The Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the UK as well as Ukraine celebrated Easter according to the Julian Calendar, marking Easter Sunday on 16 April. Observing one Ukrainian Easter traditions, families brought baskets of food for blessing over the Easter weekend.
The Big One climate protest, a four-day event at Westminster, was due to start on 21 April. Cafod, Christian Aid and Green Christian are among the Christian groups urging supporters to be there, “taking a stand against fossil fuel company greed and government inaction – which is fuelling both the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis.”
Westminster Justice and Peace, Christian Climate Action and Columban missionaries will join an ecumenical “No Faith in Fossil Fuels” service at St John's, Waterloo, at noon on Friday. Afterwards, the congregation will walk via the Shell HQ to a rally outside the Houses of Parliament.
Malakai Bayoh, aged 13, a pupil at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School and a member of the school’s Schola Cantorum, was given the “gold buzzer” from lead judge Simon Cowell on ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent last weekend, meaning he goes straight through to the live shows at the end of next month.
He performed Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s arrangement of Pie Jesu on the show. Previously, Malakai has performed at venues including the Royal Opera House and Royal Albert Hall, while last Christmas he performed two tracks for Classic FM with presenter and singer Aled Jones which have had 25 million interactions online.
The school's headmaster, Paul Stubbings, said: “We’re tremendously proud of Malakai’s talent, work ethic and dedication. Everyone in the Vaughan community is willing him on and we look forward greatly to seeing how his musical career develops from here.”
The Catholic Union has welcomed the results of a public consultation on a private members’ bill in the Isle of Man regarding assisted dying, where in response to a question asking “in principle, do you agree or disagree that assisted dying should be permitted for terminally ill adults on the Isle of Man”, the results showed that 49.01 per cent agreed and a majority, 49.61 per cent disagreed. The Catholic Union was among those that submitted evidence to the consultation.
The Catholic Union has also raised concerns that freedom of religion and belief in the workplace is under threat, especially in the public sector, after in a survey of Catholic Union members and supporters, almost a third said they had felt disadvantaged at work because of their faith. More than seven in ten of these instances were in the public sector.
The survey was carried out to inform the Catholic Union’s evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into human rights at work, which includes a section on freedom of religion and expression. One lay chaplain in an NHS hospital spoke of a “pathological closing down” of chaplaincy work, while another responder was subject to a formal complaint for saying “God bless” to a patient.
The Bishop of Salford, John Arnold, has officially launched a local synod in his diocese. Although intended to run in parallel with the remainder of the 2021-2023 Synod on Synodality, the Salford synod has been convoked under canons 460-468, a juridically separate process involving the Catholic faithful of a particular local area.
Launching the synod, on 14 April, Bishop Arnold said he was calling Catholics “to be bold and creative in listening to how the spirit may be speaking to us today in scripture, tradition, and in the voices or those within and beyond our Catholic community”.
The Catholic mission to seafarers, Stella Maris, has announced the appointment of a new chief executive, the former soldier Tim Hill. Hill, who will begin work in June, served as an officer in the British Army for 35 years, commanding all British troops in Germany between 2019-2023. He succeeds Martin Foley, who led the apostolate for 13 years.
Stella Maris, founded in 1920 as the Apostleship of the Sea, provides seafarers with practical and pastoral support in Britain's ports and around her coastline.
In a move likely to influence Catholic education across England and Wales, the government has released new outlines on forming multi-academy trusts, moving forwards with the declaration, in last year’s education white paper, that ministers expected all schools to convert to that status by 2030.
The Department for Education published new “trust development statements” last month, guidelines they intend to guide academy mergers in an equitable way. A key criticism of process so far has been a perceived tendency for high-economic-background, well-performing schools to avoid mergers with poorer and less academically high-performing institutions.
Catholic and Church of England dioceses have been prominent in converting local faith schools to the trusts, a process criticised by teachers’ unions as underfunded and promising dubious benefits in education quality.
Ireland's Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has rejected a claim by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that any pregnancy counselling service not providing abortion information is a “disingenuous organisation”. The HSE was responding to a question from Michael Collins TD.
“It’s wrong for the HSE to dismiss any pregnancy counselling agency which openly has a pro-life ethos as being ‘disingenuous’ and to imply its intentions are designed to somehow ‘trick’ women,” Eilís Mulroy of PLC said.
She claimed that the HSE’s MyOptions service was not up to scratch in offering women information on alternatives to abortion, and this had been shown by a study published in 2022.
“Last year there were 8,500 abortions, the highest number on record. The government has shown no interest in offering women positive alternatives to abortions,” Ms Mulroy said.
The tragic death of teenager Anne Lovett in a grotto as she gave birth and the Kerry Babies scandal are indicative of sexually obsessive Catholic morality, according to Fr Brendan Hoban.
Writing in the Western People, Fr Hoban said sex before marriage in Ireland was, for many, the big sin and that left “a huge stain” on the “brittle lives” of the young and vulnerable and on the “credibility of Catholic sexual teaching”.
More recently Irish Catholics have “claimed exemption” from this sexually obsessive morality and have accepted a greater sense of God’s mercy. He said this was why confession, once a popular religious rite, has now “virtually disappeared”.
Pax Christi England and Wales is promoting Global Days of Action on Military Spending from 13 April to 9 May, to highlight increases in military budgets and promotes a shift towards peace and justice.
This year of war in Ukraine has meant a huge boost for militarism and military budgets across the world, especially in countries of the Global North, but campaigners believe military spending should be reduced and investment put into other forms of security, such as stabilising Earth’s climate. Earth Day on 22 April falls within the dates for the days of action.
Caritas Westminster is holding an event on 20 April in Westminster Cathedral Hall, “Animating parish senior groups”. As many activities for older people restart after the pandemic, the aim is to come up with new ideas and programmes for parishes. Organisations taking part include those that work with older people in the Diocese of Westminster. including the Irish Chaplaincy, St Vincent de Paul Society and Anna Chaplaincy.
Nearly three-quarters of refugees in Britain have no access to legal representation, according to the Jesuit Refugee Service. “People who were at first cheerful, outgoing, and able to engage with the world withdrew and became depressed and anxious,” they report in a recent study of refugee detention at Napier Barracks.
Monday saw the latest monthly Christian Vigil for Refugees at the Home Office in London. Westminster Justice and Peace and London Catholic Worker led a group praying for migrants seeking safe passage to the UK.
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