President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta of Mali and Cardinal Jean Zerbo (pictured), Archbishop of Bamako, paid a joint visit on 13 June to the mainly Christian village of Sobane Da in central Mali where at least 95 people – including 24 children – were murdered four days earlier.
They went “to express solidarity with the population”, who are largely from the Dogon community, the Archdiocese of Bamako said. The President vowed to crack down on growing insecurity in Mali.
It is believed that the jihadists who attacked the village belonged to the Fulani ethnic group. The Dogons’ own self-defence militia, Dan Nan Ambassagou, has said it considers the Sobane Da massacre a “declaration of war”.
Ebola rampant in rural DRC
The outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is almost “out of control”, Cafod said, as the number of confirmed cases rose to more than 2,000. Cafod quoted Dr Emmanuel Mbuna Badjonga, who is based at the heart of the affected area in North Kivu province, in eastern DRC, as saying that, “while Ebola has been kept out of the main towns, it is rampant in remote communities”.
The Eritrean government has shut down all Catholic health centres in the country after their administrators refused to sign a document approving their handover to government officials. When most of them refused to do so, security forces expelled the staff and closed the centres, positioning soldiers around the buildings. The Catholic Church in Eritrea condemned the action in a letter to the health ministry. It said the social services that the Church provides in Eritrea could not be construed as an act of “opposing the government and state”. The closures leave thousands of people, mostly mothers and their children in rural areas, without health care.
Church meets priests’ children
Bishops in France have met three adults fathered by priests who are seeking to get the Church to recognise their existence. They are part of a 60-strong group called the “Children of Silence”. A second meeting, to discuss better access to Church archives for children seeking information about their fathers, was set for October. “Today was a great day,” said Anne-Marie Jarzac, 68, the daughter of a priest and a nun. “We haven’t been received at the Vatican yet, but this is still a big step forward.”
Catholic women have led a strike (pictured) in Switzerland in support of demands that women, married men and homosexuals be granted the “same right to active participation in the Church as ordained men”. The action was spearheaded by the Association of Catholic Women, which has some 130,000 members.
Voters in Guatemala went to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president. The vote will go to a second round, on 11 August, between former First Lady Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope party, and former prison director Alejandro Giammattei, of the Vamos party.
Controversially, the courts have barred three top candidates from running, including Thelma Aldana, the former attorney general who is known for her anti-corruption investigations.
Bishop Víctor Hugo Palma of Escuintla said in a video released last week: “It is important, as the Biblical phrase says, to examine everything. Those who run for office … must not seek their own personal gain.”
More than 100 political prisoners were released in Nicaragua at the beginning of last week following pressure from the opposition movement that is demanding the removal of President Daniel Ortega and the abolition of an amnesty law adopted earlier this month.
Opposition and human rights groups oppose the new law because although it has facilitated prisoners’ releases, it makes it more difficult to prosecute the security forces responsible for extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances and torture.
The Archdiocese of Managua, in a statement signed by Auxiliary Bishop Leopoldo José Brenes, has demanded that all political prisoners be freed. At least 80 are still held captive.
Back room row bishop quits
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the auxiliary bishop of Santiago less than a month after he appointed him, weeks after the bishop made comments about the lack of women at the Last Supper.
The Archdiocese of Santiago did not specify why Carlos Eugenio Irarrázaval had stepped down in its statement on 15 June, but said the Pope had accepted the resignation “for the good of the Church”.
In a television interview in May, at the start of his tenure, the bishop said there were no women seated at the table at the Last Supper, and that “we have to respect that”. He also said that perhaps women “like to be in the back room”.
In the archdiocese’s statement, Bishop Irarrázabal apologised for the remarks.
Fr Augustus Tolton (pictured), a former US slave who became the first African-American Catholic priest, is a step closer towards sainthood after Pope Francis made him Venerable on 12 June.
The priest will need to have two miracles attributed to him before he can be canonised. Tolton was born into slavery in Missouri in 1854, but escaped to freedom as a child during the Civil War. He was ordained a priest in 1889 in Rome after no American seminary would accept him. He returned to the US to serve for three years at a parish in Quincy, Illinois, before moving to Chicago to start a parish for black Catholics, St Monica’s, where he remained until he died in 1897.
At least three Catholic bishops have joined protests in Manila against what they describe as China’s “continuous bullying of the Philippines”. There was outrage over the sinking of a Filipino fishing boat and the abandonment of its crew by a Chinese fishing vessel in the South China Sea on 9 June. A Vietnamese fishing vessel later rescued the 22 crew members.
Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon accused China of having “no respect for our territory or respect for Filipino lives”. Bishop Ruperto Santos of Balanga said that the incident showed that China has “selfish, vested interests” in the South China Sea’s contested waters and islands. The government in Manila has called on China to impose appropriate penalties on the Chinese crew.
Loading ...
