Abune Merkorios, the Fourth Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church was buried on Sunday 13 March at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, following his death on 4 March. He was 84. On Saturday, church leaders, senior government officials and thousands of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians gathered in Maskel Square in Addis Ababa to pay their respects.
The Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Porto, in Portugal, was arrested briefly over suspicions of corruption related to the concession of Portuguese citizenship to descendants of Sephardi Jews expelled in the late fifteenth Century. According to the law, approved in 2015, the certification of descent is carried out by the Jewish communities of Lisbon and of Porto, which are independent of each other. Under the decree, thousands have acquired Portuguese citizenship, which comes with a European Union passport. The fact that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich had been approved in 2021 came as some surprise, since there are hardly any Sephardi Jews in Russia. Questions on the legality of this and other approvals prompted a state investigation which resulted in the arrest. According to Portuguese police, Rabbi Daniel Litvak is suspected of corruption, forgery, money laundering and tax fraud. He was taken into custody on Friday, 11 March, as he was preparing to leave the country, and released after questioning in the early hours of Saturday. Litvak, who is Argentinian, had to surrender his passport and cannot leave the country. Although Abramovich has been sanctioned by the British Government over his ties with President Vladimir Putin, his Portuguese passport has protected him from EU measures. However, if it is discovered that he obtained his citizenship through fraudulent means he may be stripped of his citizenship.
Ethiopia’s bishops say they have never been silent about the war in the northern region of Tigray. “Since the day the war broke out, the Catholic Church in Ethiopia did not keep silent and makes continuous statements denouncing the war, loss of lives, displacement, loss of property and the all the consequences,” the bishops said on 8 March. The statement followed criticism from Bishop Tesfasellasie Medhin of Adigrat in Tigray, who asked the Ethiopian Catholic Church to end its silence about atrocities in Tigray.
Catholic bishops in Malawi have raised their concern over what they described in a 6 March statement as rampant corruption in the southern African nation. The bishops were marking the 30th anniversary of their 1992 pastoral letter that criticised former President Hastings Kamuzu Banda's one-party state under the Malawi Congress Party. The letter contributed to the achievement of multi-party democracy in Malawi. “Loss of public trust in law enforcement agencies and the judiciary fuels mob justice, public anger and is a recipe for civil disorder,” the bishops warned.
The Anglican Archbishop of Capetown, Thabo Makgoba, has called on the South African government to “condemn unequivocally” the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying it is a flagrant breach of Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter. “After all the support the UN gave us in the struggle against apartheid, it is unthinkable that we should approve such a flagrant violation of a central tenet of the UN Charter,” he said. He was pleased the government had called on both Russia and Ukraine to pursue diplomatic efforts to find a solution. Archbishop Makgoba was preaching on Ash Wednesday in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town. Afterwards, he joined a silent protest on the cathedral steps against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Sixteen parishes of Loikaw Diocese in Kayah state, Myanmar, have been totally abandoned due to escalating conflict between military and rebel forces. Airstrikes and artillery shelling have forced nearly two-thirds of the 90,000 Catholics in Kayah state to flee their villages, seeking refuge in the jungle or churches in neighbouring villages and towns. On 10 March a convent in Kayah state used as a retirement home and hospital for elderly nuns was badly damaged by an airstrike.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Prefect ad interim of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, met refugees at the Hungary-Ukraine border last week and saw the church’s relief work first-hand. Hungary’s Catholic Bishops have reported large diocesan contributions to the support of some 200,000 Ukrainian refugees who have entered Hungary during March. The Barabás aid centre gives food, drink and medical assistance. Caritas Hungary has a tent at the Keleti railway station in Budapest, where volunteers from Caritas in the Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest help refugees. In Gyor Diocese, Caritas runs an aid centre helping to find accommodation. The Dioceses of Szeged-Csanád and Szombathely are among those running appeals for funds, organising longer-term care of refugees, offering legal advice and running minibuses for transport.
A 20-year-old woman has been killed in Erbil, Iraq, by her own relatives for converting to Christianity. It was announced on International Women’s Day that Maria Eman Sami Maghdid, was stabbed to death by her uncle, in complicity with her brother. Conversion from Islam to Christianity and the decision to use a new name, Maria, along with her promotion of women’s rights and freedoms on social media led her family to murder her. They had forced her to marry at the age of 12 a man from whom she separated four years later. In the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, female victims of honour killings are thought to number in the thousands over the past three decades.
Archbishop Boutros Marayati, Head of the Armenian Catholic Archdiocese of Aleppo, Syria, is pushing local church leaders and representatives of Catholic charitable organisations to ensure that aid sent to Syria is well organised, arrives at the right destination and reaches the poorest people. A conference held in Damascus attended by the papal nuncio Cardinal Mario Zenari, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, and many Catholic bishops – discussed initiatives to better support Christian communities in the Middle East and encourage young people not to emigrate. Archbishop Marayati expressed concern that “the distribution of resources arriving from outside seems chaotic” and that “the most enterprising may be able to collect aid from various sources, while the less prepared, who often have the greatest needs, receive nothing.”
As the 9 May polling day nears in the Philippines presidential election, a Christian pastor’s blessing of presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late Philippines dictator, at a political rally on 8 March has drawn ire from Catholic groups including the Saint Lorenzo Ruiz lay organisation. A pastor of Jesus Christ the Deliverer church said the Marcos Jr candidacy, alongside President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter for vice-president, was offering “genuine” unity for the Filipino people.
Two new bishops are to be consecrated and appointed to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem by Pope Francis. According to Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin primate of Jerusalem, Fr Jamal Deibes will continue his mission as Patriarchal Vicar for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Fr Rafic Nahra, who has great knowledge of the Jewish world, as Patriarchal Vicar for Israel.
Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres, who was relieved on Wednesday last week of his office as Bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, said that he feels “blessed to suffer persecution and calumny”. In a letter published on the website of the Diocese of Arecibo, shortly after the Holy See Press Office announced the Pope’s decision, Bishop Fernández Torres, 57, stated that “today I can hold my head high and even being imperfect and sinful, know that I have done the right thing and that gives me a lot of inner peace.” The bishop stressed that this experience “has helped me realise in a new way the grave responsibility that all bishops have in the government of the Church, which is apostolic and not pyramidal, synodal and not autocratic.” Bishop Fernández Torres supported conscientious objection to compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 in an August 2021 statement.
The Vatican on Saturday expressed “surprise and pain” at Nicaragua’s expulsion of the papal nuncio. The church said in a statement that Nicaragua’s action against Polish Mgr Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag was “grave and unjustified”. It noted he had functioned as a formal witness during government talks with the opposition. The government has made no statement about the nuncio's departure.
In the context of the Ignatian year a solemn Eucharist was held on Saturday 12 March at the Church of the Gesù in Rome to mark the fourth centenary of the canonisation of Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Isidore the Farmer, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Jesus and Philip Neri. The Mass was presided over by Fr Arturo Sosa Abascal, S.J., Provost General of the Society of Jesus and Vice-Chancellor of the Pontifical Gregorian University, in the presence of Pope Francis, who preached a homily on the Gospel of the Day, Jesus’ Transfiguration.
Loading ...
