The French bishops issued a statement after their autumn assembly in Lourdes, asserting that abortion cannot be seen only as a matter of women’s rights and should not be inscribed in the country’s constitution as the government plans.
“Inscribing it into our basic rights would damage the balance among them,” they said. It would weaken the command “thou shalt not kill” that is “written into all consciences, beyond just those of believers”.
“Women’s rights should be better promoted and guaranteed,” they added. “Real income equality, protection against violence…social support for their education of children, especially for single women, are highly desirable progressive policies for our societies.”
President Emmanuel Macron recently announced France would enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution next year. In a message to the bishops’ assembly, Pope Francis recalled his visit to Marseille in September and urged them “to promote and defend human life through just laws and to practice brotherhood.”
Voters in Ohio, which has a Republican governor and legislature, supported establishing a right to abortion before foetal viability in the state’s constitution by 56.6 per cent to 43.4 per cent in a referendum.
The victory for pro-choice groups came despite efforts by the state’s Catholic bishops to urge voters to reject the proposal. Pro-choice groups outspent pro-life advocates during the campaign, with an advert focusing on the case of a 10-year old Ohio rape victim who had to travel out of state for an abortion dominating the campaign.
In nearby Kentucky, incumbent Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has won re-election, but the role of abortion in that contest was less than campaigners claimed. Pro-life Republican candidates won all other state-wide races, while Beshear’s campaign material did not mention the word “abortion”, although but one advert featured a young woman who had been raped by her stepfather when she was 12 and had procured an abortion.
The moral theologian Mgr Stuart Swetland has criticised the US State Department’s plans to upgrade its nuclear gravity bomb.
“The best thing for the world – as Pope Benedict and Pope Francis spoke out about, and John Paul II before both of them – would be mutual disarmament of the nuclear arsenals of all nations that possess them,” said Mgr Swetland, the president of Donnelly College in Kansas City.
As a Naval Academy physics graduate, he spent midshipman summers on patrols aboard submarines equipped to carry nuclear weapons. He said nuclear bombs are “both non-discriminatory…and they’d be disproportionate”.
Members of the World Council of Churches (WCC) will visit the Marshall Islands in the Pacific on 16-24 November to acknowledge the long-term impacts of nuclear weapons testing.
Between 1946 and 1958, the US detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the islands, and significant nuclear waste remains today. Local people continue to suffer from its effects on their health, from the degradation of the environment and from pollution of their waters. The WCC “pilgrimage” aims to raise global awareness of the ongoing impacts of nuclear testing, concerns around climate change and demonstrate solidarity with local people and member churches.
A survey of US Catholic priests found that younger clergy are decidedly more conservative than their seniors.
“More than half of the priests who were ordained since 2010 see themselves on the conservative side of the scale,” according to the report, conducted by The Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America.
“No surveyed priests who were ordained after 2020 described themselves as ‘very progressive.’” A majority of priests ordained between 1965 and 1969 – 68 per cent – self-identified as “progressive” or “very progressive”.
The survey was based on 3,516 responses to a survey sent to 10,000 clergy. The study also indicated “a significant proportion of American priests [nine per cent] say that they had ‘personally experienced sexual harassment or abuse or suffered sexual misconduct’ during their formation or time in seminary”.
The report also found that “71 per cent of priests report knowing at least one victim-survivor of clergy sexual abuse, with 11 per cent knowing five or more”.
The University of Notre Dame has drafted a programme to prepare seminarians to minister to survivors of sexual abuse. “Fully Equipped for Every Good Work” suggests that trainee priests are tested before ordination on 12 core competences, including their ability to understand “trauma-informed pastoral care”, readiness to meet, listen to and validate victims’ experience, and how to accompany a “brother priest” accused of abuse.
The 40-page proposal arose from feedback following a US-wide consultation on the clergy sex abuse crisis held at Notre Dame and the University of St Thomas in Minnesota. A number of victim-survivors involved reported that “many priests have been ill-equipped to accompany them,” Fr Thomas Berg, a co-author of the proposal, told the Crux news agency. He added: “The present whitepaper is very much a work in progress.”
A Mass in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, marked the centenary of the foundation of the first seminary in the US to train Black men for the priesthood. Between its inception and its closure in 1968, St Augustine Seminary produced numerous priests, nine of whom became bishops.
Fr Paulus Budi Kleden, superior general of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) who now use the site as a retreat centre, said that although the seminary “lost its function as a centre to train African American candidates for the priesthood, its legacy remains”.
It stands for the congregation’s “dedication to participate actively in the efforts to eradicate the discrimination of race, religion, nationality, culture, and sexual orientation”, he said, adding that it was “a privileged moment for all the members of the SVD to recommit ourselves to live and promote interculturality”.
Cardinal Robert McElroy praised the recently concluded Synod in Rome during an address to the Religious Formation Congress, and called on religious men and women to lead the way in creating a more synodal Church.
He said the gathering, which included religious men and women, priests and laypersons, “testified to the identity of the Church as the entire people of God in a piercing manner”. McElroy said it was “fascinating, transformative and powerfully transcendent to witness God’s diverse tapestry of grace at work throughout the world”.
Addressing the process of discernment that characterised the synod, McElroy said: “As you in religious life fully recognise, such a process of discernment allows the grace of God to be recognised more clearly in our midst, and points to the commonality of our identity as disciples of Jesus Christ, bound together in our love for God and the church, even amid sometimes contentious topics.”
New York’s first perpetual adoration chapel has opened in Manhattan. More than 300 people signed up for the first week following the opening of the chapel at St Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village.
Fr Boniface Endorf OP told Vatican News most of the initial flood of visitors were “non-parishioners.” He said: “We have people from all over Manhattan, even from New Jersey and Brooklyn.” The parish has translated prayer resources into Spanish. Participants can sign up online for a time slot and on arrival the parish office provides a key card so they may access the chapel.
The annual Border Mass at the Rio Grande River crossing between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez commemorated the 148 migrants who have died at the El Paso border and 686 have died along the entire US-Mexico border this year.
Bishop Mark J Seitz of El Paso and Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of Ciudad Juárez celebrated the Mass on a platform over the river with the congregation on both embankments.
A migrant caravan heading through Mexico for the US border has grown to 7,000, largely made up of people fleeing economic and political unrest in Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela.
Restrictions on movement imposed by governments in the Americas have pushed increasing numbers to risk their lives crossing the Darién Gap, a swampy jungle at the Colombia-Panama border. Besides facing environmental hazards, migrants are routinely robbed and sexually abused by criminals in the region.
Church groups are helping evacuate and shelter hundreds of civilians as fighting escalates in Myanmar. Almost 50,000 people have been displaced in northern Myanmar after an alliance of ethnic armed groups launched an offensive against the military two weeks ago.
Restrictions on transport, poor communications and a lack of funds have hampered aid efforts by local humanitarian groups. At least 600 people have taken refuge inside the cathedral and catechist’s centre in the town of Lashio. Hundreds more are sheltering in Baptist churches and Buddhist monasteries.
The junta-appointed president warned last week that Myanmar could end up “split into various parts” if the military is unable to “manage” the fighting. Myanmar’s borderlands are home to more than a dozen ethnic armed groups and some have trained and equipped newer “People’s Defence Forces” that have formed to fight the military since the 2021 coup.
The Archdiocese of Seoul has helped to finance a smartphone app to help South Korean Catholics find the graves of dead family members or friends. Cemetery Address Platform allows users to locate graves by typing in the cemetery address and baptismal name of the deceased.
High-resolution drone images, showing forests or steep slopes in cemeteries, help the user find their way. “You can use the portal map service on your smartphone to find the location of a destination such as a restaurant, but there was actually no service within the Church that showed the location of the graves of family members,” said John Baptist Kown Yo-Han, the app’s developer.
An Indian court hearing a legal dispute to have a sixteenth-century church in the Archdiocese of Mumbai restored and declared a historical monument will return to the case on 21 November. Our Lady of Mercy Church, built by Portuguese Jesuits in 1562 at Thane in the western state of Maharashtra, lies in ruins at present.
Melwyn Fernandes, general secretary of the Mumbai-based Association of Concerned Catholics, says the dispute dates back to 1970 when the church was being renovated and a stone with Hindu carvings was found at the entrance arch. Local Hindus started a campaign claiming the site was originally a temple of the Hindu god Shiva.
The Thane district is dotted with many Catholic churches dating back several centuries. Christians make up around 2.5 per cent of the district’s 11 million population, which is majority Hindu.
The Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on the government to address the high cost of living in the country, where over-taxation is “strangling” the poor.
Speaking after their assembly in Nakuru on 10 November, the bishops also called for action on the plight of the unemployed, the problems in Kenya’s education system, and the evil of corruption in the country. “The high cost of living has deeply affected and shaken the social fabric of Kenyan society,” they said in a statement.
Addressing the issue of “over-taxation of Kenyans”, the bishops said many traders and businesses are now faced with the option of closure or laying off employees due to the immense drain on their resources and added tax burdens. They said they are aware of the external factors that contribute to the rising cost of living, singling out the price of petrol and Ukrainian and Middle East conflicts.
The bishops’ did, however, welcome the government’s move to declare 13 November a national tree-planting day. They said this accorded with the Church’s commitment to the environment. “The government’s initiative is in line with Pope Francis encyclical letter on care for our common home, Laudato Si’,” they said. “We urge our Christians and all Kenyans to fully engage in this initiative and come out to plant trees within their homes, churches, schools, and villages.”
On 4-6 September the Kenyan government in conjunction with the African Union hosted the Africa Climate Summit with global leaders, including Church representatives.
A Catholic priest in Kenya welcomed King Charles’ meeting with religious leaders during his visit to the country earlier this month as a positive sign for interfaith dialogue.
The King met religious leaders at the 120-year-old Anglican Mombasa Memorial Cathedral, and also visited an historic mosque. The clerics – convened under the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics (CICC) – came from Christian denominations, Muslim groups and African traditional religions. They explained how they use interfaith dialogue to address threats to peace, security and development.
“Currently, we have so many interreligious conflicts in the world. These conflicts have caused economic problems, retrogression, and disrupted peace and unity in many countries,” said Fr Richard Ooko Airo, the director of interreligious dialogue at the Catholic Archdiocese of Mombasa. “So, having a king who is also counted as the head of the church visit, is very significant. When he visited the religious centres, it was an indication that the church is ready for interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.”
The Vatican has ruled that transgender people can be baptised, serve as godparents and act as witnesses to Catholic marriages.
A document issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in response to six questions said an individual who had “undergone hormone treatment” and “reassignment surgery” could be baptised provided it does not cause “scandal” and “confusion” among Catholics.
Citing Francis, it said the Church is not a tollhouse and that the sacrament of baptism should be made available to people as it “is the door which allows Christ the Lord to dwell in our person”.
A transgender person can act as a godparent “under certain conditions”, including that it does not cause scandal or problems in the “educational sphere” of a community. Becoming a godparent, it points out, is not a “right” but a task taken on by a confirmed Catholic “who leads a life of faith”.
The doctrine office notes that there is nothing to prevent a transgender person from witnessing a marriage.
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