Next month Pope Francis will be the first pope to visit Iraq Patriarch Louis Sako of the Chaldean Catholic Church says the visit is a sign of rebirth for Iraqand the ancient biblical lands of Mesopotamia. Patriarch Louis Sako of the Chaldean Catholic Church says the visit is a sign of rebirth for Iraq. The official welcome on Friday 5 March will start the Presidential Palace in Baghdad.After a greeting with President of Iraq, Barham Salih, he will meet bishops, priests, and other Catholics at Baghdad’s Syrian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation. On Saturday 6 March, Pope Francis will leave for Najaf and meet the country’s top Shia religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Following an interreligious meeting at the Plain of Ur he will return to Baghdad and celebrate mass at the Chaldean Cathedral of St Joseph.On Sunday 7 March, Pope Francis will visit Erbil and Mosul in Northern Iraq with their significant Christian minorities, meeting the Christian community in Qaraqosh in the Nineveh Plains, followed by Mass in Erbil. The Pope will then depart for Baghdad, returning to Rome on Monday morning.
Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, has welcomed global solidarity following Myanmar’s military coup on 1 February. He has also applauded the followers of all religions in Myanmar - Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindus – for joining hundreds of peaceful anti-coup protests nationwide. Cardinal Bo has been sharing on twitter support from the Jesuits in Manila, Cardinal Vincent Nichols in England and Wales and other Catholic solidarity. And shared images from processions within the country, “in support of the civil disobedience movement” by priests and religious in the Dioceses of Kengtung andHakha and Mandalay Catholic Youth.Hundreds of Catholics, including dozens of nuns, marched on the streets of Yangon last Sunday reciting prayers and the Rosary. The same day, in Kachin State, nuns stood at the entrance of a church compound holding placards stating “No to dictatorship”
Last weekend, Cardinal Bo highlighted that Myanmar’s military was kidnapping people at night. The widespread protests have now prompted a backlash with Myanmar's military warning that anti-coup protesters could face up to 20 years in prison.
The Catholic Church inBelarushas recommended reforming the country's constitution, or Basic Law, to include provisions upholding "traditional family values", as a senior government official met the Pope and pledged closer ties with the Vatican. The Church's new agency said the reform proposals had been tabled at Belarus's annual People's Assembly, which was launched on 11 February by President Alexander Lukashenko and includes the Dominican Bishop Kazimir Velikoselets, administrator of the Minsk-Mohilev archdiocese on its presidium.
The Church had suggested making "matters relating to family values and family policy" a priority in national legislation and public policy, along with heterosexual marriage, the right to life "from conception to natural death", and the "exclusive right" of parents "to bring up their children as they see fit, unless this is contrary to law". The proposals were tabled as Belarus's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Aleinik, met Pope Francis at the Vatican on 8 February.
The Argentinian-Slovenian Lazarist missionary Fr Pedro Opeka and his humanitarian association “Akamasoa” (“City of Friendship”) have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Janez Janša for their work among the poor of Madagascar.Pope Francis visited the community in September 2019 during his Apostolic Journey to Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius.
Fr Amedeo Cencini, Pontifical Delegate to the Boseecumenical community, has ordered its founder Enzo Bianchi to leave the monastery by 16 February. In order to avoid any more delaying tactics, Father Cencini ordered Bose to vacate its monks from one of its houses in Tuscany and make it available to the founder.
Fratel Enzo, who will soon be 78, ignored an instruction to leave the monastery's premises last May after a Vatican investigation found the community was experiencing “serious problems” related to the founder’s “exercise of authority”.
On Sunday the Order of Friars Minor celebrated the 600th anniversary of Pope Martin V instituting the Commissaries of the Holy Landon 14 February 1421. In a message for the anniversary Pope Francis said: “The mission of the commissaries is still relevant: to support, promote and enhance the mission of the Custody of the Holy Land by making a network of ecclesial, spiritual and charitable relationships that have as their focal point the land where Jesus lived.”
CardinalMalcolmRanjith of Colombo has voiced dissatisfaction with the presidential commission probing the Easter Sunday 2019 terrorist atrocity in Sri Lanka. He asked for a copy of the special presidential probe report after it was submitted to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa last month but was told it was not yet public. The Cardinal warned that if little appeared to be happening, “there are international organisations abroad and we will act accordingly, seeking their assistance in order to achieve some justice”.Nine suicide bombers belonging to local Islamist group National Thawheed Jamaat, linked to Islamic State, carried out devastating explosions that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels on 21 April 2019, killing 258 people.
A group of Spanish lawyers has launched petitions and lawsuits to prevent removal of crosses by local officials after claims that Christian symbols are linked to the country's former dictatorship. “Many towns are being pressured to get rid of public crosses,” said Maria Riesco of the Association of Christian Lawyers, expressing concern about strict regulations at regional levels. "Some state that any cross in a public place, whatever its inscription, exalts Franco's regime and must be taken down," she said.The Valladolid-based association has announced legal proceedings against the mayor of Aguilar de la Frontera, near Cordoba, for demolishing a cross outside the town's Carmelite convent.
Pope Francis and Indianbishops have expressed grief over a flash flood on 7 February that killed at least 49 people in northern India’s Himalayan region, with 155 people still missing under mud.Ahuge glacier collapsed into a river in Uttarakhand State, causing a surge of water which swept away houses, bridges, roads, and two hydropower dams.
“I express my closeness to the victims of the calamity,” Pope Francis said on 10 February. Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, president of the India Bishops’ Conference offered condolences, saying “Caritas India will render all assistance we can.”
Organisations representing Bangladesh’sminority religious groups have requested the reading of scriptures of all the four major religions of the country at the beginning of parliamentary sessions and state ceremonies. The demand comes from the “Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council”. Parliamentary sessions and state programs in Muslim-majority Bangladesh currently begin with a recitation from the Qu’ran. Bangladesh the 50th anniversary of its independence next month.
In his Lenten message, Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar of Damascushas described Syria as “like a ship sinking in a storm,”destroyed by war and economic sanctions.He says the country has been destroyed "down to its foundations," but affirmed that the local Church is helping with reconstruction in healthcare, education, and pastoral care of young people. The country has 6 million refugees and another 6 million are internally displaced, “living in misery and uncertainty”, while 95,000 people have amputated hands and feet or paralysis with “psychological and medical” problems; and “innumerable dwellings are damaged or destroyed.”
President Joe Biden announced he was reestablishing the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which his predecessor, Donald Trump, had allowed to lapse. He was appointing Melissa Rogers as executive director of the office, a post she held during President Barack Obama’s second term. Incoming Domestic Policy Council chair Susan Rice reportedly opposed re-establishing the office as a full member in the council. Rogers is a Baptist known for strict separationist views on church-state issues.
Bishop John Brungardt of Dodge City, Kansas has stepped aside from leading his diocese while civil and religious authorities investigate an allegation the bishop sexually molested a minor. Brungardt has denied the allegation. The 62-year old bishop is the first to step aside while an investigation under the terms of the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundiis undertaken.
The charity Aid to the Church in Needhas strongly condemned the behaviour of its founder Fr Werenfried van Straaten after an accusation of sexual assault was published in the German weekly ZEIT. Van Straaten died in 2003. In 2010, a woman made a “plausible” allegation of historic sexual abuse and was awarded €16,000 “in recognition of the suffering”. ACN said that those responsible at the charity “followed the procedure recommended for the ecclesiastical sector in Germany” regarding cases of abuse.In a statement, international executive president Dr Thomas Heine-Geldern said: “ACN is dismayed by the serious accusations published in the ZEIT supplement Christ und Welt on 10.02.2021 in connection with the founder of the organisation, Father Werenfried van Straaten. The organisation completely condemns the kin kind of behaviour of which Father van Straaten is accused in the article.”
The US Bishops’ conferencehas called on the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to migrants from four Central American countries that were devastated by two successive hurricanes late last year. Bishop Mario Dorsonville, chair of the committee on migration and Bishop David Malloy, chair of the committee on international justice and peace in a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary for Homeland Security, said the US had a moral responsibility to offer humanitarian assistance for the foreign nationals. TPS allows foreign nationals to stay in the US and indefinitely extends work permits for them if their countries of origin are deemed unsafe for return
Several orders of religious women have signed a statement of support for LGBT youthdrafted by the Tyler Clementi Foundation, an organisation dedicated to fighting bullying and stigmatization and named for a young gay man who committed suicide. The Benedictine Sister of Chicago, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, the Sisters of Loretto, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville, Kentucky and the U.S. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph all signed the document.
Francis finds solution for polarised Swiss diocese of Chur
On 15 February, Pope Francis appointed Fr Joseph Maria Bonnemain, 72, as the new Bishop of Chur.
Last November, the 22 members of the Chur cathedral chapter refused all three candidates proposed by Francis.
Fr Bonnemain is a member of Opus Dei known for his moderation and potential as a bridge builder.
The Swiss bishops’ conference immediately expressed its great joy at Bonnemain’s appointment and thanked him for his 18-year-long “courageous and prudent” support as secretary of the conference’s commission on “sexual assault in the church environment”.
Loading ...
