More than 700 Catholic priests in Nigeria held a peaceful protest on Thursday last week as they buried Fr Vitus Borogo, a priest in Kaduna Archdiocese by unknown armed persons at Prison Farm, Kujama, on 25 June. Fr Borogo’s younger brother was abducted during the attack. The priests carried placards with inscriptions to express their grievances and to call on authorities to take action. At the funeral at the Queen of Apostles Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Kaduna, Matthew Ndagoso, lamented the rising state of insecurity in the country. He said that Nigerians, and in particular the faithful in Kaduna are traumatised because of the rising attacks in the country, while authorities seem to be incapable of tackling the problem.
The Missionaries of Charity congregation has been expelled from Nicaragua, the latest in a series of attacks on the Catholic Church and its ministries from the country’s increasingly repressive Sandinista government. The order operates a home for abandoned adolescents, a home for the elderly and a nursery for low-income families in Nicaragua.
Pope Francis sent a video message to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo on 2 July, the date he had planned to make an “ecumenical pilgrimage” to the region. The Pope told the people of both countries that “words at this time are not enough to convey the closeness I would like to express to you and the affection I feel to you”, and regretted the postponement of his visit due to mobility problems in early June.
The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, celebrated Mass in front of the House of Parliament in Kinshasa. Around 100,000 Congolese faithful took part in the Mass, which was held at around the same time on Sunday as Pope Francis celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for Rome’s Congolese community. "Greed for raw materials and the thirst for money and power slam the doors on peace and represent an attack on people's right to life and serenity... Peace upon this house! Peace upon the Congolese land: May you return to being a house of fraternity!" Parolin said.
The President of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (Comece), Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, has reaffirmed the concerns of the Church for the way the issue of abortion is treated at the EU level. Following the US Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the European Parliament is expected next week to reiterate its call for “safe access to abortion”, and its condemnation of what it considers a “backsliding in women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in the US.” According to a statement released on Friday, MEPs were to reaffirm this call in a debate on Monday afternoon, and a resolution on 7 July. During a meeting with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, Cardinal Hollerich insisted that the attempt to see abortion as a fundamental right, “not only goes against the respect of the dignity of every human being, which is one of the pillars of the EU, but it will also gravely endanger the right to freedom of religion, of thought and conscience and the possibility of exercising conscientious objection.”
Twenty-five years after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese authority, the territory’s leading Catholic prelate Bishop Stephen Chow voiced gratitude to the Chinese Central Government in Beijing and vowed to build “a more caring and inclusive Hong Kong filled with vibrancy, hope and development opportunities.” Hong Kong’s Executive Chief John Lee, elected in May, was sworn in on 1 July, the same day as the 25th anniversary. After swearing in Lee on Friday, the Chinese president Xi Jinping, on his first trip outside mainland China since the Covid pandemic began, vowed that “one country, two systems” – a governance model under which Hong Kong was promised it would retain some autonomy and freedoms for 50 years – would endure. Xi returned to mainland China having stayed less than 24 hours.
Christians in India on 3 July celebrated the 1,950th anniversary of the death of St Thomas the Apostle, who first brought the Gospel to the subcontinent. The date is marked as Indian Christian Day in the country. “We are happy that the Declaration was done on 3 July 2021 as Indian Christian Day/Yeshu Bhakti Divas,” explained Archbishop Anthony Poola of Hyderabad, who will be created a cardinal by Pope Francis on 27 August. Poola is the first Dalit to be made a cardinal.
Elon Musk has said that he met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday last week. “Honoured to meet @Pontifex yesterday,” Musk wrote in a 2 July Twitter post published at 3:54 a.m. Rome time. The world’s richest man with a net worth of more than $200 billion dollars posted a photo of himself and four of his eight children standing with the Pope. The private meeting was not listed in the Pope’s schedule.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, chair of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice expressed regret that the Supreme Court had restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “The Catholic bishops of the United States have long-supported the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in order to address climate change,” Coakley said.
US President Joe Biden announced he would confer the Medal of Freedom on Sr Simone Campbell, who led the Catholic social justice lobby Network for 17 years. Sr Simone is best known for starting a nationwide advocacy tour called “Nuns on a Bus” that brought her and other religious women to various states, urging members of Congress to enact policies that reflected Church teaching on social justice issues such as health care reform and immigration. Her political activism earned the ire of the Vatican which cited her work in its censure of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 2012.
An Italian nun who dedicated her life to caring for poor children in Haiti was killed on 25 June. Saturday. Her home diocese of Milan reported that the Lombardy native, Sr Luisa Dell’Orto, 64, was injured “during an armed aggression, probably with the aim of robbery,” in Port-au-Prince, the capital. She died in hospital shortly afterwards, just two days shy of her 65th birthday. Pope Francis mentioned her heroic life thee next day after he prayed the midday Angelus.
Ahead of the planned international conference on biodiversity, Cop15, now scheduled for 5-17 December this year in Montreal, Canada, the bishops of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (Secam), after a preparatory meeting in Nairobi, issued a statement signed by Secam Vice President, South African Bishop Sithembele Sipuka saying: “We join the global civil society's calls for no more biodiversity collapse,” writes Francis Njuguna. Naming indigenous communities as “guardians of Creation”, the bishops expressed particular concern over a planned East African Crude oil pipeline, stretching from Uganda to Tanga, Tanzania, and the environmental destruction of Africa’s Congo Basin rainforest.
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