Cardinal Christian Tumi, Archbishop Emeritus of Douala, was freed a day after being kidnapped by gunmen on 5 November in Cameroon's North West region. “Glory be to God for Cardinal Tumi has been freed by the Separatist fighters,” announced Bishop George Nkuo of Kumbo diocese. “He is fine and in good health.” The 90-year-old Cardinal was ambushed as he travelled in a road convoy between Bamenda and Kumbo. He has been vocal in calling for dialogue and peace amidst the four-year-long conflict in the English-speaking North West and South West regions of the country.
Medical experts have said that Arzoo Raja, the Karachi teenager at the centre of a forced conversion and marriage case in Pakistan, is no older than 14, leading judges to declare on Monday that it would appear to be a child marriage. Sindh law prohibits the marriage of anyone under the age of 18. What has yet to be determined is if Arzoo Raja freely converted. She has been ordered to remain in a shelter home until the next hearing on 23 November. Her abductor remains in police custody. In a statement last Sunday, a Christian committee for justice and human rights, headed by Cardinal Joseph Coutts, strongly condemned the alleged kidnapping, and forced conversion and marriage.
A Polish archdiocese has apologised and promised to make amends to victims, after its former leader, Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz, was banned from further public appearances and denied the right to a cathedral funeral after being implicated in sexual abuse. “That this matter has been taken up, clarified and pursued to the end shows there is no concession in the Church for such a crime,” the western Wroclaw archdiocese said in a statement. “We may be talking about deeds which took place decades ago, but they will never be considered to have expired.”
A Vatican nunciature decree also barred 97-year-old Gulbinowicz, the oldest of Poland's six cardinals, from using episcopal insignia, and ordering him to pay an “appropriate sum” to the St Joseph Foundation set up a year ago by the Polish Bishops Conference to help abuse victims and co-ordinate prevention and protection.
The Church’s Caritas agencies are supporting victims of Hurricane Eta, an unusually powerful storm which hit Central America on 3 November, leaving scores dead and hundreds missing. The Bishops’ Conference of Honduras launched an appeal for solidarity after city streets in many places were transformed into rivers.
On Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, strong winds ripped roofs off buildings. Fr Francisco Chavarría, Caritas director in Nicaragua, reported working with parishes along the Coco River where “families have been left with nothing”. In Guatemala, where at least 150 have been killed, local infrastructure collapsed with many buried under mudslides. Caritas has distributed food, hygiene supplies and portable shelters to survivors.
Covid-19 has hit the densely populated Zaatari refugee camp, the largest in Jordan, which hosts 76,000 refugees who fled Syria due to conflict there. Médecins Sans Frontières announced last week that it has opened a centre for the treatment of mild or moderate cases, with 30 beds available.
Worshippers wearing protective masks attended a Mass on All Saints' Day at the Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Baghdad to mark the tenth anniversary of a 31 October 2010 church massacre where 58 people were killed by al-Qaeda. Commemorating the killings, during an evening Mass at Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said: “Our martyrs are the torches of faith that illuminate our paths of life and ignite in us the fire of love toward everyone”.
On the fifth anniversary of the tailings dam collapse at the Samarco mine in Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Bishop Vicente de Paula Ferreira, Auxiliary in Belo Horizonte, offered ongoing "solidarity with all those affected". As head of the Bishops’ Commission for Mineral Extraction and Integral Ecology he called for the mining companies responsible to provide, “medical, psychological, economic and social rehabilitation of individuals and communities”. On 3 November 2015, an avalanche of mine waste killed 19 people and contaminated 415 miles of rivers and watersheds. The dam was owned by Vale, a Brazilian company, and BHP, an Anglo-Australian mining giant listed on the London Stock Exchange.
After Chileans voted in favour of drafting a new constitution, the process has started to select representatives and discuss its contents. The Apostolic Vicar of Aysén, Mgr. Luis Infanti de la Mora, spoke this week in favour of including the right to water in the new constitution, pointing out that large agricultural companies and other industries have preferential access to water and that people's daily needs are not always met.
Thousands marched this week in Port-au-Prince, after a teenage girl's body was found on Sunday 1 November. Evelyne Sincère had been kidnapped and her family was not able to pay the ransom demanded. Details of Sincère’s murder have not been released, but a video of her sister crying over her body sparked outrage in the country. Civil society groups have recorded 162 kidnappings during 2020.
The Haitian Bishops’ Conference, in a statement earlier this year following another high-profile murder, wrote that the Haitian people, “want and immediately call for concrete and strong actions to definitively eradicate the insecurity and impunity which increases their misery and despair. Enough is enough!”
A group of Catholic nuns has accused Poland's mass-circulation Gazeta Wyborcza daily of defamation and appealed for human rights arbitration, after the paper alleged that the country's religious sisters were mainly relegated to cooking, cleaning and collecting post for priests, and for bishops living “in palaces”.. “We treat these words as discrimination against women and an insult to nuns, who live according to the charism of their order in line with their convictions,” said the nuns from the St Elizabeth order, which runs schools, orphanages and special needs facilities in Poland, with branches in Africa, Latin America, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
A half-British teenager has been beatified as a martyr in Spain, more than eight decades after he was murdered by republican militia during the Civil War for his work as a member of the Federation of Young Christians. Cardinal Juan Omella of Barcelona, president of the Spanish Bishops Conference, said: "He was committed, body and soul, to building a civilisation of love, and to fighting for justice, peace and solidarity. This young martyr recognised the wish to transform society, not through violence, but through the Gospel embodied in the Church's social doctrine". The cardinal was preaching at Saturday's beatification Mass for Joan Roig Diggle (1917-1936), attended in Barcelona's Sagrada Familia basilica by the nuncio, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, and members of the teenager's family.
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