News that the German supermarket chain Lidl had airbrushed the crosses from photographs of Santorini’s famous blue-domed churches on the packaging of its line of Greek products caused outrage in parts of Europe. In Austria, the company was forced to issue an apology.
Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague wrote to the Greek ambassador to the Czech Republic that airbrushing out the crosses had been both “unprecedented and ignorant”. He added: “Up to now, it is ‘only’ a matter of faked photographs, but there are fears that crosses may soon actually be removed from churches.”
Lidl Belgium said it had removed the crosses “to guarantee political and religious neutrality”. However, Lidl Austria published an apology on Facebook. “There is no doubt that a mistake occurred here for which we apologise,” it said.
Reparations warning
Polish Church leaders have warned that “exaggerated political emotions” could jeopardise reconciliation with Germany after Poland’s governing party demanded massive new reparations from Germany over its actions in the Second World War.
“The reconciliation process [has been] achieved and upheld thanks to efforts not just by politicians but by many people of goodwill on both sides of the border. It could easily be lost by thoughtless decisions and rashly spoken words,” said Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz of Warsaw on behalf of bishops responsible for ties with the German Church.
The bishops were reacting to demands by the Law and Justice party, headed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, for the Government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to authorise the payment of €840 billion (£766 bn) for the lossses suffered by Poland under the six-year Nazi occupation.
Germany made reparations in 1953, 1970 and 2004, but insisted that Poland pledge not to seek any further damages. In a radio interview last weekend, Poland’s Prime Minister, Beata Szydlo, said she believed that Poland had a right to demand further reparations.
Anti-corruption unit backed
Guatemalan bishops have thrown their weight behind Ivan Velasquez, the leader of the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), whom President Jimmy Morales is trying to remove from the country. The CICIG is investigating the funding of Morales’ presidential election campaign.
In a statement last week, the bishops said: “The fight against corruption and impunity are an urgent necessity for the Guatemalan state. Weakening the CICIG is equivalent to supporting impunity and corruption, under the supposed banner of national sovereignty.”
Senators under fire
Two US Democratic Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin, have been criticised by Catholic leaders for asking questions about a judicial nominee’s religious opinions during a confirmation hearing.
Amy Barrett, a Catholic University of Notre Dame Law Professor, has been nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals – one of the 13 courts of appeal that sit below the US Supreme Court. Citing some of Professor Barrett’s writings during the hearing, Senator Feinstein said: “The dogma lives loudly in you … dogma and law are two different things.”
Senator Durbin, who is also Catholic, noted that some conservatives use the phrase “orthodox Catholic” to distinguish themselves from more liberal Catholics like himself. “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” he then asked.
Following the confirmation hearing, Notre Dame’s President, John Jenkins, sent a public letter to Senator Feinstein. “I ask you and your colleagues to respect those in whom ‘dogma lives loudly’ – which is a condition we call faith,” he wrote. “The attempt to live such faith while one upholds the law should command respect, not evoke concern,” he added.
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, a moral theologian who publicly challenged Pope Francis about his teaching on marriage and the family, has died aged 79.
The former Archbishop of Bologna was one of four cardinals who signed the dubia – a series of questions, seeking clarification – concerning the Pope’s move to allow remarried divorcees to receive Communion.
His death means that only two of the dubia cardinals – Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmüller – are still alive. The fourth, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, died in July.
Cardinal Caffara was widely respected as a defender of established Catholic moral teaching. However, he was also willing to examine questions such as genetic engineering. In 1978, he represented the Holy See at the first world congress on sterility and artificial procreation.
It was during the papacy of St John Paul II that the cardinal came to the fore, when the Polish Pope appointed Caffarra as president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. This was a year after he served as an expert at the 1980 synod on matrimony and the family. He was also a member of the 2014 and 2015 synod gatherings that Pope Francis convened on the same topic.
Theatre loses venue
The Catholic Church in Sydney has ordered the Genesian Theatre Company to leave its Kent Street venue, ending a tradition of amateur theatre in the centre of the city that goes back to the 1950s.
First built in 1868 as St John’s Church but later used as a poor house and a hostel, the building is likely to be part of a new hotel or residential development.
The president of the theatre company, Roger Gimblett, confirmed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the Church had told the club to vacate the building in November next year.
The company offered to buy the building from the Church but was told that a property developer, who has secured two adjoining buildings, had offered over A$6 million, or £3.65m, for the site. The former church may not be demolished because it is a heritage site.
Genesian has a loyal audience. It stages Agatha Christie murder mysteries, costume drama and occasionally Australian plays for almost 50 weeks a year, often to near-capacity houses.
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Sydney said the Church was trying “extremely hard” to find an alternative venue for the theatre.
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