The Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for bankruptcy protection last week, unable to cope with the collapse of donations due to the coronavirus. Archbishop Gregory Aymond assured the faithful that the cost of sexual abuse settlements came from archdiocesan funds, which are distinct from parish monies raised in weekly collections. The increasing cost of the settlements threatened the archdiocese’s ability to pay additional victims, according to Aymond. Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico announced it had filed a complaint with the Small Business Administration (Sba) which is administering the Payroll Protection grants, enacted to soften the economic blow from the pandemic. The Sba issued a rule saying it would not award grants to corporations in bankruptcy proceedings and the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and has not yet completed the process. The Payroll Protection programme allows corporations with fewer than 500 people to obtain grants to cover their payroll expenses for two months.
Police have arrested members of a criminal gang thought to be responsible for the kidnap and murder of a seminarian from the Catholic Good Shepherd Major Seminary in northern Kaduna State. Eighteen-year-old Michael Nnadi was taken on 9 January, along with three other seminarians who were later released. His death was announced on 1 February. One of the gang has said he was singled out for execution because he kept preaching the Christian Gospel to his Muslim captors.
Poland's Catholic Church is launching a beatification process for the parents of St John Paul II, with the same postulator, Mgr Stanislaw Oder, who led work on the late pontiff's canonisation. The southern Krakow archdiocese said the beatification tribunal, headed by Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski and staffed by local clergy, would begin with a Mass on Thursday in the Blessed Virgin basilica at the couple's Wadowice hometown.
The Church in Tamil Nadu, India, recently backed a new law punishing those who disrupt burials of coronavirus victims. Protesters fear the spread of infection, but they now face three years in jail. “It is a welcome step at a difficult time like this,” said Archbishop Antony Pappusamy of Madurai; “We believe in the dignified burial or cremation of any dead person irrespective of Covid-19.”
The Philippines government has issued rare praise of the Catholic Church for all its efforts and donation drives to help the needy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque on 27 April applauded diocesan and Caritas initiatives to provide emergency food and safety kits. Meanwhile Columban Fr Shay Cullen, head of the Preda Foundation in Olongapo, has called for the release of child prisoners. “Free the Child Prisoners Before They Die” he said, highlighting that children in jails “are weak from malnutrition, asthma, tuberculosis and damaged by physical and sexual abuse and hurt”.
The Archdiocese of Dili in Timor-Leste, or East Timor, has launched a pastoral task force to work with the government on pandemic responses after Archbishop Virgilio do Carmo da Silva met with Prime Minister José Maria Vasconcelos on 28 April, after the predominantly Catholic nation’s state of emergency was extended to 27 May. Archbishop Da Silva reported that priests and religious will work with Caritas in supporting poor families subjected to quarantines and lockdowns.
Catholic churches in Seoul have held their first Masses in two months as South Korea lifts coronavirus restrictions. Some 150 people participated in a Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in central Seoul last weekend. They had to be registered online, to restrict numbers, and had their temperatures checked at the door. Inside, they wore face masks and sat at intervals of several metres. The celebrant said just one “The Body of Christ” and communion was then distributed in the hand to people lining up alongside aisles marked with tape at one metre intervals. There were no hymns. Older and vulnerable people were advised not to come.
Caritas Europa and its member organisations have called on European states to ensure that the rights of migrant farmworkers are respected, specifically that they are provided with decent working conditions and granted legal papers. It says the pandemic has shown the extent to which migrant labourers are essential for harvesting produce. Yet the workers themselves have no rights or protection and have faced travel restrictions over the past two months.
The pro-Beijing Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China has suspended all church activities and traditional Marian pilgrimages throughout May, and delayed the opening of seminaries. Crosses have been taken down from churches in Henan and Anhui dioceses during March and April.
Romania’s Orthodox Church has called public posters depicting medical workers dealing with coronavirus patients as saints an insult to Christian iconography. Church spokesman Vasile Banescu said on 29 April that the posters were not just “a blasphemous act” but also an insult to doctors, who do not think of themselves as “improvised saviours”. Bucharest City Hall is replacing the posters with “images that bring homage to hero doctors without hurting the faith of passers-by”.
The Pope last week sent money to a small community of transgender people living in Torvaianica, central Italy. The community, many of whom are sex workers, had fallen on hard times due to the disruption of the coronavirus outbreak and approached their local parish priest, Fr Andrea Conocchi, for financial help.Fr Conocchi, had provided the 20-strong group with food parcels from Caritas, but was unable to provide further aid and advised the community to request help from the Pope directly.On receiving the request, the Pope directed his Almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, to wire money directly to the group.
Addressing a virtual audience via Vatican Media from the library of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Sunday 3 May Pope Francis called on believers of all religions to pray together on 14 May to ask God to rid the world of the pandemic and emphasised the importance of any vaccine being put together in “a transparent and disinterested way”.
In an interview with Daily Compass on Saturday the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments Cardinal Robert Sarah expressed concern over some of the “negotiations” between Churches and secular authorities over precautions when receiving communion. “The Eucharist is a gift we receive from God and we must receive it in a dignified way. We are not at the supermarket,” he said. On distancing arrangements in Germany, he said: “Unfortunately, many things are done in Germany that are not Catholic, but that doesn't mean you have to imitate them.” On livestreaming of Masses, he said: “God became incarnate, He is flesh and blood, He is not a virtual reality. In Mass the priest has to look at God, instead he is getting used to looking at the camera, as if it were a show. We cannot go on like this.”
The leader of the Knights of Malta, who had set about reforming the eleventh-century military order after healing a rift between the order and the Vatican, has died. Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto was 75 and had been diagnosed with “an incurable disease” several months ago, the Knights said in a statement.
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