Catholic campaigners at UN climate talks in Madrid over the past two weeks aimed to bring a "moral perspective" to the negotiations. writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. "Our task is to maintain a link between what's happening in the negotiating rooms and outside in parishes and communities across the world, where millions of alternative, sustainable pathways are already being pursued," said Chiara Martinelli of CIDSE, a network of 17 Catholic development agencies in Europe and North America. She felt Catholic organisations brought the voices of those most impacted by climate change into the talks, “especially from the global south”. Vatican-based Caritas Internationalis said it was urging "robust rules to ensure transparent and fair counting of carbon emissions reductions" and better protection of indigenous peoples. Christian groups and religious were involved in ‘sit-ins’, protest dances, and marches such as the half a million-strong one in Madrid on 6 December which included representatives of the Global Catholic Climate Movement and where Greta Thunberg was a speaker. The same day a Mass for the success of the talks was concelebrated by Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra, Archbishop of Madrid, and the Peruvian Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte of Trujuillo, president of the Latin American bishops' council, CELAM. The ecumenical World Council of Churches sat on the panel looking at the connection of issues linked to the climate crisis, such as food security and extractive industries. In a letter to the climate talks, Pope Francis said current commitments to mitigate climate change and alter human behaviour fall short of what is needed and urged that politicians "listen to the young people now filling streets all over the world". Nearly 200 countries were represented at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid. It sought effective strategies for implementing the Paris Agreement, a framework of action against climate change adopted by the U.N. in December 2015.
The switch of allegiance of Russian Orthodox churches in western Europe from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul to the Moscow Patriarchate has met with a mixed response, with many transfers so far in France and the Benelux area but fewer elsewhere (writes Jonathan Luxmoore). The Paris-based network of parishes founded by émigrés fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution faced stark choices after its leader, Archbishop Jean Renneteau, opted to switch to the Moscow Patriarchate rather than follow an Ecumenical Patriarchate order to integrate parishes into local – mostly Greek Orthodox-led – archdioceses. The choice facing its 118 member parishes as well as other related organisations across western Europe stem from a schism over Ukraine between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the large, Kremlin-supported Russian Church. The metropolitan archdiocese in France, has issued the first figures on the transfer. They are incomplete and difficult to compare, but show some trends. About two-thirds of parishes that have decided in France and most of the Benelux parishes have opted to transfer. The result was opposite in Britain and Ireland, where so far nine parishes have voted to stay with Istanbul and only two chose Moscow. Joining Moscow meant the western European archdiocese could remain an exarchate with its own archbishop instead of being folded into the local Orthodox hierarchy, as the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s planned streamlining of diaspora structures would do.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi verbally tackled a reporter and invoked her Catholic faith when the reporter asked her if she hated President Trump (writes Michael Sean Winters). “I don’t hate anybody,” the speaker said sternly. “I was raised in a Catholic house. We don’t hate anyone, not anybody in the world. This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office,” she added. “As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone.” Her comments came at the end of a press conference at which she announced her intention to bring articles of impeachment to the floor of Congress for a vote. Pelosi is the highest-ranking Catholic in the US government but her support for abortion rights has often put her at odds with the US bishops’ conference. She supports positions advocated by the bishops, however, on anti-poverty programmes, protecting immigrants and refugees, and enacting gun control legislation.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, has described Vatican policy towards China as “terrible, terrible, terrible”. The retired bishop told Asian magazine New Bloom last week that his warnings to Rome about the campaign by the Chinese government to exert control over the Church have been ignored and his own recent relations with the Vatican have been “simply disastrous”. He renewed his criticism of the 2018 Vatican-China deal, warning that he thinks Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin is exercising undue influence on Pope Francis. “I have a clear impression that Parolin is manipulating the Holy Father,” he said. Meanwhile Catholics in China must put loyalty to the state before their faith, according to the bishop who chairs the state-sponsored and now Vatican-approved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Bishop John Fang Xingyao of Linyi, who is also on the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was speaking during a Communist Party-sponsored meeting in Beijing. “Love for the homeland must be greater than the love for the Church and the law of the country is above canon law,” said Bishop Fang at the Political Consultative Conference on Religions.
The Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) reports that 16 million Argentinians – around 40 per cent of the population – live below the poverty line. The report was published days before President Mauricio Macri left office, having promised in 2015 to deliver “zero poverty.” Alberto Fernández was to be sworn in as President on 10 December, as part of a left-ward turn in the region’s politics. On Sunday, Fernández and outgoing president Mauricio Macri attended Mass together at the Basilicia of Luján, 40 miles outside Buenos Aires.
President Muhammadu Buhari sent a personally-signed goodwill message to Ignatius Kaigama last week, when he was installed as Archbishop of Abuja. He praised Archbishop Kaigama’s work on “peace, inter-faith dialogue, and mutual understanding between religions”. Archbishop Kaigama succeeds Cardinal John Onaiyekan, who has retired after turning 75.
A former priest has sued the Archdiocese of St Louis after his name was published on a list of those credibly accused of abusing children. Michael Toohey, 77, left the priesthood voluntarily in 1970 after serving in St Louis for three years. His name was one of 26 names never previously published. In total, the archdiocese published the names of 63 men against whom “substantiated” allegations had been lodged. Toohey is suing the archdiocese for slander and libel. He denies ever abusing a child and said the archdiocese never notified him of any allegations until the list was published.
Around 160,000 security personnel will be deployed to try to ensure that Christmas and New Year celebrations in Indonesia are safe. This is nearly double the number who guarded about 50,000 churches across the country last year. At St Mary Immaculate Parish in Surabaya, which experienced a suicide bombing in May 2018, the church is being provided with metal detectors and support from both the police and an Islamic youth movement whose members have offered to help with security.
The Diocese of Cuernavaca has suspended evening Masses due to insecurity in the city and in the surrounding state of Morelos, south of Mexico City. Bishop Rámon Castro of Cuernavaca said last week that some churches have rescheduled night or evening services because “People are afraid to go to Mass at night”. “There are many people I know who have nothing to do with organised crime, but find themselves affected by this violence and have changed their lifestyle,” he said. On 5 December, gunmen killed the acting police chief of Cuernavaca, Juarez Lopez, 49. This year is the most violent in the history of Morelos state. At least 14 police officers have been murdered this year, with more than 800 other killings.
Seven men found guilty of the 2016 killing in Honduras of environmental activist Berta Cáceres have been sentenced to jail terms of up to 50 years. Cáceres, 44, was shot after leading a struggle by indigenous groups to stop construction of a $50 million hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. She was present at the Vatican in 2014 when Pope Francis addressed the World Meeting of Popular Movements. Meanwhile the mandate of the Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, an internationally backed investigation team, is set to expire in January after four years in operation. The government must decide whether to renew its mandate, which is currently backed by the EU, the Organisation of American States, and the bishops’ conference.
Christian Brother James Miller who served as a vice principal at the La Sallian Christian Brothers school in Huehuetenango in rural Guatemala was beatified on 7 December with a celebration on the soccer fields of the school he once served. Blessed Miller and his colleagues often came into conflict with government soldiers demanding the release of indigenous men living in the Christian Brothers' "Casa Indigena" boarding home, who had been forced into military service. On 13 February 1982, Blessed Miller was shot in broad daylight by three assailants while he was up on a ladder, fixing the boarding home’s exterior wall.
The theologian Johann Baptist Metz died on 2 December at the age of 91 in Munster, Germany. Metz was a leader of Christian-Marxist dialogue and sought to apply ideas from the left-wing Frankfurt school of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno to his “new political theology”. Germany’s Catholic news agency, KNA, said his rejection of “bourgeois Christianity” had been applied to liberation theology. Fr Joachim Schmiedl, chairman of Germany’s assembly of Catholic theology faculties, said he believed Metz’s ideas could be found in the teachings of Pope Francis.
Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako has announced that there will be no public Christmas celebrations in the patriarchate. It will be a sign of sympathy for more than 400 people killed during recent street protests against an Iraqi government heavily criticised for Iraq’s endemic corruption, high unemployment, dire public services and foreign interference. Iran's influence over Iraq has grown steadily in recent years and it has close links to Shia politicians who are part of the ruling elite.
A public Advent service in Brooklyn, New York City, on 5 December saw the blessing, alongside a life-sized nativity scene, of a large tree decorated with 17,000 red lights and 2,500 red bows representing the plight of the millions of Christians being persecuted around the world for their Christian belief.
Women now occupy 55 percent of all church offices in Belgium and lay people in church work outnumber priests, according to a Belgian Church report that saw these trends positively. The report, the second in an annual series, said between 2016 and 2018, baptisms dropped by 11.8 per cent, and Sunday Mass attendance by 16.8 per cent. But the figures for participation by lay people, especially women, showed a positive underlying dynamism, Church officials argued.