The Catholic Church in China “has opened up to the outside world” since the 2018 agreement between Beijing and the Holy See, according to the Bishop of Shanghai.
Bishop Joseph Shen Bin, who was appointed to the see without Vatican approval in April and only received its formal recognition in July, gave an interview to his new diocesan magazine in in which he said that Chinese Catholics “must adhere to the principles of patriotism and love for the Church” and follow “the direction of the sinicisation of the Catholic Church in China”.
He continued: “This is the bottom line, which no one can break, and it is also a high-pressure line, which no one should touch.” He said that the diocese should “have the courage to go out and show our confidence and openness as a member of the Universal Church”.
Open Doors, which campaigns for persecuted Christians, has called for international dialogue with the Chinese authorities after they repatriated 600 North Korean refugees.
The charity’s spokesperson Timothy Cho urged the British government to negotiate with China to have refugees sent to a third country, such as the Philippines, rather than face deportation to North Korea and “the process of imprisonment, torture and punishment that follows”.
He said that those who fled the country for religious reasons are in particular danger should they be sent back to North Korea, where they “are likely to be dealt with particularly severely, indeed many are likely to be executed”.
Church bodies have joined advocacy groups to complain against the alleged actions of Indonesian police against villagers protesting against a geothermal project on the Christian-majority island of Flores.
In a complaint submitted to the National Human Rights Commission in Jakarta on 20 October they accused police of carrying out “intimidation and criminalisation” of residents opposing a power project led by the state electricity company. The organisations involved include Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission of the Franciscans.
Flores Island is a geothermal hotspot but local communities fear the loss of land and livelihoods with this project.
The Diocese of Ballarat has been granted leave to appeal a judgment in Victoria that found it liable for abuse of a child. The Australian High Court will now rule on the Church’s liability for harm committed by paedophile priests.
Over the past two years, Victoria’s courts ruled that Ballarat is vicariously liable for the abuse of a child by assistant priest Fr Bryan Coffey. “Vicarious liability” is typically used to hold employers responsible for the wrongful actions of employees.
In 2022, Victoria’s supreme court described parts of the Church’s argument – namely, that it was not responsible because the abuse took place during after-hours social visits – as “ruthless” and “an affront to common sense”.
The court described the Church as “all-powerful in the management of clergy within a diocese” and that activities of an assistant parish priest were under the “direct control” of the priest, who reported to the bishop.
The Standing Committee on Human Rights in Pakistan’s Senate reported last week that 179 Pakistani citizens are currently in detention and awaiting trial for blasphemy. In addition, 17 people already convicted of blasphemy are awaiting a second trial. The statistics were described as “heart-breaking” by Pakistan’s National Human Rights Commission, which collected the data.
Senator Walid Iqbal, chair of the committee, called for the formation of a national coordination committee within the human rights ministry to develop standard operating procedures to address issues that cause unjust “collective punishment” to minority communities. He expressed concern about “the misuse of blasphemy laws as a means to resolve personal issues”.
The Catholic Church in the Arabian Peninsula announced the start of a Jubilee for the 1,500th anniversary of the Martyrs of Arabia on 24 October, commemorating the martyrdom of Saint Arethas and other Arab Christians in 523AD.
“We consider this year to be a year of grace for the entire vicariate and for all Christian communities in the Arabian Gulf,” said Bishop Aldo Berardi, apostolic vicar in Northern Arabia. “We celebrate with faith the memory of our Christian ancestors who gave their lives for Christ,” he added, and “the Holy Year offers us the opportunity to better understand our vocation as a Catholic Church in this region”.
Around 2.5 million Catholics live in the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia, mostly foreign workers.
The Diocese of Aachen has published a list of 53 priest who are believed to have perpetrated abuse. It is the first German diocese to do so. The list includes the name of one bishop – August Peters, who was auxiliary bishop of Aachen from 1981 until his death in 1986. He is buried in Aachen Cathedral.
“I can understand that this must come as a shock to many of you”, the present Bishop of Aachen, Helmut Dieser, told a press conference on 18 October. “But we don’t make exceptions for alleged perpetrators, no matter what position they held during their lifetime”.
According to the vicar general of Aachen, Andreas Frick, the diocese has only published the names of perpetrators who have been dead for at least ten years. Bishop Dieser said he had informed his fellow bishops in Germany.
The city council of Wroclaw has asked to end municipal funding for Catholic catechism classes in Polish schools. It has appealed to the prime minister and education minister for legal solutions to allow the city to cut funding, “in view of the very difficult economic situation faced by local authorities and the dynamically rising costs of operating the education system”.
In Poland, religion classes are hosted and funded by public schools but with curriculum and teachers chosen by the Church. Lessons are optional and Wroclaw’s council noted that recent years have seen falling attendance.
Data published earlier this month shows that only around 15 per cent of secondary-school pupils attend religion classes in Wroclaw, down from 34 per cent in 2018. Among primary-school pupils – who often attend the classes to prepare for First Communion – the figure is now 63 per cent, down from 80 per cent in 2018.
A Czech priest has apologised to local children after stamping on Halloween pumpkins near his church because he dislikes “the satanic feast of Halloween”.
Fr Jaromir Smejkal, parish priest in Kurdejov, South Moravia, destroyed the carved pumpkins in a nearby park. He apologised in an open letter to the mayor and on social media, saying he would have acted differently had he known they were carved by local children.
“I acted according to my faith and duty to be a father and protector of the children entrusted to me and removed these symbols,” he explained.
Environmental activists clashed with Religious on a construction site in the south of France, where the Missionary Society of Our Lady is building a church and pilgrim centre.
After protesters disrupted work in Saint-Pierre-de-Colombier earlier this month, members of the community attempted to protect the site when work resumed on 16 and 17 October, struggling with protesters who broke through barriers and forming a human chain around machinery.
Environmental campaigners claim that the building damages local habitat and that its permit was fraudulently acquired, while the community said that it “reiterates its opposition to all violence, prays for its opponents, and firmly demands that its rights be respected”.
The site has been the subject of dispute for years and the community has previously been ordered by its local bishop to cease construction on the grounds that the project is outsized. The Vatican has endorsed this ruling and also launched an inquiry into the community after Miviludes, the French state agency for monitoring cult movements, reported in 2018 that it manipulated its members.
Ancient vestments, relics and reliquaries that survived the blaze at Notre Dame de Paris in 2019 are on display in the Louvre. The Treasury of Notre Dame Cathedral exhibition in Paris also features medieval manuscripts and a cloak from the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Prior to the fire, the treasury was housed in a 12-metre-high vaulted room in the cathedral, which was open to the public. Yet Anne Dion-Tenenbaum, joint curator of the exhibition said few people had visited the it, especially the French. She told The Times: “They went to see the cathedral but didn’t think it was worth going to the treasury.”
One visitor to the exhibition, Fr Michel Frament, parish priest at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, said: “God does not want evil, but he allows it to happen for a greater good. The fire was sad but it has led to some positive events.”
A rise in the number of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago is helping to spread bed bugs, say hostel owners in north-western Spain. Several pilgrim hostels have been obliged to close for fumigation in the municipality of Caldas de Reis, Galicia.
Jesús Fariña, owner of the Doña Urraca hostel told El Periódico de España: “Fumigation helps, but this year we have seen an enormous number of pilgrims and what this means is they transport the bugs from one place to another.”
Other hostel owners blame the growing numbers of pilgrims using a “back-pack service” whereby their rucksacks are transported from one hostel to another by car or van. Yolanda Rey, owner of the Albor Hostel, said it only needed one rucksack to be infested for the bugs to “automatically cause an infestation” in adjacent backpacks.
Oklahoma attorney general Gentner Drummond filed a lawsuit on 20 October to stop what would be the first publicly-funded Catholic school in the United States.
In June, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board approved an application to establish the St Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School. On 9 October the board signed a contract with the school, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
Gentner, a Republican, had previously warned the board that its decision violated both the state and US constitutions. Groups like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union have already filed a lawsuit against the school, which plans to open by July 2024.
The school’s supporters, which include Governor Kevin Stitt, also a Republican, argue that recent Supreme Court rulings ensure that religious non-profits have the same rights as secular organisations to apply for public charter school funding.
Las Vegas, the gambling hotspot known as “Sin City”, has become the thirty-third Catholic archdiocese in the US.
When the Vatican established the Diocese of Las Vegas in 1995, by dividing the existing Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas in two, it housed around 250,000 Catholics. An increase in the numbers of registered Catholics in to 650,000 has led to the formation of the archdiocese. It is spread over 39,000 miles of Nevada, with 67 priests in 30 parishes.
Last week, George Leo Thomas was installed as the first Metropolitan Archbishop of Las Vegas. At a Mass to give Thomas the pallium, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, said the growth of the local Catholic population was the result of synodality, meaning “women and men working together on the shared journey of faith.”
“Catholics in this local church are realising the vision of the Second Vatican Council, not only that all of us are called to holiness, but that at all times clergy, religious and lay share responsibility for the mission of the Gospel,” he said.
Workers demolishing a former convent in Kenosha, Wisconsin, discovered a time capsule containing 80-year-old newspaper articles, photographs of past parish priests and handwritten notes, among other items.
Fr Sean Granger, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, removed and examined the documents from the time capsule, a copper box that workers found inside the cornerstone of the old Sisters Convent at 4816 Seventh Avenue, the Kenosha News reported.
The time capsule’s contents had been left undisturbed since 27 June, 1940, when about a dozen people signed a scroll of parchment paper that they placed inside the box along with photos, church documents and newspapers with headlines about rumoured peace talks during the Second World War and the 1940 presidential election.
A fire on 31 January left the former convent, most recently used as office space for two local parishes, uninhabitable. The Kenosha News reported that the lot will be turned into open green space.
In his message for World Food Day on 16 October, Pope Francis said that hunger and malnutrition globally are the result of the “accumulation of injustices and inequalities that leaves many stranded in the gutter of life and allows a few to settle in a state of ostentation and opulence.” He said the “cries of anguish and despair of the poor” should “awaken society from indifference”.
This year’s theme is “Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind”. The Pope urged international organisations, governments and civil society, “to join forces and unite ideas so that water may be everyone’s heritage, be better distributed and managed in a sustainable and rational way.”
Church statistics published to mark World Mission Sunday showed that the global number of Catholics continued to increase last year, but the number of clergy and religious had slightly declined.
The Dicastery for Evangelisation recorded an increase of just over 16.2 million Catholics to 1,375,852,000, making up 17.7 per cent of the world’s population. The number of priests fell by 2,347 to 407,872. African and Asia saw their numbers of priests grow, while Europe was the only continent where the overall number of Catholics declined.
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