Poland's Catholic Primate has condemned attempts to "implicate Poles" in the Holocaust, as President Andrzej Duda pulled out of an international conference in Israel after being barred from speaking (writes Jonathan Luxmoore). "We must remember the vast suffering of Jews, who held full citizenship of our country", said Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno. "Of course, there were acts of enmity and hatred which we must speak about and acknowledge in a spirit of truth and atonement before God. But blaming Poles for murders carried out by the German Nazis is a great dishonesty and falsification of history". The 55-year-old archbishop was commenting on a decision by Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, to withdraw from a World Holocaust Forum at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Institute, after being denied a right to speak alongside leaders from Germany, Russia and France.
The Chinese government has targeted unregistered Catholic and Protestant churches with a new expansion of rules and regulations governing religious organisations. It will institute another tranche of laws covering 41 religion-related topics on 1 February, two years after the implementation of another set of restrictive laws. Further pressure will be put on unregistered Catholic and Protestant churches to register with the authorities. The new rules further ramp up the process of so-called “Sinicisation” of religion. “The goal is to have all religious organisations brought into the open, registered in one way or another and thus end the duality of official and underground religious organisations,” said Francesco Sisci, a senior researcher at Beijing’s Renmin University.
Parents must not worry about their young children disrupting church services as a baby’s cry is a “beautiful homily”, says Pope Francis. Speaking as he baptised 32 children in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday, Francis pointed out that children are “choral”, and if one starts making a noise “they all begin, and a concert will take place.”
Bishop Virgílio Antunes of Coimbra, in central Portugal, has warned his faithful that though they are not immediately at risk of martyrdom the future could hold “barbaric cultural and ideological persecution”. His letter marked the opening, on Sunday 12 January, of a jubilee year in the diocese to mark the 800th anniversary of the five Franciscan martyrs of Morocco, whose relics were placed in the same Church where the first King of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, was buried. The arrival of the relics inspired a young St Anthony to become a Franciscan friar and to study in Coimbra before being sent to Padua, in Italy. “We are challenged with bearing witness to our faith and our hope but face the possibility of either civilised rejection or barbaric cultural and ideological persecution,” the bishop wrote.
The Zimbabwe Council of Churches, of which the Catholic Church is an observer member, has warned of further protests in the country if President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government fails to address Zimbabwe’s serious social and economic challenges. ZCC secretary general Revd Kenneth Mtata lamented on 6 January that "instability will grow and there will be loss of lives due to failed social services and failure to access livelihoods". The government has crushed anti-government protests several times with violence over the past 18 months.
Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo, Archbishop of Jakarta, has declared 2020 as a Year of Social Justice. Announcing the special year on 4 January at St Mary of the Assumption Cathedral Church in Jakarta Cardinal Suharyo unveiled a “Homeless Jesus” sculpture at the cathedral, by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, whose work has been displayed in Rome outside of the Papal Office of Charities.
The Church in Australia has called on Catholics to pray, volunteer and donate to aid the victims of the current bushfires. Calling the fires an “unprecedented calamity”, Archbishop Mark Coleridge announced a series of special measures, including the facilitation of a national volunteer network, the distribution of special prayers to parishes across the country, and the holding of a special collection in support of the Society of St Vincent de Paul on the Australia Day Weekend, 25 to 27 January.
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has left the St Fidelis Capuchin Friary in Victoria, Kansas and moved to an undisclosed location. It is believed the move came in advance of the expected new publicity surrounding the disgraced former cardinal once the Vatican releases a report on how he rose through the ranks despite allegations of sexual misconduct. Fr Joseph Mary Elder, a spokesman for the Capuchin province said that McCarrick left on his own accord.
The cable news network, CNN, has reached a settlement with Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky Catholic high school student who sued the network for defamation after its reporting on an incident that occurred at last year’s March for Life. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed, but Sandmann sought $275 million in damages. Last year, video surfaced of Sandmann, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, smiling at a native American, Nathan Phillips, who was playing a drum in front of his face. Many commentators characterised the video as a confrontation in which Sandmann was mocking Phillips. An investigation debunked claims that Sandmann and other students had shouted racial epithets. Sandmann is still suing the Washington Post and NBC news for damages.
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is proposing a state subsidy to help large churches with their electricity bills in the evening peak period. Large churches tend to be a speciality of the neo-Pentecostals, such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which also tend to hold more services in the evenings, though the Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida would also benefit. The proposal is being widely seen in Brazil as an offer to the Pentecostals, currently 29 per cent of the Brazilian population and a key target voting bloc for Bolsonaro if he seeks re-election in 2022. There has so far been no comment on the proposal from Catholic authorities.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York spoke to a rally of 25,000 people protesting over the recent spate of anti-semitic attacks in the New York area. Thirteen attacks on Jews have been reported in the last 10 days. DiMarzio and Dolan joined more than 130 faith leaders from across the state, in condemning the assaults. "Anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate of any kind are repugnant to our values and will not be tolerated in our state," the faith leaders said. "An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us." The family members of Josef Neumann, one of the victims of an attack in Monsey over Hanukkah, are unsure if the father of seven will ever regain consciousness.
Posters against the legalisation of assisted procreation for lesbians and single women in France have not reappeared in Paris train stations despite a court order to the advertising agency that posted and then removed them. The pro-life group Alliance Vita said that meant its posters would not appear before the procedure is legalised this month. "It's too late now," its director Tugdual Derville told La Croix.
As churches close and parishes consolidate across the Netherlands, a study shows that many parishioners give up going to Mass rather than travel to another village to attend church. This “uncomfortable conclusion,” as Katholiek Nieuwsblad called it, emerged from a study by the weekly originally meant to show that church closures would have a negative impact on villages. Instead, it found that parish social activities were often easily taken over by secular groups and the link to church life was broken.
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