Floods claim 169 lives

Floods claim 169 lives

Caritas Sri Lanka is providing emergency food and water to people hit by floods and landslides following torrential monsoon rains. At least 169 people have been killed and nearly half a million displaced, according to the country’s Ministry of Disaster Management. Another 112 people are still missing, and the death toll is expected to rise, as authorities battle to rescue those still stranded and warn of further landslides and crocodile attacks. Meanwhile, Caritas Indonesia is providing humanitarian support to more than 2,000 families displaced following the latest volcanic eruption of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province.

The Southern Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference has denounced “crimes against women and children” after a new study revealed that one in every five children in South Africa suffers sexual abuse and that a woman is killed every eight hours by someone she knows. “The physical integrity of women and children is not respected” and “there is a pervasive culture of alcohol and drug abuse which exacerbates the violence”, the conference president, Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, said. He called for initiatives to provide for better family life.

Belgium’s bishops have spoken out against euthanasia for mentally ill patients after a religious order allowed it for patients in its psychiatric hospitals, including those not in the terminal phase of their illness. The Bishops’ Conference statement noted the Church’s opposition to assisted dying and said that, “in the same way, we cannot agree that this be practised” on these patients. Br René Stockman, the Belgian-born global superior in Rome of the Brothers of Charity order, has sharply criticised the order’s decision and has raised the issue with the Vatican. “There is a limit and a prohibition going back to since humans first began to live together,” the bishops said. “If we tamper with it, we harm the foundations of our civilisation.”

Clergy pressed to testify
Ten victims of clerical sexual abuse in Lyon have called on Cardinal Archbishop Philippe Barbarin (above), the city’s archbishop, and six other Church figures, to testify in a new legal case, accusing them of failure to denounce a paedophile priest. He is due in court in September along with Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a French archbishop, a bishop who used to work in Lyon and three other archdiocesan officials. The accusations stem from the case of Fr Bernard Preynat, who has admitted his guilt and faces criminal charges for sexually abusing minors between 1986 and 1991. An earlier suit against Cardinal Barbarin for not informing the civil authorities about the abuse years ago was dismissed last August because the accusations were beyond the statute of limitations and there was no proof that the cardinal had tried to obstruct the course of justice. The Archdiocese of Lyon said it “could only deplore” this “misdirected” suit, in which the victims’ group, La Parole Libérée, challenges the three-year statute of limitations.

The Portuguese College in Rome was declared a “House of Life” in a ceremony on Tuesday. The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation bestowed the title in recognition of the college’s role in saving at least 40 people from the Axis powers towards the end of the Second World War. Those saved included Jews and opposition figures. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem honoured Fr Joaquim Carreira, rector of the college at the time, as a “Righteous Among the Nations” in 2014. The current rector, Fr Fernando Caldas, who received the award, said it was an honour to follow in the footsteps of such a man. The president of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Manuel Clemente, Patriarch of Lisbon, attended the ceremony, accompanied by Luigi Priolo, the last survivor of those saved by the Portuguese priests and seminarians in 1944.

Pope Francis’ proposed visit to South Sudan in October will not now take place, the Vatican’s spokesman, Greg Burke, told reporters on Tuesday. Rome’s daily Il Messaggero said that the trip had been put off after a delegation to the war-torn country concluded that it would be too dangerous. The Pope was said to have made the decision reluctantly “after the information coming to his desk left him with few alternatives”.

Workers die in police raid

Ten people were killed in the northern Brazilian state of Para, when police raided a peasant settlement on Wednesday last week. The victims were all landless workers on the Santa Lucia ranch, about 900 kilometres north of the state capital, Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon. The 150 families on the ranch have been calling on the Government to recognise their ownership of the land. The 2016 report of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church documented 61 murders in land conflicts that year. It has recorded 36 deaths, including the Para killings, so far this year.

China detains bishop

A Vatican-approved bishop who is not recognised by the Beijing Government has been detained for a fourth time since he was confirmed as Bishop of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province last September. Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, 54, was detained on 18 May, a month after he was briefly taken into custody during Holy Week. This time, Bishop Shao was summoned to the religious bureau and did not return. “Public security conveyed a message from the bishop on 22 May, requesting a backpack and a bottle of sacramental wine,” said a source. “That means he is likely to be taken far away and will not return home soon.”

Bangladesh has reinstalled a statue (above) in the grounds of the Supreme Court in Dhaka, just days after it was taken away following months of Islamist protests. Its removal from the front plaza of Bangladesh's top court on 26 May resulted in violent clashes between police and secular groups who saw the move as further evidence of creeping Islamisation in the officially secular country. The original removal of the statue was described as “saddening and unacceptable” by a bishop who asked not to be named. The statue is of the Greek goddess of justice, Themis, who is wearing a sari.