Troublespot welcomes clergy
Church bells rang out in the city of Masaya, 30 km from the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, on 21 June to welcome the arrival of senior Catholic clergy who were trying to stop a new violent clampdown on anti-government protesters.
The clergy processed through the streets with the Blessed Sacrament, joined by priests and religious and thousands who came out of their homes to challenge the violence.
Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solórzano, Archbishop of Managua (left), and Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Baez Ortega were among a delegation that entered the police station from where attacks on civilians have been ordered, commanded by Commissioner Ramón Avellán. After more than an hour, the Cardinal reported that Commissioner Avellán “has committed himself to stop all violence”, and adding: “I told him that if this does not happen, I will call him later.” More than 200 Nicaraguans have died in clashes with police and paramilitaries in Masaya and other cities since April.
Optimism over China ties
Pope Francis has voiced optimism about improved ties between the Vatican and China, rejecting claims that the Holy See may be making too many compromises in its negotiations with Beijing’s communist government.
“We are at a good point,” the Pope told Reuters in an interview at his Vatican residence last week. “Dialogue is a risk, but I prefer risk rather than the certain defeat that comes with not holding dialogue. Let’s move forward serenely.” Francis said the road to reconciliation with China was divided into three paths – the official dialogue, unofficial contacts among ordinary citizens “which we do not want to burn”, and cultural dialogue.
Radical Islamist groups plan to build more than 2,600 mosques in Madagascar and are bribing locals to convert to their cause, according to a newly appointed cardinal on the Indian Ocean island nation. Describing these moves as an extremist “invasion” of the country, where about 7 per cent of the population identifies as Muslims, Cardinal-designate Désiré Tsarahazana of Toamasina (pictured) said that the Church should be alarmed.
“The rise of Islamism is palpable. You can see it everywhere. It is an invasion, with money from the Gulf States and from Pakistan – they buy people,” he reportedly told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. Capella sentenced
Capella jailed for child porn offences
A Vatican court found Mgr Carlo Alberto Capella, a former staff member at the Vatican nunciature in Washington D.C., guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography. Judge Giuseppe Della Torre, head of the tribunal of the Vatican City State, delivered the verdict, sentencing Capella to five years in prison and fining him 5,000 euros (£4,400) on 23 June. He will serve his sentence in the Vatican’s prison.
Parishioners at a church in western Kenya are unhappy after the Diocese of Homa Bay suspended their priest for misconduct. Fr Paul Ogalo was suspended on 3 June for using secular music, drama and dance after the Mass to attract youngsters to church. The 45-year-old priest had been entertaining his parishioners with rap music, urging them to stop using drugs and to get involved in environmental and social justice issues. The church’s youth leader, Violet Menya, said Fr Ogalo had attracted hundreds of young people to church and had helped many to embrace farming, business and other activities instead of drugs.
Mexico’s bishops have published security protocols to protect priests and religious – along with church property and shrines – as crime and violent attacks on churchmen and property continue to rise, ahead of the presidential elections on 1 July. Mexico suffered its worst year of violence in memory in 2017, when it recorded more than 29,000 homicides, as the crackdown on drug cartels and organised crime showed little success. The Church said 24 priests have been murdered in Mexico since December 2012.
Anger at pagan temple plan
Plans to build a temple dedicated to pagan gods near Reykjavik, capital of Iceland, have left Christian groups concerned that a resurgence in neo-pagan traditions could pose a threat to their religion.
“Asatruarfelagid”, an Icelandic association that promotes paganism and has around 2,400 members, has raised funds to build the temple and has received a nod from the government to proceed. The head of Asatruarfelagid, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, said Catholics and other Christians should not be worried. “I don’t believe anyone [really] believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” he said. “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”
The Catholic bishops of Algeria have postponed planned celebrations for the beatification of the 19 religious victims of Islamist extremist violence in Algeria in the 1990s, including the seven murdered monks of Tibhirine, because the Holy See has not yet replied to its proposals for the event.
The bishops had hoped Pope Francis would preside over the celebration in Oran, whose former bishop, Pierre Claverie, was one of the victims. But, as the Holy See has not yet responded, not enough time has been left to organise an event in the autumn, they said in a statement reported by the French daily La Croix.
Some 20,000 Catholics from Hanoi Archdiocese and nine dioceses in northern Vietnam attended a Mass on 19 June to mark the 30th anniversary of the canonisation of 117 Vietnamese martyrs.
The Mass was held at the Martyrs Pilgrimage Center of So Kien in Ha Nam province. This contains the remains of many martyrs who died in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and instruments used to torture them. Pope St John Paul II canonised 117 martyrs in 1988. The Vatican estimates that the actual number of Vietnamese martyrs is between 130,000 and 300,000.
The president of Poland’s Bishops’ Conference has said that Europe is looking to his country’s Catholic faith to save it from “flabby totalitarianism” and a “dictatorship of materialism”. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan was preaching at a Sunday Mass, broadcast live on state TV.
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