Aid to the Church in Need, a charity that supports persecuted Christians, was due to launch its Report on Religious Freedom this week at the House of Lords. Compiled over two years, the report will assess levels of religious freedom and the drivers of hatred and discrimination in every country in the world. It was due to be launched on Thursday 22 November by Lord (David) Alton of Liverpool (pictured), Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and Bishop Edwin de la Peña of Marawi, a diocese in The Philippines that was attacked by Islamic State-affiliated militants last year. The launch comes as Aid to the Church in Need prepares to commemorate the victims of religious hatred and persecution on “Red Wednesday”, 28 November.
Priests in England and Wales are to be issued with identity cards to prove that they are in good standing with the Church. The plastic, credit card-sized documents will include a passport-style photograph of the priest, signed by the bishop of the diocese and vicar general, and include an expiry date. The new identification scheme, which was agreed by the bishops at their spring plenary this year, is based on the traditional practice of issuing a celebret, or certificate of good standing, to a travelling priest who wants to celebrate the sacraments in a different diocese to his own. The cards also include a QR barcode which, when scanned, provides up-to-date information about the holder’s status. Cards have been issued in some dioceses already. Other dioceses are rolling out the scheme now. A spokeswoman for the Bishops’ Conference told The Tablet: “This is a sign of the care the Church takes to protect the sacraments, priest, and faithful from anything that is sacramentally irregular.”
Yemen conflict plea
Cafod has called on the UK Government to use its influence in Yemen to bring an end to conflict it described as “the most severe humanitarian disaster on the planet right now”. In an open letter to the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, co-signed by seven other aid agencies including Christian Aid, Cafod says 14 million people are on the brink of famine. “What the country needs most right now is an immediate end to the fighting,” the letter reads.
The Diocese of Nottingham has apologised after a priest used his homily for Armistice Day to condemn the cynicism of “cigar-smoking, brandy-swilling generals” and Britain’s ongoing participation in the arms trade. Fr Frank Daly, parish priest at St Peter’s Church in Hinckley, south-west Leicestershire, told participants at a Remembrance Service in Argents Mead that the cynicism of generals who “sent thousands of men over the top like cannon fodder to instant and painful death without any thought of who they were ... is still alive and well today.” That the UK economy profits from the arms trade “shamed their memory”, he said, asking: “How can we pray for peace when we are producing the very means of destroying it?” A spokesman for the diocese regretted any offence that had been caused.
Diocesan shake-up
Discussions took place last weekend in the Diocese of Killaloe in Ireland over a diocesan restructure aimed at offsetting the decline in the number of priests and the ageing profile of the clergy.
Under the new system of Pastoral Areas, 18 parishes will have no resident priest, down from 22 parishes under the old system. In its reflection following the Loughrea gathering, the diocese admitted it was “grieving the loss of the intimate parish per priest system”.
Correction On 22 Nov we reported that Vincent Doyle, the son of Fr John J Doyle, a Co Longford priest, and founder of Coping International would take part in a documentary, Children of the Church, about Catholic priests who father children. We wish to make it clear that, as Doyle explained in a letter to The Sunday Times which originally reported this as fact, neither he nor Coping International are making or taking part in any documentary on this issue. We apologise for the error.
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