The head of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice has called for the government and the international community to address the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua by President Daniel Ortega’s regime.
In a statement published on 20 April, Bishop David John Malloy of Rockford highlighted the ban on Holy Week activities, the expulsion of missionaries and the jailing of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa. He urged stronger campaigning “for the release of Bishop Álvarez and for a restoration of peace and rule of law in Nicaragua”.
Walter Reed Hospital, the United States’ most prominent military hospital, insisted it provided adequate pastoral care for Catholic service members and veterans after it cancelled a contract with local Franciscan friars and hired a for-profit company to manage pastoral services.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Archdiocese said the the failure to renew the Franciscans’ contract was “incomprehensible” and an assault on the religious liberty of Catholics at the hospital. In a statement, the hospital said it has an active-duty Catholic chaplain on its staff, and can call upon three local priests as required.
The Sri Lankan Church organised a 40-kilometer-long human chain on the fourth anniversary of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, demanding justice for the 261 people killed.
Thousands joined on 21 April to protest the government’s failure to address allegations of a cover-up. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, has consistently called for an international investigation.
“We consider that finding justice and revealing the truth is a national service that we can do to our country,” said Fr Julian Patrick Perera, a secretary to the legal team of the Archdiocese of Colombo, who recently presented the case to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Pope Francis told a group of faith and civic leaders from Manchester that tackling the environmental crisis demands an end to a “throwaway culture of waste” and new economic models. The Pope received the delegation from the northwest of England in the Vatican’s apostolic palace on 20 April.
The Bishop of Salford, John Arnold, and the Anglican Dean of Manchester, Rogers Govender, led the group, which included Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Francis said their “united witness is particularly eloquent” given that Manchester’s role in the Industrial Revolution, which, along with technical and economic progress, had left a “negative impact on the human and natural environment”.
Six years after Iraq declared victory over Islamic State, more than 200,000 Yazidis are still displaced, living in camps across Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, according to the UN International Office for Migration.
Christians who fled to the region say that while they appreciate its relative security, they feel apprehensive about the future. The region houses Assyrians and other Christians, some of whom escaped IS after it attacked towns of the Nineveh Plains.
The Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, run by Assyrian priest Fr Emanuel Youkhana, is working to restore houses, schools, churches and shops in the Nineveh Plains, and offers vocational training and advocacy work for minorities.
Faith-based institutions from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Italy and France have announced they will stop investing in fossil fuel companies, as they join a global network of groups committed removing their assets from the industry. The 31 organisations – including Italy’s Catholic Scouting Movement – have made a divestment worth more than US$2 billion, according to the Laudato Si Movement, the global Catholic climate group.
Church groups have called on the Philippines president to declare a “climate emergency”.
They submitted a petition to President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr on 20 April, saying that a declaration would signal the government’s recognition of the gravity of the situation. The appeal followed a march through Manila attended by members of missionary groups and Bishop José Colin Bagaforo of Kidapawan, president of Caritas Philippines.
Fr Tony Labiao, Caritas Philippines’ executive secretary, said they want “a swift transition to a low-carbon economy and the protection of natural habitats and ecosystems”. John Din of the Columban Missionaries highlighted Pope Francis’ call for “ecological conversion”.
More than 100,000 people participated in the Parade for Life and Family on 15 April in Peru’s second city, Arequipa, according to the coalition who organised the event.
Addressing the participants, Archbishop Javier Del Río Alba of Arequipa said: “It’s a joy to re-encounter families, young people, adults, children, mothers in these groups that entered the parade that say yes to life in our dear Arequipa, after two years of not being able to do it like this in person.”
He found it “very encouraging to see that thousands upon thousands celebrate the gift of life and family”.
A US plan to halt irregular migration through the Darién Gap – the treacherous stretch of jungle separating Colombia and Panama – has been criticised by Catholics working on immigration issues, who say the scheme is unlikely to contain the vast flows of people heading northward.
“For migrants starting their trips in faraway continents, the route through the Darién Gap, although it’s expensive, is much less costly than entering another way,” said Elías Cornejo, migrant services coordinator for the Jesuit ministry Fe y Alegría in Panama.
According to Panama’s government, more than 87,000 migrants crossed in the first three months of 2023. An unknown number have lost their lives there.
Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has said he will sign a euthanasia bill into law if parliament approves it again, after he returned it to MPs asking for clarification of some definitions.
His decision follows years of back-and-forth over the bill, as he vetoed it or sent it to the Constitutional Court – which most recently took issue with its wording. Rebelo de Sousa says he now has no more doubts about its constitutionality.
The ruling Socialist Party has said it will simply reconfirm the text and send it back to the president, meaning that Portugal is set to permit assisted suicide and euthanasia for its citizens.
Pope Francis has said that he plans to travel to Mongolia, the world’s most sparsely-populated state and home to about 1,300 Catholics, after visiting Marseille in September this year. Speaking on 14 April to employees of ITA Airways, who staff the papal plane, he referred again to the Mongolian trip which he first mooted during an in-flight press conference in February.
According to the results of a 2021 census, Australian Catholics are older, more diverse, better educated, and more likely to be divorced than the average Australian.
Catholics remain the biggest religious community in Australia, with just over five million identifying as Catholic in 2021 – 20 per cent of the population. This total was down from a numerical peak of 5.4 million in 2011, and reflects a long-term relative decline: in 1996, 4.8 million Catholics made up 27 per cent of the population.
Compared to previous census results, the Church in Australia is older, more female and better educated than in the past, and composed of smaller families, with only two per cent of married couples having four or more children, and only 10 per cent three or more.
The divorce rate among Catholics rose to 11.7 percent in 2021, higher than the national average of 10.6 per cent. With a fifth of Australian Catholics born in a non-English speaking country, the Church, historically based upon Irish immigrant communities, has become more diverse.
The Bishop of Hong Kong, Stephen Chow Sau-yan, made a five-day visit to Beijing last week, the first visit to the Chinese mainland by a Hong Kong bishop in 30 years. It was at the invitation of the Archbishop of Beijing, Joseph Li-Shan, the head of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, China’s state-sanctioned Church organisation.
Bishop Chow attended a vigil in Beijing’s Church of the Saviour for the beatification of his fellow Jesuit the Venerable Matteo Ricci, the sixteenth-century missionary to China.
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