Hundreds of thousands of anti-coup protesters filled the streets of Myanmar’s cities on Monday following calls for a nationwide strike against the military takeover. The junta has warned that confrontation could cost lives, and last week Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, appealed directly to the military to spare the lives of protesters. Organisers named the civil action the “Five Twos revolutoion” after the date 22.2.2021. Monday’s rallies followed the deaths of three protesters over the weekend, two of them shot when the security forces opened fire on striking ship workers in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city. Another man was shot in Yangon while taking part in civilian patrols to prevent night-time arrests. In a broadcast on the state-run MRTV on Sunday night, the army accused the National League for Democracy party of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, of “inciting violent clashes”.
In separate Ash Wednesday homilies, Catholic bishops advised Nigerians to use Lent to pray for peace and stability. "We are in a real mess in Nigeria,” said Bishop Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo of Oyo. “Corruption, bad governance, barefaced falsehood in official circles, nepotism, perversion of justice, theft of public funds, incessant kidnap for ransom, unemployment, wickedness in high and low places are all claiming victims every day.”
The Vatican issued a statement last week on vaccination of employees in Vatican City State that is “intended to allow a flexible and proportionate response while striking a balance between protecting collective health and individual freedom of choice, without being oppressive for the employee.” The Governorate specified that certain jobs may require vaccination, “in work activities related to service to the public, interactions with third parties, or those posing risks to the safety of other employees”. Voluntary adherence to a vaccination programme must take into account the risk that any refusal by a person concerned may pose a risk to him or herself, to others, and to the working environment, the statement said. “For this reason, protecting the community may include — for those who refuse vaccination in the absence of health reasons — the adoption of measures that both minimises the danger at issue and allows alternative work solutions to be found for the interested party.”The note states that this health regulation should be considered a “tool that is neither sanctioning or punitive in nature in any case”.
Catholic bishops in South Korea and Japan have issued a joint statement opposing the Japanese government’s decision to dump radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the marine environment from 2022. Years of debate have followed the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima regarding the disposal of water used to cool the facility and currently held in tanks. “We oppose the release of water containing tritium, a radioactive material that has been purified and treated, into the ocean,” said the statement, and, “we have a responsibility to hand over to future generations a global environment where we can truly live safely and with peace of mind.”
Catholic peace activists are mourning the death of Sr Dianna Ortiz, an Ursuline nun who was tortured by the Guatemalan military in 1989 and worked most recently asdeputy executive director of Pax Christi USA. She died of cancer in Washington on 19 February at the age of 62. The Guatemalan military’s abduction, gang rape and torture of Sr Ortiz became a global news story when she claimed an American with ties to the U.S. Embassy had been complicit in her ordeal. She was a prominent advocate of survivors of state-sanctioned violence.
A Vatican delegation visited the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, on Monday ahead of Pope Francis’ scheduled meeting with the country’s top Shia religious leader in a week’s time. Pope Francis is to visit Iraq from 5-8 March for the first-ever papal trip to the country. He will support interfaith dialogue and the beleaguered Christian community which has been reduced to 400,000 by successive conflicts since 2003. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said on 18 February in a meeting with the Council of Heads of Christian communities, "Iraq is not Iraq without Christians".
Peru’s interim president announced on February 15 that 487 people had received the coronavirus vaccine produced by the Chinese state company Sinopharm in violation of the established vaccination plans. Those who received the vaccine include former President Martin Vizcarra, who was replaced in November by Francisco Sagasti. In Peru’s protocol, health care workers and the elderly are the first to have access to the vaccine. However, the country received a shipment of the Chinese vaccine in September for clinical trials. Doses intended for people associated with the trial were then given to public figures, including Vizcarra, his wife and brother, and the Nuncio, Italian Archbishop Nicola Girasoli. Archbishop Carlos Castillo of Lima lamented Girasoli’s actions, saying his explanations so far have not been sufficient and that the news was “sad and angering.” Girasoli released a statement saying that he was vaccinated because of his role as an “ethics consultant” with the university running the clinical trial. Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete and Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti have both stepped down after it was revealed they had received the vaccine ahead of their turn.
Pope Francis paid a surprise visit to Edith Bruck, a Holocaust survivor who has devoted her life to telling the story of surviving the Nazi concentration camps. The Pope asked to meet the Hungarian-born author, poet and film writer after reading an interview she gave to Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano about her experiences during the Second World War. At their meeting, which took place at the 89-year-old’s apartment in central Rome on Saturday 20 February, Francis asked forgiveness for the atrocities that were wrought on the Jewish people.
The Colombian port city of Buenaventura has been experiencing a wave of violence since late December. Homicides were up 200 per cent in January in the city, whose population is majority Afro-Colombian. Hundreds of people have been displaced from their homes as organised criminal groups fight for territory. Since a general strike in 2017, the population of Buenaventura has called on the national government to improve access to basic services in the region. They say that while the city’s port has generated significant economic activity for the country, the people who live there are ignored. President Ivan Duque has largely been silent about the violence linked to organised crime in the city. Rubén Darío Jaramillo, the bishop of Buenaventura, has said in interviews that people in the city do not trust the authorities and that criminal groups are in control. “The state must provide holistic support to the population, because there are large criminal gangs that are linked to international organised crime,” said Jaramillo.
The Bishop of Dresden-Meissen, Heinrich Timmerevers, wants to flatten the grave of a parish priest in his diocese accused of sexually abusing children. “I think flattening the grave a good idea. It is a natural consequence and absolutely appropriate as the grave could retraumatise people”, Timmerevers told the Sächsische Zeitungon 20 February. The priest in question, Fr Herbert Jungnitsch (1898-1971), was parish priest of the Catholic parish St Georg in Heidenau for many years. According to parish records he was guilty of seriously sexually abusing “at least four” children. Members of the parish and church employees were said to have been co-involved in the abuse. “Many older parishioners still remember Fr Jungnitsch as a charismatic priest. It will not be easy to convince them that he was guilty of massive violence against and sexual abuse of children,” vicar-general Andreas Kutschke said in a statement on 20 february. “Together, we must try to find a way of naming the perpetrators, listening to the victims and recognising their suffering.”
While 2020 will be a pandemic-induced loss year for the French church, it appears that parishioners who cannot contribute to collections at Mass have boosted their giving to the separate annual denier du cultecollection. Dioceses have reported that these direct donations increased by up to 20 percent last year and the number of donors, which had been slowly falling in recent years, went back up.Full accounting is not yet available but these increased funds and lower operating costs have helped stave off the worst financial effects of the pandemic, Church economic officials say.
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