Pope Francis has condemned female genital mutilation and trafficking for prostitution. Speaking on the United Nations International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), he said: “This practice, which is unfortunately common in various parts of the world, humiliates the dignity of a woman and gravely attacks her physical integrity.” According to the UN, FGM is concentrated in about 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East but is also practiced by immigrant populations elsewhere, including in the UK. More than four million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM this year, the UN says. Francis called for more efforts to stop human trafficking, particularly of women and girls for forced prostitution. “This is a deep wound inflicted by the shameful search for gain without any respect for the human person,” he said ahead of the Catholic Church’s International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking on Tuesday. In a video posted on his official Twitter account, Francis prompted nuns to work to better the life of the poor and the marginalised, and to fight back against sexism, especially within the Church: “I invite them to fight when, in some cases, they are treated unfairly, even within the Church; when they serve so much that they are reduced to servitude – at times, by the men of the Church.”
Morocco was in shock on Sunday after emergency crews found a five-year-old boy dead at the bottom of a well in a tragic end to a five-day rescue operation. The ordeal of “little Rayan” since he fell down the 100-foot dry well on Tuesday gained global attention. Pope Francis, while mourning the loss of Rayan, praised the beautiful sight of how all the people gathered together to try to save a child. The boy’s father Khaled Aourram said he was repairing the well when his son fell in. The shaft, just 18 inches across, was too narrow for the boy to be reached directly, and widening it was deemed too risky so earth movers dug a wide slope into the hill and then a horizontal connecting tunnel to reach him from the side.
Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop-designate Shelton Fabre as the fifth archbishop and tenth bishop of Louisville, Kentucky. The 58-year-old Fabre replaces Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, who reached the retirement age of 75 last year. Fabre has been the Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana since 2013. He served as chairman of the US bishops’ conference Ad Hoc Committee against Racism. He is one of only two black ordinaries in the US, the other being Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
A faith-based crisis pregnancy centre in New London, Connecticut is challenging a new law in that state which targets pregnancy centres that do not perform abortions. Proponents of the law claim it was needed so that pregnancy centres that do not perform or refer for abortions advertise that they are not a “full-service” facility. The lawsuit alleges the new law is “a speaker-based, viewpoint-based law targeting the speech only of speakers espousing certain pro-life moral, religious, and philosophical beliefs”.
The “Nineveh Fast” was celebrated by Iraq’s Chaldean Church between 7 and 9 February. For three days Chaldeans abstained from food and drink from midnight until noon the next day. Patriarch Louis Sako, Archbishop of Baghdad, said the practice commemorates the fast asked by the Prophet Jonah of the inhabitants of Nineveh, a corrupt city which stood near present-day Mosul, which saved the city from destruction.
Brazil’s Catholic Bishops have joined the call for justice for the murder of a young Congolese beaten to death for asking to be paid for days of work done at a kiosk on one of Rio’s most famous beaches. Moïse Kabagambe, 24, was known to Caritas Brazil which helped him when he first arrived in Brazil. The bishops expressed their solidarity with Moïse's family and the Congolese community in Brazil.
Celebrations have been held in a Nairobi Loreto school to mark the centenary of Loreto in East Africa. Archbishop Martin Kivuva of Mombasa celebrated an open-air centennial Mass, where he named the 12 schools run by Loreto in Kenya, with expansion to Tanzania, South Sudan and Ghana. The President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta, himself a past pupil of a Loreto nursery, sent a representative. Six Irish sisters landed in Mombasa in October 1921 with a mission for education, particularly for girls.
A Catholic priest who was killed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was buried on Saturday. Fr Richard Masivi Kasereka, 34, of Butembo-Beni diocese was assassinated on 2 February while returning to his parish after attending the World Day for Consecrated Life celebrations. He was a priest of Kaseghe parish in North Kivu and was alone in the car. “We condemn very strongly these acts of barbarism, violence, and hatred which continue to sow terror and desolation in our province,” said Fr Jean Claude Musubao Lulonga, Superior of the African Delegation of the Clerics Regular Minor. Fr Kasereka’s death has been blamed on Islamist Allied Democratic Forces.
Nicaragua’s National Assembly, controlled by President Daniel Ortega. has revoked the legal status of five universities, including the Jesuit-run Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, along with a number of Catholic educational and charitable projects. Faced with closure in the Diocese of Estelí are an association of parochial schools, an agricultural institute, a Catholic cultural association, and the Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission. Mgr Carlos Avilés, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua said that retired Estelí Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata "was very critical of the government and denounced many things." "It’s all false and a pretext to repress," Mgr Avilés added. Ortega was re-elected in November last year, but church leaders said the election was fraudulent.
Akash Bashir has become the first "Servant of God" in the history of Pakistan’s Church, and is on the road towards possible canonisation. Pope Francis made the proclamation on 31 January, the feast of St John Bosco. Bashir was a 20-year-old student at the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Lahore when he blocked a suicide bomber from entering St John’s Church in Lahore on 15 March 2015. Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore said, “he gave his life to save more than 1,000 people present in the Church for Sunday Mass.” His last words were, “I will die, but I will not let you in.”
Dalit Christians in southern India were left “disappointed and disheartened” after their meeting with the papal nuncio to India and Nepal to demand an end to caste discrimination within the Church. “He listened to our plight and demands very attentively but he did not commit to anything” reported Mary John, president of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM). The DCLM delegation met Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli on 2 February at Vellore in Tamil Nadu. They particularly appealed for the appointment of a Dalit as the head of the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore, a post currently vacant. There is only one Dalit bishop in the 18 Catholic dioceses of the region even though Dalits comprise about 75 per cent of Catholics.
Reports of abuse were filed against hundreds of clergy members and others in the Church in New Zealand dating back to the 1950s, according to figures released this week to a royal commission. Between 1950 and 2021, there were 1,680 allegations of abuse reported against diocesan clergy and members of Catholic religious orders or associations, according to Te Ropu Tautoko, a group coordinating between the commission – the highest form of investigation in New Zealand – and the Catholic Church.
As April's presidential election nears in France, Tom Heneghan reports that President Emmanuel Macron has turned to religion to woo conservative voters — especially Catholics — that two right-wing rivals are also aiming at. Towards a wider group of Catholic voters, Macron has stressed his support for Middle Eastern Christians by bestowing the Legion of Honour award on Fr. Pascal Gollnisch, the energetic head of France’s L'Oeuvre d'Orient charity that has supported the Catholic minority there since 1856. Three challengers, far right-wingers Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour and centre-right Valérie Pécresse, have also stressed this and other Christian themes in their pursuit of support in the vote expected to re-elect the incumbent president. The Macron government has also unveiled a new policy on Islam, ending its cooperation with the long-squabbling French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) and creating a new, more locally based network called the Forum of French Islam (FORIF). French policy on Islam is mostly about security, which resonates with conservative voters, including many Catholics. Centrists like Macron stress guided integration of Muslims into this secular society while politicians further to the right call for tighter limits on mosques and immigration. While scrapping the CFCM was long overdue, critics say the FORIF risked becoming another failure in almost three decades of official efforts to create a “French Islam” to match the country’s second religion to its laws.
Pope Francis has kept Michel Aupetit, who quit as Archbishop of Paris in December amid rumours of mismanagement and a possible romantic liaison, as a member of the Vatican’s important Congregation for Bishops after what the latter called a “warm exchange” of views, Tom Heneghan writes. Aupetit, who disappeared after his resignation offer was swiftly accepted by the Pope, told Vatican News Francis had called him a “victim of hypocrisy and clericalism” and was worried about the Church in France. He said he told the Pope about his recent activities helping the homeless and handicapped but gave few details or revealed where he lived. The Vatican did not announce the meeting in Rome and has not given an official account of it. Aupetit resigned after media reports accusing him of an increasingly distant and autocratic management style and a possible relationship with a female theologian. Both have denied any wrongdoing. He is the second prominent archbishop to quit recently. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin quit Lyon in 2020 and went to a monastery in Rennes to be a chaplain to an order of nuns and teach at the local seminary.
Pro-life groups in Spain are complaining of a change in the abortion law which they say violates freedom of expression and of religion, writes Filipe Avillez. Left-wing parties approved a law which bans attempts to limit “the exercise of a woman’s right” to abortion, including through “annoying, offensive, intimidating or coercive acts”. Violation of the law could result in a three-month prison sentence. Although the bill does not mention silent prayer vigils, pro-life groups worry that these could be construed by critics as “annoying” or “offensive” and have called the law disproportionate, saying they will challenge it in the country’s Constitutional Court. Speaking at an event before the vote, Jaime Mayor Oreja, of the One of Us movement, said that it is strange that the Government should go out of its way to penalise “such a specific, limited and commendable activity as praying or explaining to mothers what abortion involves”. He criticised what he termed a “sick obsession” of the left with “the culture of death”. All the left-wing parties voted in favour of the law.
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