A week after the Zimbabwean elections on 23 and 24 August, which won President Emerson Mnangagwa a second term, the country’s Catholic bishops have heavily criticised the conduct of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
A statement issued by the bishops’ Justice and Peace asked the ZEC “to give an account to the nation about the delays and procurement of voting material and the missing names on the voter's roll”, which have led to claims that the election was rigged.
“We call upon all the aggrieved parties to redress their grievances following the legal procedures,” the statement said, adding: “Let us all shun barbaric actions that are contrary to the Christian ethos and national values as stated in the preamble of our national constitution.”
Tanzania’s 37 bishops have demanded the government cancel a recent agreement giving a Dubai-based company the right to manage the country’s ports. “We are driven by a conscience that aims to protect resources, solidarity, peace, freedom, and national unity,” they said. “The people do not want the port of Dar es Salaam to be given to one investor to run it,” under the terms of the intergovernmental agreement between Tanzania and Dubai.
Last weekend, the secretary-general of the Tanzania Episcopal Conference, Fr Charles Kitima, said: “The majority of citizens do not want this agreement which gives the foreign investor the authority and right to own the main economic routes as specified on this agreement.”
Heavy monsoon rain triggered by a tropical cyclone has affected more than 300,000 people across the Philippines, including the capital Manila, and Catholic parishes have provided sanctuary and humanitarian aid. Caritas dispatched hundreds of sacks of rice, toiletries and tents for evacuees.
“In times like this, we will prioritise those who really need help like in the low-lying areas or those living under bridges or near the rivers, whose houses were totally wrecked by the floods,” said Caritas Philippines president Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo of Kidapawan.
Manila streets were flooded and people trapped in their homes in slum areas as waters rose quickly. Parishes in Marikina, Metropolitan Manila, opened their doors to local people fleeing the swelling river.
Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore has called the refurbishment of and reopening of some churches in Jaranwala “a sign of rebirth”. He was speaking last week at the Catholic church of the Christian quarter of Essa Nagri in Jaranwala, already cleaned, repainted, furnished and ready for worship after being attacked in some of the worst anti-Christian riots in Pakistan’s history.
“We prayed for peace with many faithful, with Muslim leaders seated next to each other,” he reported, “and with many men of good will, who want to build the peaceful coexistence of different religions in society.“
Reconstruction works ordered and financed by the Punjab government followed vandalism by a Muslim mob on 16 August. The archbishop has visited Jaranwala several times in recent days, accompanied by various delegations of Muslim leaders who have shown support. “The process of recovery has begun and it is important to continue on this path,” he said.
Of approximately 30 damaged, burned or vandalised churches and chapels, four have already been restored or are being rapidly repaired.
Bishops from the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala have urged the Indian government to do more to restore peace in strife-torn Manipur. “We all need to extend our wholehearted support to rebuild the shattered lives of people in Manipur,” a statement from 54 bishops said on 26 August.
Cardinal George Alencherry, head of the Church, called on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led federal and state governments to “take earnest steps to restore peace in the troubled state.” The bishops described the violence as “a deep wound in the heart of secular India” and expressed concern over rising incidents of persecution against Christians in other parts of the country as well.
In Manipur, more than 160 people have died and hundreds more been injured since ethnic clashes broke out in May, while tens of thousands of people have been displaced.
Latin America and the Caribbean are far from overcoming the damaging impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report by the Latin American bishops’ council CELAM.
It said the region will take years to recover if governments do not act immediately, it said. The report recommends that the Church endorse its preferential option for the poor to help solve material needs and foster hope.
The document “Latin American and Caribbean Societies in the Post-Pandemic Context (2021-2022)” says poverty and malnutrition levels in the region have yet to drop to pre-pandemic levels, with rising unemployment while half of all jobs are casual. Meanwhile, political polarisation is growing in many countries, as well as dissatisfaction with the region’s democracies.
An Armenian Catholic bishop in the US is calling for prayer and action as some 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh face “genocide by starvation”.
For the past nine months, Azerbaijani forces have blocked the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, an historic Armenian enclave located in southwestern Azerbaijan. Bishop Mikael A Mouradian, of the California-based Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg, last week called the blockade “a violation of every kind of law”. He said that with the area surrounded by Muslim-majority Azerbaijan, the blockade amounts to an “ethnic cleansing of Christians” since “the sole Christian people in the Caucasus are now the Armenians”.
In February, the International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to ensure “unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor [the road into Nagorno-Karabakh] in both directions” but aid agencies report that this has not happened.
The World Council of Churches and Pax Christi International are inviting churches and individuals to pray and advocate for with communities in the Holy Land during the World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel on 16-23 September. The week includes the International Day of Prayer for Peace on 21 September.
Church groups are encouraged to organise liturgies, educational events, and peaceful actions to promote justice and peace. Pax Christi International endorsed last week’s statement by civil society organisations in the Holy Land, including its partner the Arab Educational Institute, urging the international community to support the cause of Christians to be respected in their faith and culture. They also called for an end to the occupation and pressure on Israel to uphold international law and human rights.
The Diocese of Rome has expressed support for anti-Mafia priest Fr Antonio Coluccia and praised his courageous pastoral work following an attempt on his life in Rome.
Italian magistrates consider a recent attack on him to be an “assassination attempt” organised by the Mafia. Fr Coluccia fended off a man on a motorbike riding into him during a march for law and order and against the Mafia. A bodyguard and the assailant were injured.
“On behalf of the Diocese of Rome, I express to Fr Antonio Coluccia and the men of his bodyguard my full solidarity for what happened on 29 August in the Tor Bella Monaca neighbourhood,” read a statement signed by Bishop Baldassare Reina, auxiliary in Rome.
Fr Coluccia has fought against drug addiction and crime since 2012, when he transformed a villa confiscated from the Mafia into a drug prevention community.
A group which tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has criticised a Massachusetts district judge’s decision last week to dismiss criminal charges against the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the Bishop Accountability group, described the dismissal as “hugely disappointing”, saying that “yet again, a predator has evaded accountability.”
The charges of sexual assault and abuse of a minor were dismissed after a judge ruled that the 93-year-old former Archbishop of Washington, DC was not mentally competent to stand trial, because he suffers from dementia and could not assist his lawyers in his own defence.
A lawyer for the victim expressed disappointment with the ruling, saying McCarrick “is and will always be the permanent personification of evil within the Catholic Church”. Charges filed against McCarrick in Wisconsin are still pending.
The vice president of the Paulist Fathers, Fr Frank Desiderio, has resigned after admitting to making unwanted sexual advances towards a woman.
“Fr Frank profoundly regrets the harm he has caused the victim as well as the effects this may have on the Paulist Fathers and the people we serve,” said Fr Rene Constanza, president of the Paulists, in a letter announcing the resignation.
Desiderio has also been suspended from priestly ministry and will go to a treatment centre for clergy with mental health problems. He was ordained in 1982 and served in a variety of Paulist ministries before his election as vice president in 2022.
Bishop Joseph Hart, the former Bishop of Cheyenne, Wyoming, whose retirement was engulfed in controversy, died on 23 August. In 2021, the Vatican cleared Hart of seven allegations of sex abuse against a minor.
The allegations had previously been deemed credible by the review board of the Diocese of Cheyenne and Hart had been removed from ministry. He denied the allegations, which date from his years as a priest in the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph, Missouri, which reached a settlement with ten victims. Allegations were also made by six men in Wyoming but prosecutors declined to press charges.
A Swiss diocese will consider the future of several mosaics by Marko Rupnik that adorn the facades of churches in Geneva, after he was accused of sexual abuse, temporarily excommunicated and expelled from the Jesuits.
The Diocese of Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg said a committee would draw up proposals about the mosaics along the Chemin de Joie (“Path of Joy”) linking 13 churches and other sites in Geneva canton. The images of the resurrected Christ were designed by Rupnik at his Aletti Centre in Rome and by another artistic workshop in Peru.
Other sites such as the Marian sanctuary in Lourdes and the basilica of Aparecida in Brazil have also launched inquiries into use of the modernist mosaics designed by Rupnik.
The Slovenian priest was expelled from the Society of Jesus in June for disobeying an order to take on a new mission. The order has said that accusations by several nuns of Rupnik’s spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse were “highly credible”.
Pope Francis has urged French employers to see job creation as a higher goal than using technology and finance to boost their profits. In a rare message read out to the annual meeting of the employers’ federation MEDEF in Paris, he said “one of the grave crises of our time is the loss of contact between an entrepreneur and the work of his enterprise, and thus with his workers”.
“It’s us, and not the machines, that are the real value of work,” he said before a round table of employers and French religious leaders. Calling employers “an essential motor of the public wealth, prosperity and happiness”, he continued: “We must, you must do more. Children will thank you, and I will with them.”
The religious leaders told the meeting that ancient faiths create a context for today’s changing times. “We don’t transmit something by adding something new,” said Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia.
The Pope is to publish a letter on St Thérèse of Lisieux on 15 October to mark the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of her birth. He said St Thérèse lived “devoted to God, forgetting about herself, loving and consoling Jesus, and interceding for the salvation of all.”
Pope Francis once confessed he “had the habit” of asking St Thérèse to send him a rose if she had taken care for one of his intentions. The Jubilee Year for St Thérèse will end on Sunday, January 7, 2024.
Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim in Norway has helped to produce a new beer in the city, whose bottles sport his personal emblem. Varden, who as abbot of the Cistercian Mount Saint Bernard monastery in Leicestershire introduced Trappist brewing to the UK, said his “vague credentials in the world of brewing” led to contacts with Trondheim brewers. They have now launched “Magnus” beer, a dark 8.5 per cent strong ale named after the martyr St Magnus Erlendsson.
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