A graphic demonstration by sexual abuse activists near the Vatican embassy to Italy on 27 May demanded action on abuse in the Italian Catholic Church. Protesters stood outside the Apostolic Nunciature building in central Rome, carrying boards with pictures of men and women with “blood-stained” underwear. “The greatest wish is that other children do not suffer what we have experienced,” said activist Francesco Zanardi. His campaign group, “Beyond the Great Silence”, aims to pressurise Italy’s Church to agree to an independent investigation. Italian bishops are divided over how such an investigation should be organised.
Christians in eastern China who wish to travel abroad for various reasons including studies report the authorities are denying them passports, citing travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In Zhejiang’s Wenzhou city, authorities have reportedly rejected passport applications of many students seeking overseas education. “Students from Wenzhou with a church background had been planning to go and study at overseas universities, but the government has refused to give them passports,” said Zhu, a Christian who would be identified only by his surname.
A handful of bishops announced that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would be barred from receiving Holy Communion in their diocese because of the ban imposed on her by San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. Bishops Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas and Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia said they would honour Cordileone’s decree in their dioceses, although Pelosi is unlikely to attend Mass in those jurisdictions. Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa, California, also announced he would impose the ban on Pelosi in his diocese north of San Francisco, where Pelosi has a holiday home near St Helena parish in the town of the same name.
The executive secretary of the women’s International Union of Superiors General was in Davos, Switzerland, in late May for the World Economic Forum gathering. Loreto Sister Patricia Murray participated in an event for business leaders and representatives of nongovernmental organisations. One discussion was around financial support for religious orders working with migrants and refugees to start small businesses and run training programmes. Meanwhile Davos participant Fr Leonir Chiarello, the Superior General of the Scalabrinian Missionaries, told Vatican News in Davos the Church has already been at the forefront of many WEF agenda items. Themes at Davos included climate and nature, health and healthcare and global cooperation.
Catholic communities in Newfoundland, Canada, are struggling to save their parishes, as 18 of the 34 parishes of the Archdiocese of Saint John’s are up for sale. The archdiocese has launched a public competitive bid process for properties – including the archdiocesan cathedral complex - to raise funds to compensate more than 100 victims of sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last year the archdiocese was liable for costs of abuse at the now-closed orphanage, operated by the Christian Brothers of Ireland, who claimed bankruptcy.
Syria’s collapsing economy is so bad that “many, many people are really hungry and they don’t have even one meal a day,” according to the Sisters of Jesus and Mary representative for Lebanon and Syria. Sr Annie Demerjian has told Aid to the Church in Need that even for Syrians who are employed, the monthly salary of a family is barely sufficient for one week. She cited Cardinal Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to Syria, saying that 85 per cent of the population is now under the poverty line. Sr Demerjian added, however that, “the churches are full, packed with people praying with a trust that they depend totally on God’s hand, and like us they feel that one day light will come from this darkness.”
“Martyrdom is normal in our Church,” said Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen at a Mass following his court appearance on 24 May. “We may not have to do that, but we may have to bear some pain and steel ourselves for our loyalty to our faith,” he added. Around 300 people attended the Mass, which was live-streamed and received thousands of views. Earlier in the day the 90-year-old retired Catholic bishop of Hong Kong pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to register a pro-democracy association. His trial is scheduled to begin on 19 September. Meanwhile for the first time in 33 years, church services to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown will not be held in Hong Kong, erasing one of the last reminders of China’s 4 June bloody suppression of the 1989 protests.
A prominent traditionalist Catholic, refused ordination by numerous bishops, has been suspended after he was ordained in a clandestine ceremony by an unnamed “senior prelate”. Dom Alcuin Reid is a liturgical scholar, the prior of a monastic community in the south of France and a vocal critic of Pope Francis’ decision to restrict celebrations of the pre-1962 or "tridentine" mass. A statement on the website of his monastery, the Monastere St-Benoit, explains that after Dom Alcuin made a pilgrimage to Rome a “senior prelate offered to confer ordinations” which then took place in April “in a discrete location not in France”. In church law Dom Alcuin’s ordination is “valid but illicit” given the “senior prelate” who carried them out is in “unimpeded communion with the Holy See”.
The Church has asked the governments of Colombia and Venezuela to resume their “truncated binational relations” in order to respond effectively to the challenges involved in serving migrants. The call to restore diplomatic relations was made during a 24 May press conference in the Diocese of Cúcuta, where a meeting of the National Secretariat for Social Pastoral Ministry was held with the border dioceses. Fr Rafael Castillo Torres, director of the National Secretariat for Social Pastoral Ministry in Colombia, said that “there have been not a few signs of concern … that challenge our humanitarian and pastoral action.” Among these are “human trafficking [and] the recruitment of minors into armed gangs. Meanwhile populist businessman Rodolfo Hernández pulled off a strong second-place showing in Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, comfortably clinching a run-off next month against former left-wing guerrilla Gustavo Petro.
Days after the Christian Association of Nigeria asked the Federal Government to ensure safety and protection for Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto and other Christian leaders, two priests of Sokoto Diocese were kidnapped. They and two others were taken by gunmen who invaded St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Gidan Maikambo in Katsina state, on 25 May. Bishop Kukah and Catholic parishes have faced harassment after his condemnation of the gruesome murder of Christian student Deborah Samuel on 12 May, for alleged blasphemy.
About 18,000 teachers and support staff from 540 Catholic diocesan schools in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory went on strike last Friday over pay and conditions. The Independent Education Union said its members stopped work to rally in both regions as part of the first full-day stoppage by Catholic school teachers in 18 years.
An event at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh centre in Dhaka on 27 May, marking 50 years since the founding of the Conference, was attended by all the country’s bishops, senior clergy, religious, lay leaders and heads of Catholic educational institutes. Conference president Archbishop Bejoy N. D’Cruze of Dhaka said, “we have a long way to go to help those who still need support for development, and we also envision an ideal synodal church through decentralisation of leadership and ensuring participation of all in the Church”.
Last week, India’s main group of lay Catholics said it would challenge anti-conversion laws. The All-India Catholic Union’s statement came after Karnataka State invited the public to raise objections to conversions and made government consent mandatory for people to change their religion or face fines and imprisonment. The Union’s national president Lancy D’Cunha “called upon the Prime Minister of India and the chief ministers of the states to take urgent steps to end targeted hate”.
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