Paris authorities have jailed a man suspected to have set fire to a church in the French capital after unexplained fires at two other churches on the north-eastern corner of the city in a week.
All three fires, clearly arson, scorched front doors made of wood and one spread into the building. None caused serious damage. The jailed man is a Ukrainian national, according to the daily Le Parisien.
It is not clear whether all three are related. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the city would join the case as a civil partner to denounce these “acts of degradation with the greatest firmness”.
Religious leaders from across Europe have urged the European Union to consider faith issues more seriously as they emphasised the problems the Ukraine war has created for people in the bloc and beyond.
Speaking at an annual exchange with the EU, Comece, the Catholic bishops’ conference in the EU, highlighted the Church’s support for Ukrainian refugees and the war’s effects on food supplies in developing countries.
“In this Ukrainian crisis, the religious argument is used by some political leaders, so it’s important to understand what this means, and how we can try to have links between the religious status of different countries,” said the Archbishop of Dijon, Antoine Herouard, who heads the Comece social affairs commission.
Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin is appealing a court ruling that its activities are not “primarily religious” and so the organisation does not qualify for certain exemptions from state laws that are afforded to religious groups.
“Our work is a direct response to Christ’s Gospel command to serve all in need, regardless of who they are or what they believe,” Alan Rock, executive director of the charity organisation said.
“This is how we continue to improve the human condition. We hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court recognises this and fixes the lower court’s error.”
The bishops of the region that covers the north of Brazil, including a large portion of the Amazon rainforest, have denounced “genocidal acts” carried out under the orders of the former federal government led by Jair Bolsonaro.
Images have surfaced over recent weeks of Yanomami Indians suffering from illness and severe malnutrition, which is attributed to the invasion and exploitation of their lands by illegal miners and to deforestation.
The bishops were left “shocked and deeply angered by images of the skeletal bodies of Yanomami children and adults in the state of Roraima, due to the genocidal and ecocidal acts of the previous federal government”.
They said that Mr Bolsonaro’s administration had “opened certified indigenous lands to illegal mining and extraction of wood, which destroys the forests, contaminates waters and rivers, introduces disease, hunger and death”. According to the bishops at least 570 children have already died in the recent crisis.
Fordham University released a report, “Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Educational Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clergy Sexual Abuse” that examines the Society of Jesus’ response to clergy sex abuse by its members.
Researchers at 10 Jesuit universities conducted the research, applying an interdisciplinary approach. The report praised those who work on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, but also highlight what they called “historical memory work”.
It issued several recommendations, calling on Jesuit institutions to “accept corporate responsibility” for the crimes of the past, and focus on justice in its broadest, not merely its legal, sense.
Catholic newspapers in Poland have defended St John Paul II against claims he ignored or covered up sexual abuse by clergy, accusing the late Pope's critics of deliberately attempting to undermine his authority and sanctity.
“We cannot remain indifferent to these slanders, which are not supported by any credible evidence,” editors of Niedziela (Sunday), Idziemy (Let's go) and other weeklies said in a joint statement, released with essays by leading Catholic writers.
“We are drawing attention to the unreliability of the allegations and their ahistorical nature, as well as to actions taken by the Polish Pope to purify the Church.”
Claims the then Karol Wojtyla knew about paedophile priests while he was the Archbishop of Krakow in 1964-1978 were made last November by a Dutch journalist, Ekke Overbeek, citing material from communist secret police archives. However, they were rejected by Poland's bishops' conference and senior Church figures, including the saint's former postulator, Mgr Slawomir Oder, now bishop of Gliwice.
Presenting the media statement in Warsaw, a Catholic TV presenter, Krzysztof Ziemiec, said there were concerns that young people brought up without direct experience of the saint would be influenced by “misleading, erroneous, harmful, sometimes grossly fabricated information”.
However, several Catholic journalists also criticised the Polish Church for fostering an unquestioning “infantile attitude” towards the Pope in his homeland, and for portraying him as infallible in every sphere including “organisational and administrative decisions”.
Belarus’s ecumenical opposition group Christian Vision has made a fresh appeal to the Pope, asking his help for a Catholic couple who were jailed as political prisoners, leaving their four-year-old daughter without parental care.
“On 19 January, the Brest regional court sentenced political prisoner Daria Losik to two years in a penal colony – in December 2021, her husband Ihar was also given 15 years in a high-security penal colony,” Christian Vision said in a statement.
“In their uncompromising commitment to truth, upholding human rights and dignity in the face of dictatorship and the destruction of civil society, we consider them the conscience of the Belarusian people and also admire their spousal love and devotion... We appeal to Pope Francis on behalf of the Losik family.”
The statement said the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose contested August 2020 re-election after 26 years in power was followed by brutal repression, had sought legitimisation by claiming close relations with the Vatican, adding that no reply had been received to an anguished letter, sent in August 2021 to Pope Francis by Ihar Losik after a 42-day hunger-strike.
In a separate statement, Christian Vision accused Archbishop Yusof Stanevsky of Minsk-Mogilev, who praised President Lukashenko's concern for “security, creation, peace and social harmony” at an official reception last week, of “preferring to remain silent in uncomfortable situations”.
Other bishops and priests also stopped responding “to attacks by propagandists”, Christian Vision added, leaving Belarus's Catholics feeling “their critical voices no longer carry much force without support from the Church's hierarchs”.
The slow implementation of last November’s agreement between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front is raising concern over continued violations of human rights in the northern region of Tigray.
“We pray that the peace agreement is successful,” said Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of the Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat. “Many of our faithful and our parishes are still besieged by foreign forces.”
Local sources – some from the Church – have described executions of civilians, abductions of young Tigrayans, sieges, looting and destruction of property. They also report the ongoing presence of Eritrean and Amhara forces and obstruction of humanitarian access.
Since the signing of the agreement, more than 3,000 civilians have been killed, according to a recent report. Tigray remains inaccessible to international and independent media.
In the northern region of Turkana in Kenya, five consecutive seasons without rain have resulted in a dramatic food crisis and the loss of more than 2.5 million livestock.
“Many elderly people, the most vulnerable segment of the population, are dying, while children’s malnutrition is getting worse by the day, because they no longer even have milk that used to be provided by goats,” said Sr Ligia Girón, an Ecuadorean missionary of the Social Missionary Sisters of the Church.
She reports fishing communities suffering because the water level of Lake Turkana has dropped by 1.5 metres, as well as conflict over water resources because fewer wells still have water.
Church and human rights organisations have welcomed the sentence of life imprisonment given to an Indonesian soldier accused of murdering four Protestant Christians in the strife-torn Papua region.
The victims’ dismembered bodies were found in floating bags on the Pigapu River last August. On 24 January a military court in Jayapura, Papua, sentenced Major Helmanto Francis Dakhi to life imprisonment and dismissed him from the military. He is one of the five soldiers accused of premeditated murder.
Fr John Djonga of the Jayapura diocese said the verdict “signals that there are efforts to take firm action against the state apparatus who are perpetrators of crime in Papua”.
Fr Bernard Baru, chairman of the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission of the Augustinian Order in Papua, said it was important to recognise that “the soldiers’ brutal actions are criminal, not in the context of carrying out their duties”.
Some 300 Catholics demonstrated outside an Eastern Catholic cathedral in Kerala, southern India, last week, demanding it be reopened after closure following clashes over liturgy.
Police sealed the St Mary’s Cathedral in Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church on Christmas Eve. Skirmishes on the altar resulted in the desecration of consecrated hosts and wine and police had to intervene.
Many priests and parishioners wanted the Mass with celebrants facing the people, and they rejected the Church Synod-approved Uniform Rite – supported by Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, the archdiocesan apostolic administrator – where the celebrant faces the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. On Christmas Eve, priests of both factions simultaneously tried to offer Mass on the Cathedral’s altar.
Caritas Philippines has teamed up with Catholic foundations to buy local farmers’ produce in bulk to distribute vegetables at cheaper prices in markets, particularly in the dioceses of Sorsogon and Dagupan.
“We have signed an agreement with farmers to purchase tons of onions from them, then sell them in local markets, reported Caritas treasurer Fr Joseph Layres last week. “There is very little margin for profit but at least it supports the farmers,” he added.
The Jesuit-run Tanging Yaman Foundation has started selling onions and sugar at half price in Manila’s poorer communities, according to Jesuit Fr Manoling Francisco.
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Honduran Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga as Archbishop of Tegucigalpa. The cardinal, who has been coordinator of the Council of Cardinals since 2013 and a close aide of Pope Francis, turned 80 on 29 December.
His resignation came as accusations of financial scandal hang over him. Pope Francis ordered an investigation last year after complaints were made against the cardinal and the rector of the Catholic University of Honduras, Deacon Elio Alvarenga Amador, over alleged mismanagement of university finances.
For many years, the cardinal has received significant payments from the university without having to present documentation to indicate the use of those funds.
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