News Briefing: global

The Episcopal Conference of Honduras has published a letter to the country’s Catholics ahead of the presidential elections in November, calling for people to consider the electoral campaign carefully. Controversy surrounds the poll after the law was changed to allow President Juan Orlando Hernández to seek re-election, despite objections from the opposition parties.

The Honduran bishops wrote: “As Christians we must participate in the elections, to commit to dialogue and respect for all … Corruption, demagoguery, populism and manipulation must all be unmasked, as they are all variants of lies.”

The right-wing National Party assumed office in 2009 following a military coup that deposed left-wing President Manuel Zelaya. Hernández won the Presidency representing the National Party in 2013 and has been criticised for an increasing culture of impunity and human rights violations. The most notorious incident was the murder of an indigenous activist, Berta Caceres, the one-year anniversary of whose death was marked on March 2 in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

The National Party will officially endorse Hernández as its candidate tomorrow while the wife of former President Zelaya, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, will represent her husband’s Libre party.

Welcome for weapons ban talks
Pax Christi International has welcomed the decision of the UN General Assembly to negotiate a legally binding prohibition of nuclear weapons. “We consider it a milestone that nuclear weapons be explicitly banned by international treaty and see the treaty as an exercise in the moral values and global responsibilities required to build a more secure and sustainable world,” it said.

The Church in El Salvador has sent findings to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican, documenting a “presumed healing” by the Salvadorean martyr Oscar Romero.

On 28 February, the Archdiocese of San Salvador announced that the documentation process was complete and the information had been sent to Rome.  

The presumed healing refers to a pregnant Salvadorean woman who was expected to die but recovered after seeking Romero’s intervention.

Archbishop Romero, who opposed the military regime of the time, was murdered while celebrating mass in San Salvador in 1980. He was beatified in 2015.

Meanwhile, at the General Audience in St Peter’s Square on Ash Wednesday, the Archbishop Romero Trust presented Pope Francis with a complete set of the homilies of Archbishop Romero, translated into English. Julian Filochowski, (pictured above), Chair of the Trust and a Tablet director, explained to Francis that this was part of an effort to make available to the English-speaking world the inspirational teaching and testimony of Romero, living out the option for the poor in our  times. The Trust expressed the fervent hope to Francis that this year of celebration of the centenary of Blessed Oscar Romero’s birth might also be the year of his canonisation in Rome.

An Indonesian archbishop has warned that “fundamentalism and intolerance are getting stronger” in Indonesia. The Archbishop of Jakarta Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo condemned the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and intolerance in a pastoral letter to mark the start of Lent.

In the letter sent to 66 parishes, the archbishop told Catholics that widespread violence, human trafficking, and an undermining of the common good by groups and individuals are blighting Indonesian society and eroding the country’s secular principles.

The Report on Religious Freedom in Indonesia 2016, published by the Wahid Institute, a study centre based in Jakarta, documents at least 204 episodes and 313 acts of abuse against religious communities, especially minorities. This is an increase of about 7 per cent compared to 2015.

Prayers for kidnapped priest
A prayer meeting was held at Ernakulam in Kerala on 4 March to mark the one-year anniversary of the kidnapping of Indian Salesian Fr Tom Uzhunnalil in Yemen.

It was organised by the Salesian Province of Bangalore, to which the Mission in Yemen belongs, with Kerala’s Catholic bishops. Fr Uzhunnalil, 58, (above) was kidnapped in Yemen on 4 March 2016. Four Missionaries of Charity sisters and 12 other people were killed in the same attack.

A bishop in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, has rejected a call to prayers for peace by President Salva Kiir on the grounds that Kiir’s army has been involved in sectarian violence, which has displaced tens of thousands in the Equatoria region. “It is a joke to hear the President of the country calling for prayers while at the moment the soldiers are hunting people across South Sudan,” said Bishop Santo Loku Pio Doggale, Auxiliary in Juba. Over 31,000 refugees have fled South Sudan so far this year.

Warning on refugees’ plight
The condition of around 140,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan is “critical and dangerous”, according to Caritas Jordan. “They have finished their money and they aren’t allowed to work,” reported Fr Khalil Jaar. “How can they live in human dignity?” he asked. Fr Jaar, who aids Iraqi refugees, was speaking at a conference hosted by the Vatican Embassy in Amman and Caritas Jordan.  

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has sent a letter to all the priests and school principals in his archdiocese, giving guidance on how to respond if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raid a church-owned property. “If they do not have a warrant and it is not a situation that someone is in imminent danger, tell them politely they cannot come on the premises,” the letter stated.

The compass of the Christian directs him to follow Christ crucified, not a disincarnate god, but God made flesh, Pope Francis said at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on Thursday last week. “Because God has taken all of human reality, except sin. There is no God without Christ. A God without Christ, ‘disincarnate,’ is a god that is not real.”