Pope Francis has met the leader of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) a Peru-based lay group subject to a Vatican investigation. Nothing has been made public about the meeting between the Pope and José David Correa González, superior general of the SCV, whose founder Luis Fernando Figari has been sanctioned by the Church for sexual abuse of minors.
Established in the 1970s, the SCV stands accused of financial corruption, while associated groups are said to have legally harassed the journalists who revealed the abuse allegations in a 2015 book, Half Monks, Half Soldiers.
Cardinal Pedro Barreto of Huancayo, the President of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon told the Crux news agency that three Vatican commissions to investigate the group had so far had “no effect”. He urged the Vatican to dissolve the group, which was mostly recently investigated last summer by Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Mgr Jordi Bertomeu from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith.
REPAM, a Catholic network which promotes the rights of people living in the Amazon region, has condemned the killing of Quinto Inuma, a leader of the Kichwa community. “One more environmental defender whom the Peruvian state failed to protect has been murdered in the Amazon,” it said, after Inuma was shot dead on 29 November in a remote part of the northern region of San Martin.
In 2021, Inuma had denounced death threats he received for defending ancestral Kichwa territory. “We continue fighting to defend millions of lives, of ecosystems that are about to disappear,” he said.
Armed men ambushed him last week as he travelled home by boat after addressing a meeting of women environmental campaigners. REPAM said government measures to protect defenders of human and environmental rights are “insufficient”. The Peruvian mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on authorities to investigate promptly. At least 30 environmental activists and community leaders have been killed since 2020.
Services in Central America and the United States on 2 December commemorated the killing 43 years ago of four US Catholic missionaries in El Salvador.
Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan were raped and murdered by five members of the El Salvador National Guard. They were among tens of thousands killed in the country’s civil war, including Archbishop Oscar Romero assassinated earlier in 1980.
The Maryknoll Sisters and Archbishop Romero Trust marked the martyrdom, while groups in El Salvador placed flowers at the graves of the two Maryknoll sisters buried in Chalatenango.
Churches in South Korea need to break away from their authoritarian and institutional approach and embrace flexibility, according to speakers at a seminar titled “De-religionisation and Society, and the Future and Prospects of Korean Catholics”.
The event, hosted by the Catholic Cultural Institute of Korea, addressed the rising numbers of religiously-unaffiliated people, but this was termed a decline in institutional religion rather than “de-religionisation”.
Speakers called for the Church “to be like a fluid and flexible tent that embraces everyone”. More people “quench their spiritual thirst outside of the Church” in counselling and healing programmes or retreats and temple visits.
The number of young people attending Sunday Mass has dropped by 17 per cent since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey by the Korean Catholic Research Institute in March. Catholics in South Korea account for about 10 per cent of its 52 million population.
The Bishop of Loikaw has been forced to flee his cathedral after it was occupied by troops of Myanmar’s military junta. Bishop Celso Ba Shwe said that the soldiers planned to use the cathedral complex “as a shield” in their war against rebel forces in Kayah State.
Staff and clergy fled the site – which comprises the bishop’s residence, pastoral centre, and clergy house – when around 50 soldiers took over the location on 27 November, reportedly hoping that rebels would be reluctant to damage it. The cathedral complex also housed hundreds of people displaced by the conflict, the bishop said, and volunteers helped move them to safer places before the military arrived.
Kayah churches have been abandoned as people desert the state, with 26 of the 41 parishes in the Diocese of Loikaw already empty when the latest violence broke out. The Karenni resistance force, which is fighting the junta, has Christians among its members. Kayah State is around 45 per cent Christian, with a Catholics population of roughly 91,000.
A convert from Hinduism who is now a Catholic nun has become the first female director of Caritas Nepal. Sr Durga Cecilia Shrestha, 40, grew up “following Hindu rituals and performing puja (worship) at home”.
As a child, she noted how happy and friendly Catholic nuns visiting her village were “with people of all ages, from children to the elders, especially the sick”. She said: “I wanted to be like them, though I didn’t know who Christ was or what Christianity meant.”
In 1996, her family converted to Catholicism, which caused her grandfather to treat them as “untouchables”. Aged 19, Durga joined the order of St Joseph of Cluny, whose nuns had run her school. Prior to her appointment as executive director of Caritas Nepal she was the director of Opportunity Village Nepal, an NGO run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
“It was a turning point for me as I was exposed to the plight of underage girls and young women being trafficked both within the country and outside,” she said.
A Pakistani archbishop has said that Muslim leaders are becoming more vocal in opposing radicalism and supporting with Christians. Following a wave of anti-Christian riots in Jaranwala, Punjab Province, Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw of Lahore told Aid to the Church in Need that the voices of Muslim leaders and scholars “have become very important” in defusing religious tensions.
“Just last week we had a meeting in our bishops’ house, during which two ulemas, including the grand imam of Lahore, agreed to organise a national level interfaith conference in the federal capital of Islamabad,” he said.
Archbishop Shaw said such leader “are also influencing the government to work more for dialogue and for a better society in Pakistan”, and expressed hope that their condemnation of the persecution of religious minorities might encourage the government to protect Christians and other faith groups and punish those who attack them.
A German missionary kidnapped in Mali one year ago was released on 26 November. Fr Hans-Joachim Lohre of the Society of Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) was kidnapped on 20 November 2022 after celebrating Mass in a convent in the Malian capital, Bamako. He has been a missionary in Mali for 30 years.
The Malian government confirmed his release on 27 November, following negotiations conducted directly by the German government.
In a statement released three days later, the White Fathers said: “We are overjoyed to know that he is finally free after so many months.” The statement said he had been flown to Germany “to be reunited with his family and receive the necessary care”. Fr Lohre had previously acknowledged that he was an “easy target” for jihadists but refused to leave the country.
The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba has sent condolences “to all those touched by the heart-wrenching tragedy at Impala Platinum”, following the death of 12 miners in the Implats Mine at Rustenburg in the North West province on 27 November.
A cage transporting miners finishing their shift fell nearly 200 metres to the bottom of its shaft, injuring 75 others. Archbishop Makgoba offered prayers and support. “It is crucial that every effort is made to understand how this tragedy occurred and to ensure that those impacted receive the support they need to navigate through this incredibly difficult time,” he said.
Production at the rest of the mine resumed on 30 November after a period for mourning and safety checks on the other elevators at the complex, the mining company said. The nine-shaft mine was the world’s largest platinum mine by production last year.
Belarussian police arrested two Catholic priests in November, according to opposition sources.
Fr Henryk Alkalatovich, 63, of the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mahiliou, was arrested on 17 November on treason charges which can carry a sentence of up to 15 years, reported Christian Vision, which monitors religious persecution in the country.
On 22 November, police arrested Fr Vyachaslau Pialinak of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, who previously served as personal secretary to the apostolic nuncio Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, who has since been made a cardinal and prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.
Christian Vision said Fr Pialinak was arrested after celebrating Mass in the city of Brest, and his mobile phone and computer confiscated. Polish reports said he had been accused of “extremism”, a legal designation covering almost all criticism of the Belarussian authorities.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that public administrations have the right to ban their employees from wearing symbols of religious belief in the workplace. In a press statement, the court said such a rule was “not discriminatory if it is applied in a general and indiscriminate manner to all of that administration’s staff and is limited to what is strictly necessary”.
National courts in each EU state can, however, decide whether such measures reconcile freedom of religion with “the legitimate objectives” underlying a ban. The ECJ also said that “another public administration’s choice in favour of a policy authorising, in a general and indiscriminate manner, the wearing of visible signs of beliefs – philosophical or religious in particular”, was “equally justified”.
The ruling followed an appeal from an employee of the municipality of Ans in Belgium, who was banned from wearing an Islamic headscarf in her workplace. She sought to prove her freedom of religion had been infringed.
Bavarian bishops have said it is “unacceptable for Christians to vote for parties that spread nationalist, racist or anti-Semitic opinions, or tolerate them in their ranks”, after the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came third in October’s state elections.
“A clear line must be drawn against right-wing extremists,” said a statement issued by the region’s Freising Bishops’ Conference at the end of their autumn plenary in Munich. A study found that 14 per cent of Catholic voters backed the AfD, compared to 14.6 per cent of the wider electorate.
The bishops warned that the party would “use the free constitutional order to ultimately abolish it”. They discussed introducing a ban on AfD members from holding offices in Catholic associations and lay organisations, though the Archbishop of Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx said he was “hesitant about putting the rules in writing”.
Br Alois, the prior if the Taizé community since 2005, handed over his office to the new prior Br Matthew on 2 December, at a service of evening prayer with representatives of the different denominations and friends of the community. Andrew Thorpe, known as Br Matthew, is the first Anglican to lead Taizé.
His message for 2023, titled “Journeying Together”, provides the theme for a European meeting of several thousand young people in Ljubljana at the end of December, hosted by 50 different parishes and the Slovenian Bishops’ Conference.
The Vatican has called for nuclear powers to help communities affected by the nuclear testing, in remarks at the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at the UN in New York last week.
Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, head of the Holy See’s delegation to the UN, said the treaty should include obligations to help communities exposed to the effects of radiation.
Pax Christi organisations in France, England and Wales and Scotland have called on President Emanuel Macron and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and to review their opposition to the TPNW and to engage with the treaty processes.
None of the five recognised nuclear-weapons states – including France and the UK – have signed the TPNW. Signatories to the treaty cannot develop, test, produce, stockpile, station, transfer, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.
The virologist serving as the Global Aids Coordinator in the Biden administration reported on World Aids Day last week that faith groups have helped save millions of lives.
“If we look at that spectrum, as a whole, faith-based organisations play a critical role, and have been playing a critical role, in prevention, in care and in treatment,” said Dr John N Nkengasong. He said faith-based organisations have played a key part in helping to implement the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and pointed to Catholic Relief Services as a key provider of care.
Pope Francis was to remove Cardinal Raymond Burke’s privileges, including his Vatican apartment, but denied calling him his “enemy”, according to reports last week.
The Pope told a meeting of dicastery heads on 20 November that Burke – a prominent critic of several papal initiatives – was using his position in Rome to be a source of “disunity”, although the decision was not made public but leaked by officials.
Some outlets claimed Francis had called the cardinal “my enemy”, but the papal biographer Austen Ivereigh reported that the Pope had denied this, while confirming that he would stop Burke’s tenancy and salary.
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