Between 130 and 150 lay Catholics from different countries gathered in the centre of Munich, close to the residence of conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx, on 17 January to protest against the German synodal procedure for church reform (writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt). Meetings are being held by the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German (lay) Catholics (ZdK) and the procedure begins on 30 January. The most prominent demonstrator was Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano who has challenged Pope Francis to stand down. It is the first time that Vigano has made a public appearance since he went into hiding in 2018. Austrian activist Alexander Tschugguel, who threw the so-called Pachamama statues into the Tiber during the Amazon Synod last year, was also present. The protesters prayed that the German Church would not attempt to establish a new Church that would go its own way as far as priestly celibacy, artificial birth control, homosexual blessings and extramarital sexual intercourse was concerned. They called on Marx to recant and repent.
Pope Francis has broken a Vatican glass ceiling by appointing the first female manager at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. Dr Francesca Di Giovanni, 66, has been given a senior diplomatic role as the new under-secretary at the Section for Relations with States and will have responsibility for working with international bodies such as the United Nations. Her role makes her one of two deputy foreign ministers at the Holy See’s ministry for foreign affairs, which is led by Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
The warring factions in South Sudan have agreed to a ceasefire while committing themselves to work for lasting peace in the country following a summit in Rome. Representatives from the government and the various opposition parties signed the deal at the headquarters of the Sant’ Egidio Community, which is helping to broker a truce between the parties, on 13 January. The news raised hopes that Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will make their planned trip to the country that has been pushed back on several occasions due to security fears and the ongoing conflict in the country.
Speaking during the weekly General Audience last week, ahead of the 18 to 25 January week of prayer for Christian unity this week, Pope Francis reminded the faithful that “Ecumenism is not something optional”. Today, 25 January, he will preside over the First Vespers of the feast of Saint Paul’s conversion, in the papal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls. The week’s theme is: “They Showed Us An Unusual Kindness” (Acts 28: 2).
The National Catholic Reporter’s Heidi Schlump profiled Catholic author and motivational speaker Matthew Kelly, whose outreach programmes and materials are credited with reinvigorating parishes through his “Dynamic Catholic” programme. But, Schlump also detailed the fact that Kelly’s non-profit “Dynamic Catholic” enterprise, which receives donations to fund its work, in turn pays out most of its money to for-profit enterprises also owned by Kelly. About four-fifths of all money the non-profit raises goes to Kelly’s for-profit enterprises, according to Schlump.
Pope Francis thanked a delegation of Italian fishermen on Saturday for their volunteer work in clearing the sea of plastic as part of their “seabed remediation” project. The campaign, called “A Pesca di Plastica” (Fishing for Plastic) is a particularly important initiative, Francis said, both because of the actual recovery of a large amount of waste, especially plastic, and also “because it can become and is already becoming a repeatable model in other areas of Italy and abroad.” The Pope said he had been disturbed by a conversation a couple months ago with sea chaplains and fishermen who recounted how they had gathered six tons of plastic from the ocean over the course of a few months. “In the Vatican we have banned plastic,” Francis told journalists. “We are working on that.”
The Mexican Bishops' Conference held a press conference on Tuesday 14 January about investigations into sexual abuse committed by priests. The bishops said that the Mexican church has investigated 426 priests in the past 10 years for sexual abuse and related crimes. Of the 426 Mexican clergy investigated, 271 were accused of sexual abuse and the other 155 were investigated for related crimes like child pornography. In the past decade, 217 of these priests have been dismissed from the clerical state. The church is still completing the investigations into 173 priests.
The string of earthquakes that hit Puerto Rico this month has reminded island residents of the devastation of Hurricane Maria, just over two years ago. A 6.4 magnitude quake struck on 7 January and the island has been rocked by aftershocks since then. There are two confirmed deaths attributed to the earthquakes, but thousands of people are living in shelters or sleeping outside. Damages are estimated at $200 million. In the city of Ponce, a viral video showed that disaster relief materials had been stored in a warehouse for an undetermined amount of time, instead of being distributed. On 12 January the Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, held Mass in the patio of a church in Guánica, the hardest hit city. He said that solidarity and faith are important in the face of disasters.
Seven people were killed in a violent religious ritual in a remote community in Panama. On Thursday, the prosecutor of the Bocas del Toro province in western Panama announced that the victims were from the Ngabe Bugle indigenous group. Members of the “New Light of God” sect were arrested in relation to the killings. The sect has operated for several months in the region. From 11 January indigenous residents were gathered by “preachers” before being tortured, beaten and hacked with machetes to make them “repent”. A mother was killed along with five of her children, who were between one and 17 years old. Several people escaped and sought treatment at a nearby hospital, tipping off law enforcement. Police freed other members of the community who had been tied up and beaten as part of the ritual. Cardinal José Luis Lacunza, the Bishop of David, Panama, said “Killing people in the name of God or invoking His name is unacceptable and absurd, because God gives life, he does not punish.”
An 83-year-old Belgian missionary has been murdered in South Africa in what appears to have been a robbery at his home in a rural town west of Johannesburg. The lifeless body of Fr Joseph Hollanders of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate was found in Bodibe, near Lichtenburg, with his hands and feet bound and a cord around his neck. The Belgian Church website Kerknet said police had arrested a man found with the priest’s mobile phone. Fluent in the local Bantu language, Hollanders had worked in South Africa since 1965.
The Russian-Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill I, is to visit Vienna at the end of May, according to the Russian embassy in Vienna. “Preparations for the visit have begun”, an embassy spokeswoman told the German Catholic press agency KNA on 10 January. The Russian ambassador in Austria, Dmitry Lubinsky, had already told diplomats at a New Year’s reception that he was looking forward to welcoming the Patriarch in the coming year.
Pope Francis has warned about a “barbaric upsurge of anti-Semitism” alongside a general growth in hatred and populism. Speaking on Monday to a delegation from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the global human rights organisation based in Los Angeles that researches the Holocaust and confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, Pope Francis said he was concerned about the rise of a “selfish indifference”. He described this as the view of advocating only what is convenient for oneself: “Life is good if it is good for me and when something is wrong, anger and malice are unleashed.” Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January will this year mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
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