Nigeria’s Catholic bishops have rejected proposed military intervention in neighbouring Niger after last month’s coup.
Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji of Owerri, the president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of Nigeria, made a passionate appeal last Sunday to Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, “to dissuade ECOWAS heads of state from the temptation of going to war against the coup plotters”.
He continued: “We beg them to stop the imminent bloodshed that will trail the military intervention,” adding: “We have wasted a lot of human blood in Africa.”
The seven-day ultimatum for the reinstatement of Niger’s deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, issued by members of the west African ECOWAS bloc, expired on Sunday. Archbishop Ugorji called for ECOWAS to adopt a diplomatic approach.
The Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has excommunicated four archbishops in the Tigray region after they appointed nine new bishops to their own See of Selama Kesate Birhan.
The leaders of the synod in Addis Ababa said that the appointments were illegal and heretical, stripping Tigray’s archbishops – Isaias of Mekele, Mekaryos of Aksum, Merja Kristors of Adigrat and Petros of Shire Indaselassie – of their titles and banning them from using churches in the region.
The bishops, who belong to the newly-formed Tigray Orthodox Tewahdo Church, said that the synod did not have the moral authority to excommunicate them. They accuse its members of supporting a brutal two-year war in the region which saw repeated attacks on churches and clergy.
Marking the anniversary of the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020, Patriarch Bechara Rai of the Maronite Catholic Church said he joined those “who cry until today for their loved ones and cry out for truth and justice”.
Speaking at a Mass on 4 August, he said that there was still no accountability for the explosion in the Lebanese capital. The service at St George Maronite Cathedral in Beirut was attended by family members of victims, the injured and those whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed.
The explosion was caused by the detonation of a stockpile of ammonium nitrate improperly stored at the port for years, killing 235 people and injuring around 5,000 others.
A Malaysian court has rejected a 57-year-old woman’s bid to return to Christianity, saying it has no power to interfere in cases concerning renunciation of Islam.
The Civil High Court in Penang state refused to hear a petition of the unnamed woman, who sought a judicial review of a decision by a Sharia court.
The woman was born into a Christian family and converted to Islam in 1995 to marry a Muslim man, whom she divorced in 2013. The Sharia court refused her permission to revert to Christianity in 2020, and the Sharia Appellate Court endorsed that decision this year.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi faced a no-confidence motion last week over his government’s failure to stop the violence in the state of Manipur, while new clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Haryana state near New Delhi killed six people and threatened to spread ethnic and sectarian violence further.
Six people were killed in Manipur last week and houses torched, bringing the total killed in the state since early May to over 180 and leaving over 50,000 people displaced.
The Conference of European Churches and the World Council of Churches wrote a joint letter to the European Union on 4 August, demanding an end to Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“The humanitarian crisis in the blockaded enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) is escalating into tragic levels of experiences with the prolonged deprivations and sufferings of civilians,” they said.
“The Lachin corridor is the only road that links the region to Armenia and it has been blocked for more than seven months, seriously affecting the lives and living conditions of 120,000 people, including children.”
People in the region lack food, medication, electricity, and fuel and “their fundamental human rights are increasingly violated”.
Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe has called on Catholics to have an “urgent conversation” about the continued risks of stockpiling and developing nuclear weapons. He was speaking last Sunday during a Pilgrimage of Peace to Japan with Archbishop Paul D Etienne of Seattle, which included a gathering of 5,000 people from over 100 nations in Hiroshima Peace Park.
The ringing of the Peace Bell at 8:15am marked the moment a nuclear bomb devastated Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Several speakers – including Hiroshima’s mayor, Japan’s prime minister and a representative for the secretary-general of the UN – called for a world without nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, the bishops attended the Peace Memorial Ceremony at Nagasaki.
The Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has said that it is “very likely” that his archdiocese will file for bankruptcy in the near future as it faces “more than 500 civil lawsuits” related to clerical sexual abuse.
In an announcement on 4 August, he said that a “Chapter 11” filing would allow the archdiocese to address the cases collectively, allowing a “faster resolution for hundreds of survivors”.
He said that the filing would not affect parish and schools, applying only to the legal entity of the archdiocese.
Howard Hubbard, Bishop Emeritus of Albany, New York, has gotten married in a civil ceremony after the Vatican refused his request for laicisation. His successor, Bishop Edward Scharfenbgerger, said that the Church does not recognise the marriage.
Hubbard, 84, was removed from active ministry in 2019 after a man alleged the retired bishop had abused him as a boy – a claim Hubbard vigorously disputed, expressing his confidence in “the canonical and civil legal processes and [that] my name will be cleared in due course”.
However, facing a lengthy process which could last into his 90s, he announced that he had “fallen in love with a wonderful woman who has helped and cared for me and who believes in me”.
Scharfenberger said it was “unexpected news”, confirming that Hubbard’s request for laicisation had been refused and that he “remains a retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and therefore cannot enter into marriage”.
Over half of religious sisters in the US are now over 80, according to statistics from the National Religious Retirement Office of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Of the 24,965 sisters registered with the office, 13,621 are aged over 80, while more are 95 or over (1,052) than under the age of 40 (944).
Aid to the Church in Need reports that vocations in Burundi are on the rise but face obstructions. According to a report compiled by Maxime Francois-Marsal, church officials have been forced to reduce the number of young men and women permitted to enter the religious life and regulate enrolment, after a boom in vocations left them with a large and increasing number of applications for seminaries. The number enrolled in the major seminaries has been pinned at 13 due to a lack of resources.
A new documentary on the Turin Shroud will employ the style of a “true crime” investigation to explore its authenticity and origin.
According to its website, The Shroud Face to Face reconstructs “the actual crime scene surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion” to present “mind-blowing fusion of faith and science for the first time.” The film-maker Robert Orlando has interviewed experts on both sides of the debate for the documentary, due for release in November. There are more details at www.theshroudfilm.com.
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