Catholic agencies are responding to huge humanitarian needs after an earthquake and tsunami struck central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Some 1.234 people are known to have died as a result of the 7.4-magnitude earthquake on 28 September that unleashed a tsunami up to 16 feet high.
The quake has also injured many thousands and has forced more than 100.000 people to flee their damaged homes. An unknown number may have been swept out to sea.
Aryo Saptoadji, of Caritas Indonesia, reports that the immediate needs are for drinking water, medicine, food, tents and blankets. At last Sunday’s Angelus in St Peter’s Square, the Pope said that the people of Sulawesi were in his prayers.
A joint Anglican-Roman Catholic outreach project has been launched in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, to provide early intervention in the lives of pre-school children of poor single parents.
Bishop David Edwards of the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton and Bishop Robert Harris of the Catholic Diocese of Saint John signed a joint declaration on 1 October in St John, which has the highest rate of child poverty in Canada.
The project, entitled “Dads and Tots”, will bring single fathers into mentoring relationships with experienced fathers who can teach them parenting skills.
The project, endorsed by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, was launched in response to the Common Declaration issued by Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby, in Rome in 2016.
Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno, Primate of Poland, announced on 26 September, after a two-day bishops’ plenary in Plock, that every diocese in Poland will implement a prevention programme on the sexual abuse of young people. Three dioceses have already published data on clerical sex abuse, with a total of 24 priests accused and some removed from working with minors or from the priesthood itself.
Knifed candidate leads polls
As Brazilians prepare to vote in the first round of presidential elections tomorrow, polls last week showed the right-wing candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, who was stabbed while out on the stump in early September, leading with 28 per cent support, ahead of Fernando Haddad, of the Workers’ Party, with 25 per cent.
Edir Macedo, leader of Brazil’s largest neo-pentecostal church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, has thrown his support behind Mr Bolsonaro. The Catholic Church has limited itself to encouraging people to vote, and to measuring the candidates by the standards of Catholic Social Teaching.
Death penalty ‘inadmissible’
Archbishop Paul Gallagher told the United Nations on 25 September that the universal abolition of the death penalty would be a “courageous reaffirmation” that humanity can deal with crime while also refusing “to succumb to despair before evil acts, offering the criminal a chance to reform”.
The Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States cited Pope Francis’ revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This states that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”.
Coptic Monk ‘poisoned’
An autopsy on a Coptic Christian monk found dead in central Egypt showed clear signs of poisoning, officials say. Zenon El-Makary, 45, died a day before he was due to testify in the trial of two other monks charged with bludgeoning Bishop Epiphanius to death at the desert Monastery of St Macarius in July. It is unclear whether he was poisoned by someone or took his own life.
Pope Francis has removed the Chilean child sex abuser Fernando Karadima from the priesthood, the Vatican has announced. Karadima, who has been at the centre of Chile’s abuse crisis, was notified of his dismissal from the clerical state on 28 September. The order takes effect immediately. The decision comes seven years after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered the priest to live a life of prayer and penance.
A march in Mexico City last week marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa college students in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It also remembered the six people killed on the same date, 26 September 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero. Incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to re-open the case with the support of international investigators.
At another event to mark the anniversary, in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, the nuncio to Mexico, Archbishop Franco Coppola, said the failure to resolve the case had illustrated a wider problem of impunity in Mexico. “It’s unbelievable that a country as developed and democratic as Mexico could have such a high rate of impunity,” he said.
Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore has begun a Vatican-ordered investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct with adults lodged against Bishop Michael Bransfield, who resigned as the Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, in West Virginia, last month.
The investigation is being led by a five-member group of lay people, with no clerics involved. One member of the team is not a Catholic. Archbishop Lori did not identify them by name.
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, has meanwhile taken up residence in St Fidelis Capuchin friary in Victoria, Kansas. The Pope removed him from all public ministry in June and ordered him to dedicate himself to prayer and penance while his canonical trial proceeds.
Gypsy pastors’ ‘healing effect’
Hungary’s Catholic Church has called for the better treatment of Eastern Europe’s large Roma minority. The community remains marginalised and poverty-stricken despite the efforts made in post-communist countries to improve conditions.
“The encounter between Roma and non-Roma within the Church positively affects the wider society,” Bishop Miklos Beer of Vac told an annual conference of Gypsy pastors and representatives at Eger, in central Hungary.
“The experience of a fraternal community provides light for everyone – accepting one another without unfavourable distinctions has a general healing effect.”