A Catholic women’s group in India has urged church authorities to protect a rape complainant nun, her companions and witnesses after Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar was acquitted of all charges including raping a nun from the Missionaries of Jesus (MJ) congregation by a court in Kerala on 14 January. The judge said the prosecution could not prove the allegations. Sisters in Solidarity, a group comprising nuns, doctors, lawyers and other professionals, said that “they are in deep shock, disappointment and disbelief at the ‘not guilty’ verdict”.
The University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University in the US were the only two Catholic schools named in a lawsuit alleging they, and 14 other non-Catholic universities, violated anti-trust laws by improperly conspiring to fix financial aid formulas so as to favour the children of alumni and other wealthy applicants gain admission. The suit was filed as a class-action suit by former students at Duke, Northwestern and Vanderbilt universities, all of which were named in the complaint.
Democrats for Life of America (Dfla) announced that their annual breakfast in advance of the March for Life was being relocated from a popular bookstore-café in Washington, D.C., Busboys and Poets, after the management of the café cancelled the group’s reservation. A spokesperson for the restaurant’s management said it “stands firmly on the belief that women have the right to make their own reproductive health decisions” and wants to provide a “safe space” for their clients. Dfla’s executive director, Kristen Day said, “Americans need to know what this cancel culture and top-down hostility towards the life movement results in. It results in bullying, discrimination, and cancellation.” She announced the group would be holding their breakfast at a different venue.
Attacking houses of worship and religious art is akin to attacking the community who prays there, said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York ahead of Religious Freedom Day, observed on 16 January. “For nearly two years, the US bishops have noticed a disturbing trend of Catholic churches being vandalised and statues being smashed,” said Dolan on 14 January. Religious Freedom Day commemorates the 1786 passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
The latest Austrian church statistics published in the second week of January show that 72, 055 Catholics left the Church in 2021, an increase of almost 23 per cent. The only time more Catholics left the Church was in the abuse “tsunami” year of 2010 as the wave of clerical sex abuses cases swept over the German-speaking countries, when 86.000 Austrian Catholics officially left. There are now 4.83m Catholics in Austria (pop 8.92m), a drop of 1.6 per cent compared to 2020 when there were 4.91m. It is possible to count the figures because there is a small compulsory church tax, introduced in 1939, that Catholics can opt out of if they wish to leave the Church; 4301 people became Catholic or re-entered the Church in 2021.
Pope Francis speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace on 16 January asked Catholics to offer up their sufferings this week for Christian unity. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity takes place from 18-25 January. (See View from Rome) Meanwhile Archbishop Rino Fisichella said on 13 January that Pope Francis approved “Pilgrims of Hope” as the motto for the Holy Year 2025. The archbishop is president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, which is in charge of the Holy Year planning efforts.
The loved ones of Tonga residents are waiting anxiously for news from the island since a tsunami caused by a massive underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano on Saturday 15 January cut the Pacific island's communication infrastructure, damaging the undersea fibre optic cable. Fr Ita Koloamatangi of the Tongan Catholic Chaplaincy of Australia said, "In my little country the main island is very flat. I can't see a place where they could run to and that really makes me worried." Tonga's deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu'ihalangingie, said Tonga was concerned about the risk of aid deliveries spreading Covid-19 to the island, which is Covid-free.
Malik Faisal Akram, 44, from Blackburn, Lancashire, was shot dead on Saturday after holding four hostages including the rabbi at Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. During the standoff Bishop Michael F. Olson of Fort Worth made an urgent request to Catholics to pray for those involved in the hostage situation. Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted: “Prayers answered. All hostages are out alive and safe,” after an 11-hour standoff.
Police in Okara, Punjab, Pakistan, arrested Muhammad Arif and two alleged accomplices on 10 January after a 16-year-old Christian girl from Okara was abducted and repeatedly raped. Arif and the accomplices reportedly took the girl to Faisalabad, where Arif raped her several times, before releasing her. The girl was unable to speak after her release because she was so traumatised by what the men did to her.
A bishop in the southern Italian region of Basilicata is facing charges of embezzlement for arranging his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a time when it was available exclusively to healthcare personnel. According to local newspaper La Nuova del Sud, Potenza Archbishop Salvatore Ligorio has been charged by the Potenza prosecutor’s office with embezzlement for receiving his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine when it was still not available to the general population.
Pope Francis sparked excitement on social media when he paid a surprise visit to the Stereo Sound record shop in Rome on Tuesday evening last week. According to Javier Martinez-Brocal, a reporter for the Rome Reports news agency who filmed the encounter and posted it on Twitter, the shop’s owners told him that their relationship with the Pope stretched back to when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. The then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio would buy records from the store when visiting Rome. Presented with a classical music record by the shop-owner’s daughter, Francis stayed just over 10 minutes, and arrived and left in a white Fiat 500 with Vatican number plates.
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