Vatican as well as that of the Chinese Government. Most bishops who took part in the ceremony were also recognised by both Rome and Beijing. However one, Bishop Lei Shiyin of Leshan, was ordained in 2011 without a Vatican mandate and therefore automatically excommunicated. Some Catholics attending the ceremony protested over the involvement of Bishop Lei, complaining about the Vatican’s “kowtow diplomacy” towards Beijing.

Copts attacked
Christians have been attacked in a village in Upper Egypt after a resident opened his house to hold Coptic prayers. Over 2,000 protesters gathered, chanting and throwing stones, and demanding that the residence at Al-Naghmeish, in the Sohag region of Upper Egypt, not be turned into a church. When the Sohag governor, police, and armed forces arrived on the scene, tear gas was used to disperse the crowd.

Massacre warning
A warning about the risk of an ethnic massacre in Yei, in South Sudan, has been given by the Bishop of Yei, 80 miles south of Juba. “Over 100,000 people live in fear and uncertainty and are unable to leave the city,” Bishop Erkolano Lodu Tombe of Yei said last week.  

In Jakarta, more than 200,000 Muslims staged a protest on 2 December to demand the arrest of the Indonesian capital’s Christian governor and his prosecution for blasphemy. The gathering was the third and largest rally in two months. Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known by his nickname Ahok, has been accused of insulting the Qu’ran. If charged and found guilty Purnama, the favourite to win the February elections against two Muslim opponents, could be jailed for up to five years.

Soccer players honoured
A Mass was held in the home stadium of the Chapecoense football team in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina on Wednesday last week, to honour the victims of the plane crash in Colombia two days earlier that claimed 71 lives, including members of the team, staff and journalists. There were six survivors. The Mass was scheduled for the time when the Chapecoense match would have taken place in Colombia .

Gregorios III, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, Alexandria and Jerusalem, gave a guest lecture at Heythrop College, University of London on Friday last week on “The Melkite Church and the Situation of Christianity in Syria Today”. Patriarch Gregorios made an impassioned plea for peace and reconciliation in his country. “We cannot live without the Muslims”, he said, and the Muslims need the Christians. Urging Christians to “stay at home”, he denied that they were “vassals of [President] Assad”. “We are more important for Syria than Assad,” he insisted. Patriarch Gregorios is the most senior Catholic leader in Syria.

The bishops’ conference of Nicaragua denounced the suppression of a march protesting over the construction of an inter-oceanic canal. The Government of Daniel Ortega is building the canal with Chinese funding, but it has attracted opposition across rural Nicaragua. Police in Nueva Guinea, a mountainous region through which the canal would pass, attacked a convoy of trucks heading towards the capital, Managua, for the protest. The march was cancelled due to the police action. “People must be brave, we must always try to defend their rights and we are with them,” Mgr Jorge Solórzano, secretary general of the bishops’ conference, said.

The Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, congratulated president-elect Alexander Van der Bellen on his victory in the 4 December presidential election. He called on him to be president of all Austrians, promoting “that togetherness which made Austria a free, stable and prosperous country after the Second World War”.

In his speech at a Lutheran conference in Tutzing, Bavaria on “Tradition and Reform in Roman Catholic theology and the Church”, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop emeritus of Mainz, said that when the connection between church reform and spirituality is disregarded, “the danger that reform concerns will be trivialised is great”. In the final instance, “this is one of the reasons why many reform movements tire so soon and peter out”, he said.

If a priest suspects that he has been called to the bedside of a dying person who has opted for assisted suicide, he must refuse that person communion and the last rites, Bishop Vitus Huonder of Chur in Switzerland has said. He deplored how, for many people nowadays, a “humane” way to die is to allow assisted suicide organisations to determine the hour of death. This puts priests in an “almost impossible situation” when they are asked to administer the Last Sacraments, as “in such circumstances the prerequisites for receiving the Sacraments cannot be fulfilled,” he explained. In such cases, priests should just pray with the dying person, Huonder said.

The Pope has praised Poland’s right-wing Catholic Radio Maryja as an “effective means of evangelisation”. “His Holiness thanks God for all the goodness born in people’s hearts over this quarter-century thanks to this radio’s relaying of evangelical material, teaching from the Church’s Magisterium and information about believers worldwide”, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said in a message for the station’s 25th anniversary.

US martyr
Pope Francis has recognised the martyrdom of Fr Stanley Rother of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, making him the first martyr born in the United States. This clears the way for his beatification. Fr Rother, born in 1935 on his family’s farm near Okarche, Oklahoma, was brutally murdered on 28 July 1981, in a Guatemalan village where he ministered to the poor. Many priests and religious became targets during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war.