Italian supercar blessed by Francis to go under the hammer
A one-of-a-kind Lamborghini sports car, signed and blessed by Pope Francis, is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in Monaco today (Saturday). The Italian sports car company designed and made a special Lamborghini Huracan for the Pope, painted white to replicate the Vatican’s flag colours with papal-gold accents on the hood, roof and doors. Francis signed “Francesco” with a black marker onto the car when he received the gift in November of last year.
Sotheby’s has valued the car at over £250,000. According to the auction house, the proceeds from the Lamborghini’s sale will go to “a quartet of deserving charities, all near and dear to Pope Francis’ heart”. Some 70 per cent of the proceeds will go to help rebuild homes and churches on the Nineveh Plains of Iraq, where Islamic State terrorists forced out the Christian community.
Bells ring in protest at killings
Churches in the Archdiocese of Manila in The Philippines are ringing their bells at eight o’clock every evening to protest over the continued killings in the country. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, said the tolling of the bells would “haunt the perpetrators of violence and killing to remember their victims, never to forget them,” ucanews reported.
A Catholic priest and a journalist are the most recent victims of the violence. Fr Mark Ventura, 37, from Tuguegarao Archdiocese, was shot on 29 April, just after he had celebrated Mass. Fr Ventura had been a staunch opponent of large-scale destructive mining.
The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand – run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party – has passed a law criminalising religious conversions, becoming the seventh Indian state to do so. Bishop Francis Kalist of Meerut, whose diocese covers part of the state, said he was unable to predict its impact. “We do not yet know how it will be implemented,” he said.
The Patriarchate of Babylon has called on candidates standing in Iraq’s parliamentary elections scheduled for today (Saturday) not to exploit religion to gain votes. “Candidates should avoid exploiting symbols and references of a religious nature as electoral propaganda instruments,” the Chaldean Patriarchate of Babylon said in a statement. It asked candidates to make references “only to their professional competence and talents” during the campaign. The elections, which will decide Iraq’s next prime minister, are the first since the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.
Catholics are planning further public demonstrations across the Democratic Republic of Congo to continue their protests over President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to stand down. “Let’s stay together, ready to face the worst,” the Catholic Church’s lay coordination committee said on 1 May following a two-day meeting in the capital, Kinshasa. The committee said it feared another postponement of elections or “a mockery” of a poll that has no “guarantee of transparency and credibility”. The influential Catholic bishops have pressed Mr Kabila to step down since his second and final term expired in December 2016. This year, 16 people have been killed in three protest marches, and shots have been fired into church grounds by DRC security forces. A priest was assassinated shortly after celebrating Mass on 8 April.
Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, the Archbishop of Seoul and Apostolic Administrator of Pyongyang, has expressed a desire to visit the North Korean capital soon. The de facto head of the Korean Church has never visited Pyongyang. “I hope to go soon,” he said, anticipating that, “one day I will meet with the North Korean Catholics to talk and to celebrate Mass together”.
The Belgian Primate, Cardinal Jozef De Kesel, has said that the official position of the Catholic Church on homosexuality is “no longer tenable”. The Church must show greater respect for the homosexual “experience of sexuality”, the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels said at a recent meeting with an LGBT group. The Church does not condemn homosexuality but requires gay people to observe sexual abstinence. Regarding that position, De Kesel said: “Everyone feels that it is no longer tenable.” Geert De Kerpel, spokesperson for the cardinal, emphasised that the meeting was a personal one.
After a retreat focused on peace building, the Colombian bishops released a statement on 1 May, ahead of the 27 May presidential election. “All members of society need to stay calm in these times of political transition, so that decisions can be made to strengthen the Colombian people, as protagonists in the process of peace building and co-existence,” they said. The election is the first since peace accords with Farc guerrillas were signed in 2016. The right-wing candidate, Ivan Duque, currently ahead in the polls, has been critical of the accords.
Threat to Hondurans in US
The Administration of US President Donald Trump announced on 4 May that it was suspending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) afforded to the 57,000 Hondurans living in the United States. They will lose their legal status by January 2020, meaning they could be forced to leave the country. The US granted this status for Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 caused extensive damage in the country. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said conditions had “notably improved” since the disaster. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has written to the DHS calling for TPS to be renewed, saying: “Given the current country conditions, Honduras is in no position to accommodate the return of an estimated 57,000 nationals.”
House chaplain to stay
US House Speaker Paul Ryan last week reversed his decision to force the House of Representatives chaplain Fr Patrick Conroy to step down, after receiving a letter from Fr Conroy in which the priest reversed his own offer to resign.
In mid-April, the Jesuit priest submitted his resignation at the request of the Speaker. Mr Ryan later said: “This was not about politics or prayers, it was about pastoral services.” But Fr Conroy subsequently took “advice” on the resignation that he had submitted and wrote again to Mr Ryan, challenging the Speaker’s authority to fire him. “I have accepted Fr Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as Chaplain of the House,” Mr Ryan then said in a statement.
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