Cardinal Archbishop Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta has said that Pope Francis’ expected visit to Indonesia next September might include a Eucharistic celebration at the 77,000 capacity Gelora Bung Karno stadium in Senayan, in the heart of Jakarta. Speaking to the Jakarta Post, Cardinal Suharyo, who heads the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Indonesia, said the visit’s schedule was still being worked out, but Francis was also expected to visit Jakarta’s Grand Istiqlal mosque and meet President Joko Widodo, as well as bishops, priests and nuns in Jakarta’s St Mary of the Assumption Cathedral. The Indonesian government on 29 January announced that its ambassador to the Holy See, Antonius Agus Sriyono, had delivered to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin a formal invitation to Pope Francis to visit the country.
The Catholic Church in French Guiana, an overseas department of France, has decided to ask the people for pardon for its role in the colonisation of the region on the northern shore of South America. The local synod in Cayenne, the capital, was held four months after the Amazon Synod in Rome. It called for more rights for indigenous people and more effective means to end illegal gold panning, pollution of rivers and overexploitation of forest resources. In French Guiana, which includes a northern part of the Amazon rainforest, settlers first worked slaves on large plantations and Paris later developed a penal colony there. It became a French department in 1946. “We will make sure to ask for forgiveness, in a solemn ceremony, for the complicity experienced with colonisation, the slave trade and other crimes of the past,” the synod said in its final document, that announced the ceremony for 10 May.The synod also called for better inculturation in the diocese, and a more active role for the laity, but did not propose reforms discussed at the Amazon Synod such as allowing women deacons or ordaining married men.
Human rights groups and the Catholic Church have criticised a “reconciliation” law passed by Salvadoran legislators on 26 February that is meant to establish mechanisms to handle crimes that were committed during the country’s civil war that ended in 1992. President Nayib Bukele says he will veto the law. An amnesty law adopted after the war prohibited war crimes from being prosecuted but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 2016. The new reconciliation law would create a path for justice and reparations. But human rights organisations say that some components of the law amount to a new amnesty. The Archbishop of San Salvador José Luis Escobar Alas said the law would “revictimise” victims.
Pope Francis said on Ash Wednesday that he is praying for the people of Iraq, but indicated he would not be visiting the country this year. Speaking to pilgrims from the Middle East during his general audience he said: “I am very close to you. You are in a battlefield, you suffer a war, from one side and the other … I pray for you and I pray for peace in your country, which it was planned that I visit this year.” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni subsequently confirmed that a papal visit to Iraq will not take place this year.
A French priest from the Gap diocese in southeastern France has hanged himself after a relative filed a complaint for rape and sexual aggression against him with judicial authorities, local media reported. Police found the body of Fr Sébastien Dubois hanging from a tree in the Alps after finding a suicide note indicating the location. The diocese announced his death without mentioning any circumstances or reason.
Slovakia's Catholic bishops have denounced rampant "fraud and corruption", as key national elections were won resoundingly by politicians campaigning for tighter rules on graft and money-laundering. “Some have come to doubt whether it is even worth voting,” the Bishops’ Conference said in a pastoral message. “But let's not be carried away by watchwords playing on emotions and slogans evoking non-existent threats. Let's uphold peace and common sense, and beware those who incite enmity". The message was circulated to churches nationwide ahead of last weekend's election, in which the opposition Ordinary People Party, headed by Igor Matovic, triumphed with more than a third of parliamentary seats on an anti-corruption platform. The party said party-political goals should always be "confronted with Gospel values". On Sunday, the Bishops’ Conference president, Archbishop Stanislav Zvolensky of Bratislava, said he counted on a new government to ensure “justice, reconciliation and the protection of human dignity”.
The Vatican has been urged to investigate the running of Poland's Gdansk archdiocese, after repeated complaints of corruption and high-handedness by its leader, Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz. The Wprost weekly reported on Sunday that 16 Catholic priests from the northern see had written to Warsaw-based nuncio, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, protesting their “mean and shabby treatment” by Archbishop Glodz, as well as his failure to respond to accusations of sexual abuse by local clergy. It added that the nuncio had referred the complaint back to Archbishop Glodz, rather than forwarding it to the Vatican, and said a group of Gdansk Catholics had reacted by staging a demonstration on Saturday outside the nunciature. However, a leading Jesuit, Fr Jacek Prusak, told Wprost he believed the complaints against Archbishop Glodz had reached the Pope, who he felt would be forced to act to offset impressions the Church was "sweeping the problems under the carpet, rather than facing up to them".
Russia's Orthodox church has welcomed the outcome of last week's three-day meeting of Orthodox leaders in Jordan on the crisis over Ukraine's new independent Orthodox Church, even though most churches boycotted the event. The Moscow Patriarchate said the aim had been to promote dialogue, which could not be ignored by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its supporters.
Ernesto Cardenal, the poet and cleric who became a symbol of revolutionary verse in Nicaragua and around Latin America, has died at the age of 95 in Managua due to reported heart and kidney problems. Suspended from the priesthood by St John Paul II, Ernesto Cardenal was reinstated by Pope Francis. In 1983, Pope John Paul II publicly confronted Cardenal at Managua's international airport at the beginning of an official visit, where he scolded him for involving himself in politics.
The Brazilian bishops have said they may “challenge” President Jair Bolsonaro after he published a video calling on people to demonstrate outside Congress on 15 March in protest against opposition to his proposals. Launching the Church’s Lenten campaign on Ash Wednesday, the secretary of the conference, Bishop Joel Portella Amado, said: “The Church will be supporting initiatives that preserve democracy. Any other initiative we will need to listen to, understand, and, if necessary, perhaps challenge,” said Bishop Amado. “If we want to defend life, we need to defend dialogue and democracy.”
The French Province of the Dominican Order has established two research groups to assess the career of Fr Thomas Philippe O.P, “Spiritual Father” of Jean Vanier, and in particular to establish why his severe condemnation by the Vatican in 1956 had ceased to be enforced. Nicolas Tixier, Prior of the French province of the Dominicans, announced the investigation on 22 February, in response to the revelations that same day of Vanier’s abusive and manipulative behaviour towards a number of women. Fr Phillippe had been accused of sexual abuse by two women in 1951, condemned by a canonical court in 1956, and forbidden to exercise any ministry, especially in the capacity of spiritual adviser. By the early 1960s, however, he had returned to counselling both men and women in L’Arche, acting as a chaplain and “Spiritual Father” to Vanier. In 2015, a church investigation found he had abused at least 14 women in that role.
The National Coordination of Indigenous Pastoral Care of the Paraguayan Bishops’ Conference released a statement lamenting the violence against indigenous women and girls in the country. The body of 12-year-old Francisca Araújo Cáceres, of the Mbya Guaraní indigenous group, was found on 24 February in the capital Asunción. She had been killed and left at a bus station. Her murder followed several other cases of violence against indigenous women and girls in the city.
By blocking two pro-life bills from going to the floor of the US Senate for a vote, senators “failed to advance two critical human rights reforms that most Americans strongly support,” the chairman of the US bishops’ pro-life committee has said. On 25 February, the Senate voted on motions to advance the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, sponsored by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, sponsored Republican Senator Ben Sasse. Neither measure received the 60 votes needed in the Senate to overcome a filibuster and advance to a vote on passage, largely because of nearly unanimous Democratic opposition to the measures. The Pain-Capable bill, which would protect unborn children from late-term abortions, failed to advance by a vote of 53 to 44. The Born-Alive bill failed to advance by a vote of 56 to 41. It would prohibit infanticide by ensuring that a child born alive following an abortion would receive the same degree of care to preserve her or his life and health as would be given to any other child born alive at the same gestational age. “It is appalling that even one senator, let alone more than 40, voted to continue the brutal dismemberment of nearly full-grown infants, and voted against protecting babies who survive abortion,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
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