Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the US bishops’ committee on migration, urged the Biden administration to reconsider a new proposal that would make it harder for asylum seekers to enter the country and have their cases heard.
“While recognising our country’s right to maintain its borders, my brother bishops and I have consistently rejected policies that weaken asylum access for those most in need of relief and expose them to further danger,” Seitz said. “Because that is the likely result of this proposal, we strongly oppose its implementation.”
He noted the vulnerability of asylum seekers and added that “the sanctity of human life remains paramount”.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, has complained about the Vatican’s efforts to enforce Traditionis custodes, the motu proprio restricting access to the pre-Vatican II liturgy.
Paprocki was one of several US bishops who had dispensed from the requirement that the old rite not be celebrated in a parish church. “I think the local diocesan bishops are much more in tune with what’s going on in their diocese than an office in Rome,” Paprocki told CNA.
He blamed Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship. “It wasn’t the Holy Father taking the initiative,” said Paprocki, but rather an “initiative of Cardinal Roche”.
Pope Francis offered prayers for the migrants who died in a shipwreck off the Italian coast on Sunday. It was feared that over 100 had drowned after dozens of bodies were washed up on the Calabrian shore, including the bodies of children.
“I pray for them,” said Francis in his Sunday Angelus address, “for those who are lost and those who have survived.”
The coastguard reported finding 80 survivors, but believe that the overloaded vessel was carrying more than 200 people when it sank.
Haiti is now a shattered country with a starving population dominated by armed gangs, according to missionary groups. Hospitals and educational institutions are closing due to violence, and the lack of fuel, electricity, food and medicine.
There has been no news of Fr Antoine Macaire Christian Noah, a Claretian missionary from Cameroon, who was kidnapped for ransom on 7 February from his parish, about 20 miles north of Port-au-Prince.
Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, the country has not had a presidential election, creating a power vacuum and escalating violence and lawlessness.
The Vatican’s foreign minister has expressed regret at Russia’s suspension of a nuclear arms treaty.
Archbishop Paul Gallagher described it as a “move in wrong direction in terms of peace and the security of the world”, after President Vladimir Putin used his annual state of the nation speech last week to announce that Russia will no longer comply with the New START treaty.
This is the last remaining nuclear arms reduction deal between the US and Russia, limiting each country's deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 – a level Russia has said it will continue to observe for the present.
Tour guides in Israel are witnessing an increase in attacks against the Christian minority by extremist Jews, mainly in and around the Old City of Jerusalem.
Last week, the Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew-Speaking Catholics in Israel published a statement by the guides documenting spitting at clerics wearing habits or Christian symbols, threatening graffiti on the walls of Christian buildings, and recent vandalism at a Protestant cemetery and in the Church of the Flagellation.
The guides urged Israel’s police to act decisively in every case as a deterrent, and the Israeli government to engage in dialogue with social and religious leaders to promote tolerance.
The Holy See and Oman have announced the establishment of full diplomatic relations and a nunciature of the Holy See will open in Muscat.
A joint statement last week said this would promote “mutual understanding and further strengthen friendship and co-operation between the Holy See and Oman”. The Vatican hopes to “contribute to the social welfare of the sultanate of Oman” and deepen links with Catholics who live and work in the region.
Oman has four parishes, 12 priests and around 55,000 Catholic migrant workers. The Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia based in Abu Dhabi covers United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen.
The Episcopal Conference of Burkina Faso and Niger has called for “united efforts” by all Burkina Faso citizens “to face terrorism and all its dramatic consequences”.
In a statement issued at the end of their plenary assembly on 19 February, the bishops warned: “The internal conflict has intensified, spreading across all regions of the country.” They continued: “In addition, the country is suffering an unprecedented food crisis and significant deterioration in access to water and essential social services.”
The bishops asked for prayers and solidarity with those “who are directly affected by the consequences of this unjust war imposed on the country”. Over the last seven years, violence linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group has killed thousands and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.
A Protestant bishop in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has been detained following allegations that he violated the state's stringent anti-conversion law.
Auxiliary Bishop Paul Muniya of the Protestant Shalom Church in Jhabua district, inhabited predominantly by tribal communities, was jailed on 23 February. The bishop’s son, Kaleb Muniya, said the bishop “has been falsely implicated by a local man” and “it is part of a well-orchestrated campaign against us Christians to defame us”.
Fr Rockey Shah, an official of Jhabua Catholic diocese, confirmed that Hindu nationalist groups are harassing Christians in the region.
The announcement by Pakistan’s president of 9 April elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces has triggered controversy. Christian leaders want a rescheduling of the elections away from Easter Sunday.
Fr Inayat Barnard, the chaplain of Caritas Pakistan, criticised “this unwanted announcement”, adding that “the Christian members of national and provincial assemblies should bring this presidential negligence to the notice of speakers and change the date”.
Last year, the election commission rescheduled local elections in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, as Christian members of federal statutory bodies rejected the decision to hold them on Christmas Eve.
The US State Department has joined Baptist churches and rights groups to challenge the arrest and detention of a Baptist minister by Myanmar’s military. Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have called the charges levelled against the pastor “politically motivated”.
Rev Dr Hkalam Samson, a former head of the Kachin Baptist Convention, was detained at Mandalay International Airport on 4 December while travelling to Bangkok for a medical appointment. “We condemn the Burma military regime’s arrest and detention of a prominent ethnic Kachin Christian leader” the US State Department said on 23 February.
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