About a quarter of the non-European priests and nuns now working in the Netherlands want to return home because they cannot fit into such a highly secularised society.
A study by two Catholic research groups showed that most foreign church men and women were well educated, sent by their superiors and hailed from villages or small towns.
Most of about 150 missionaries had no problem with Dutch customs or food, although the language presented some problems, the study showed. Most felt supported by the communities they served.
But “the biggest stumbling block appears to be ... the secularised society”, according to a report in the weekly Katholiek Nieuwsblad.
About half the missionaries were neutral about returning while the remaining quarter wanted to stay. Younger foreign priests were keenest on returning home.
Just over one-fifth of the Dutch population is Catholic, down from two-fifths in the 1960s, and around three per cent of Catholics are regular Mass-goers.
Protestants, once three-fifths of the population, now make up 10 per cent.
The Brazilian bishops’ conference has condemned Sunday’s attacks on government buildings by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro, described by his replacement Lula as the “acts of vandals and fascists”.
The bishops issued a statement demanding the “immediate cessation of criminal attacks on the democratic rule of law”, after a 3,000-strong mob stormed the presidential palace and the buildings housing congress and the supreme court in the capital Brasília on 8 January.
“These attacks must be immediately contained and their organisers and participants held accountable with the full force of the law,” the bishops said. “Citizens and democracy must be protected.”
Catholic and Orthodox Church leaders in Ethiopia emphasised peace in the Horn of Africa country, as Christians marked eastern Christmas.
Christmas in Ethiopia is called Genna and is marked on 7 January. Orthodox, Catholics and Protestant Christians follow the Ethiopian calendar celebrations. The country, where many are Orthodox Christians, has recently experienced challenges with peace.
Cardinal Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel sent his greetings as he hailed a recent peace agreement signed between the government and rebels, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Since November 2020, the two had fought a devastating war in the northern state of Tigray.
The Fellowship of Catholic University Students in the United States has held a mega-conference in St Louis that attracted 17,000 young Catholics.
The conference featured liturgical celebrations and inspirational talks by Catholic celebrities such as Fr Mike Schmitz, a priest of the diocese of Duluth, Minnesota who produced a series of popular podcasts on the Bible.
Jonathan Roumie, who played Jesus in the recent series The Chosen, also spoke. “If you feel like you need some sort of breakthrough in your life, if you need some sort of opportunity to go further and something’s holding you back, ask yourself, have you completely surrendered to God?” the actor asked the assembly.
A new Church labour law has come into force in Germany, which bars discrimination based on lifestyle and sexual identity and removes the threat of dismissal from church staffers in second marriages or same-sex relationships.
The law, approved by the bishops’ conference in November, after mounting public pressure, withdraws the “core area of private life, especially relationships and privacy” from any legal assessments, and must be applied by each of the German church’s 20 dioceses and seven archdioceses.
Unidentified armed men killed a 66-year-old Catholic priest in western Burkina Faso on 2 January.
Fr Jacques Yaro Zerbo was assassinated in the Boucle du Mouhoun region, said a statement by Bishop Prosper Bonaventure Ky of Dédougou. The gunmen stole the vehicle and belongings of the Malian-born priest. Fr Zerbo had taught in seminaries and formation centres throughout Burkina Faso and had a ministry to support young people.
Burkina Faso is witnessing “one of the fastest-growing displacement and protection crises globally”, partly due to activity by Al Qaeda and Islamic State militants, according to the United Nations.
The kidnappings of priests and religious are increasing in Nigeria, the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Minna in Niger State reported last week.
Bishop Luka Sylvester Gopep lamented the “precarious” security situation throughout the country. More than 20 cases of kidnapping and killing of priests were recorded in Nigeria in 2022. “This is alarming and requires urgent action by federal and state governments,” he said.
Some attacks were perpetrated by Islamic militants, but others have been blamed on bandits seeking to extort money.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh have been exported for millennia from the Golis Mountains in Somaliland. However, the first of the gifts brought by the Magi to baby Jesus is threatening frankincense and myrrh trees which produce precious resins.
Gold miners are killing the ancient trees, reports the Candlelight environmental organisation.
“The first to go are the Myrrh trees, which are uprooted when diggers clear the land for surface mining,” it says. “Frankincense trees last a bit longer as they grow on rocks but are destroyed once the miners dig deep into the earth.”
Already, the trees have been weakened by drought in the Horn of Africa and over-harvested for cosmetics, aromatherapy, and therapeutic applications.
Around 88,000 people walked in a procession last Sunday in the Philippines to commemorate the Feast of the Black Nazarene, marked on 7-9 January in Manila’s Quiapo district.
Manila Archbishop Jose Cardinal Advincula celebrated the concluding Mass on Monday, a day President Ferdinand Marcos Jr declared a special holiday in the capital.
The march replaced the traditional re-enactment of the 1787 Traslacion, or solemn transfer, of a 17th century life-size statue of Jesus of Nazareth from its original shrine to Quiapo Church. Cancelled for the past three years due to Covid, millions used to crowd around the statue, which is believed to be miraculous, in an event lasting nearly 24 hours.
This year, people walked for three hours, carrying candles, banners and images of the Black Nazarene but without the statue.
Zimbabwe is experiencing a situation of “negative peace”, according to the Zimbabwe Bishops’ Conference Justice and Peace Commission.
Commenting on Pope Francis’ Message for World Peace Day, which emphasised the need for collaboration, the Commission described the situation in Zimbabwe last week as, “the absence of violence” whereas what is desired “is a positive peace which entails restoration of relationships, creation of social systems and resolution of conflict”.
The commission said: “Our nation urgently needs a real dialogue between social and political parties.” It called for more initiatives for young people.
Five years after the departure of President Robert Mugabe, who ruled the country for 37 years, the percentage of citizens who have slipped into extreme poverty has increased from 30 per cent in 2017 to 50 per cent. The commission criticised frequent power cuts, endemic corruption and high prices for basic commodities, medicines and medical care.
Pakistan and the United Nations held a major conference in Geneva this week aimed at securing international support to rebuild the country after devastating floods in what is expected to be a major test case for who pays for climate disasters.
Floods last summer put a third of the country underwater and as many as four million children still live near contaminated and stagnant flood waters. Catholic Church agencies have been involved in relief efforts and advocacy on climate change.
Irish Columban Fr Liam O’Callaghan, who is on mission in Hyderabad, Sindh province, told The Tablet: “Columbans have delivered 1,743 relief rations – food packs, mosquito nets, health kits, winter bedding – to families in various areas of Sindh.”
As Orthodox Churches in Palestine celebrated Christmas last weekend, churches in East Jerusalem expressed concerned about the rise in Israeli extremist attacks on Christian property in the city.
They strongly condemned an attack by Jewish extremists who vandalised a Christian cemetery in occupied East Jerusalem on 1 January. Stone graves were destroyed with crosses toppled at the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.
Hosam Naoum, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, said: “We have noticed that hatred speech and hatred crimes are on the rise.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, called the desecration of the graves “a blasphemous act” and expressed hope that those responsible would be brought swiftly to justice.
Many Palestinians, both in Israel and in the occupied territory, are fearful of the new hardline Israeli government’s policies towards them, in light of the strong presence of far-right settler groups within it.
Benedictine Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, a leading peace and social justice activist in the United States, died at Mount St Benedict Monastery in Erie on 6 January at the age of 81.
She helped form Benedictines for Peace and served as Pax Christi USA‘s National Coordinator 1985-1991, running workshops on peace education, nuclear disarmament and nonviolence. In 1992 she helped set up Benetvision Publishing to promote the work of Sr Joan Chittister and in 2012, Monasteries of the Heart, an online monastery.
Her books included Peace Is Our Calling: Contemporary Monasticism and the Peace Movement and her writings appeared in National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners and others. She compiled and edited numerous books for Pax Christi and later for other publishers including Orbis Books.
She lived in inner-city Erie and supported homeless projects, soup kitchens and artistic initiatives.
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