Former president of Peru Alan García (above) committed suicide on Wednesday last week. The 69-year-old shot himself as police arrived to arrest him in connection with the corruption scandal involving the giant Latin American petrochemicals and construction company, Odebrecht.
Garcia was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 and again between 2006 and 2011, when he is suspected of taking part in a massive kickback scheme, which he vehemently denied.
At his funeral on Thursday, the Archbishop of Lima, Carlos Castillo, prayed before Garcia’s coffin accompanied by the papal nuncio, Nicola Girasoli. Meanwhile, Lima’s former archbishop, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, called for an end to what he called “the persecution” of people being investigated in Peru in the Odebrecht case. He maintained that Garcia had done “much good” for the country during his two administrations.
Ortega anniversary protests
Nicaraguans commemorating the first anniversary of the protest movement against President Daniel Ortega joined Good Friday processions in the capital of Managua and the city of Matagalpa.
Dozens of protesters joined the Stations of the Cross procession to Managua’s cathedral, carrying crosses inscribed with the names of people killed during the past year’s protests. In Matagalpa, Bishop Rolando Álvarez said: “We are associating the pain of so many Nicaraguans to the Passion of Christ.”
Over the past year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights estimates that around 325 people taking part in protests have been killed by the security forces and by paramilitaries linked to the Ortega government.
Edmundo Valenzuela, the Archbishop of Asunción in Paraguay, has called for extra support for a campaign to help the 80,000 people displaced by floods in March, particularly in the capital of Asunción, where some working-class areas of the city were hit hard. Archbishop Valenzuela says local churches have been aiding the relief effort, opening their doors to displaced families and going by canoe to visit flooded homes.
Faithful stage wall protest
More than 1,000 parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church (pictured) in Mission, Texas, used Palm Sunday to process to the city’s historic La Lomita chapel, which is threatened by President Donald Trump’s plans to erect a border wall between the United States and Mexico. The Diocese of Brownsville, in which La Lomita is located, has the highest density Catholic population in the US. Its bishop, Daniel Flores, is legally challenging Mr Trump’s plans.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that 37,000 catechumens and candidates were received into the Church at Easter Vigil services last weekend. Migrants appear to account for the largest numbers of new Catholics. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest, with more than 4 million members, received 1,560 catechumens and 913 candidates. Galveston-Houston, in Texas, welcomed a similar number with 1,512 catechumens and 631 candidates.
Other dioceses in the historic “Bible Belt” tended to have more candidates than catechumens, reflecting conversions from other churches. The Archdiocese of Atlanta welcomed 645 catechumens and 1,181 candidates.
The traditional bastions of Catholicism in the US saw lower growth. The Archdiocese of Boston welcomed just 288 catechumens and 182 candidates. In the two dioceses most affected by the scandal surrounding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archdiocese of Newark welcomed 411 catechumens and 58 candidates, while the Archdiocese of Washington received 455 catechumens and 183 candidates.
University president resigns
Franciscan Fr Sean Sheridan has resigned after six years as President of the Catholic University of Steubenville in Ohio, following a series of controversies. These include the mishandling of allegations of sexual abuse among some of the faculty, and a row over the inclusion in an English course of Emmanuel Carrère’s novel, The Kingdom, labelled blasphemous by the right-wing website, Church Militant.
The ecumenical NGO Christian Solidarity International – Austria has changed its name to “Christians in Need”
Elmar Kuhn, general secretary of Christians in Need headquartered in Vienna told Kathpress CSI-Austria had altered its name to more clearly reflect its aim, which is to highlight crimes committed against Christians. “We want to show what we are committed to, namely to persecuted Christians. At the same time, we want to strengthen the social co-existence of Christians, Muslims and Hindus, Kuhn said. Christians in Need supports the families of blasphemy victims in Pakistan, helps Christians who had to flee and have now returned to Iraq and runs orphanages in Syria and Nigeria for children whose parents have been murdered.
The Brazilian farmer convicted of killing missionary Dorothy Stang in 2005 was finally taken into custody last week. Regivaldo Pereira Galvão was convicted of the killing in 2010, but a series of appeals and judicial rulings have kept him out of jail. However, Brazil’s Supreme Court has now overturned a May 2018 injunction stopping Galvão from serving his prison sentence, allowing the authorities to detain him.
Stang was an environmental advocate in the Brazilian Amazon, known for her defence of indigenous peoples and the rainforest. From Ohio, she was a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Galvão was convicted in 2010 of hiring two men to kill her. She was shot on her way to a community meeting. The cross pictured above marks the spot where she died.
Interviewed on Austrian state radio on Holy Saturday, Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said he did not think that there was a lot of opposition to Pope Francis in the Curia, but “there are a few individuals, a small minority, who see things differently and who perhaps would like a different Pope”. Criticism of popes was nothing new, he said. He recalled how critical the German-speaking countries had been of both St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
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