Six Christians jailed in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have been granted bail ahead of Christmas.
Arrested on 29 November under the state’s stringent anti-conversion law, they were accused of attempting to convert people through enticements such as providing medicines. Police seized copies of the Bible and other Christian literature during a raid on the Christian group.
The group denies breaking Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion act of 2021, which can carry a prison sentence of up to ten years. The state, governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is considered the centre of Christian persecution among India’s 28 states, 11 of which have enacted anti-conversion legislation.
Attacks on Indian Christians “have risen sharply under Modi”, according to the New Delhi-based United Christian Forum (UCF) that tracks violence against Christians in India. The UCF has collected details on 687 incidents of violence this year against Christians from 23 states up to November, amounting to “two incidents per day in a secular and democratic country”, it said.
More than 10,000 people in India have had their eyesight improved through cataract surgery provided by Project Vision, a charity founded by a Claretian priest. Fr George Kannanthanam told UCA News that “the struggles of visually-challenged HIV-infected and leprosy people with whom I worked,” had inspired him to found it.
A further 600 people have had eye transplants thanks to the charity, which asks donors to pledge their eyes after dying. “There is still taboo and unwillingness among people to donate their eyes,” said Fr Mario Zalki, director of Project Vision. But he added there had been many positive changes, especially among young people.
Project Vision organises “blind walks” in cities across India, where participants are blindfolded and travel around the city, holding the hand of someone who is visually impaired. The charity now plans to implement improved technology to provide improved vision for up to five people using the eyes of a single deceased donor.
The Vietnamese government announced that President Vo Van Thuong of Vietnam invited Pope Francis to visit the country.
The announcement came on 14 December as the president visited Archbishop Joseph Nguyen Chi Linh of Hue at the Archbishop’s House, accompanied by the ministers for home and religious affairs ministers, where they exchanged Christmas greetings.
President Thuong had signed a letter inviting “Pope Francis to visit and see the social-economic developments and religious life in the country”, the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs reported.
Thuong, 53, said he shared the desire of the communist country’s seven million Catholics to welcome the Pope. He himself met with Francis and the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin during his visit to the Vatican in July, and signed a landmark agreement that allows a papal representative to reside in Vietnam and open an office for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
An attempt by the Biden administration to address a backlog of neglected and abused minors from Central America waiting to regularise their immigration status in the US will delay visas for foreign-born clergy.
The government announced that minors from from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador would be placed in the same queue as foreign-born clergy and seminarians, with the unintended consequence that foreign-born clergy who currently wait one year for the immigration papers can now expect to wait five.
“We’ve been in several conversations with the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House,” attorney David Spicer, senior policy adviser for Migration and Refugee Services at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Our Sunday Visitor, “as well as meeting with members of Congress and their staff, to discuss these ongoing issues and the impact of this recent change.”
The bishops’ conference is advocating passage of a bill which would expedite abused minors’ cases without creating an additional delay for clergy.
The Bishop of Sacramento said his diocese would be entering bankruptcy to cope with the volume of sex abuse settlements which followed the California state legislature’s decision to lift the statute of limitations of abuse allegations.
“Without such a reorganisation process, it is likely that not all the abuse victim-survivors would receive a fair consideration of their claim,” Bishop Jaime Soto said in his letter sent to the faithful. “The funds available to settle claims could be depleted by the first few cases addressed, leaving those that follow with little or no compensation.”
Earlier this year, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and the dioceses of Oakland, San Diego, Santa Rosa and Stockton filed for bankruptcy for the same reason. California has now enacted a law that permanently removes the statute of limitations on child sex abuse and expands the definition of abuse to include procuring child pornography.
In their Christmas message, Cuba’s Catholic bishops said that 2023 has been “a very difficult year” for the country’s food, health, and services.
They regretted emigration from the country of “children, young people, entire families, workers, and professionals” which has disrupted communities and left many elderly people lonely.
The bishops called for help for all citizens to develop their full potential in Cuba, and urged Catholics “to celebrate Christmas as a family and in the Christian community” and “to share at home, to visit the sick and those who are alone, to pray more, to read and meditate on the Bible.”
Southern Africa’s Catholic bishops published a handbook in readiness for next year’s general election in South Africa, encouraging voter engagement without endorsing specific political candidates or parties.
“Citizen education is an essential part of any democratic society” it says. “By providing citizens with the necessary knowledge and understanding of the electoral process, people are empowered to exercise their democratic rights and actively contribute to shaping the future of their country.”
The handbook is published by the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Southern Africa, which brings together the bishops of South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini.
Catholic bishops in Tanzania opposed government plans to evict Maasai communities from their ancestral lands. Reports from Dar-es-Salaam said the government planned to lease some areas of Loliondo and Ngorongoro in the northern of the country to a US-based company to develop tourism.
In a video message on 11 December, the Tanzanian bishops’ conference general secretary Fr Charles Kitima said: “We do not reject investment nor do we refuse the government to change the region for wider use, but those human beings must be treated according to human rights.”
The message continued: “We do not need to persecute the Maasai of Loliondo and Ngorongoro if we want Ngorongoro as income. Humans are more valuable than animals.”
A priest in Kenya’s Diocese of Eldoret was injured in an attempt to rescue a group of young girls from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Fr Amos Kimtai from Saint Kizito Parish is known for his opposition to FGM – which is illegal in Kenya – and said that he had called the police when a crowd gathered near parish property on 9 December but “hearing the frightened cries of the young girls provoked me and so I went out to try to rescue them”.
“I could see a group of about 50 young girls and some women who were being circumcised while the men stood on guard to ensure that no one interfered with the process,” he said. “They hit me so badly. I have bruises on my head, neck, and back. My hands were also injured as I tried to block their blows.”
Seven months of fighting in Sudan has led to “a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis”, according to the UN’s Human Rights Office, with the restive region of Darfur has been particularly badly affected.
Close to nine million people need humanitarian assistance and reports suggest that some 4,000 people have been targeted and killed because of their ethnicity. The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns in Washington is lobbying President Joe Biden to push for investigation into the killings, saying the US should support the international community’s efforts to investigate war crimes through the International Criminal Court and the UN Fact-Finding Mechanism.
There are concerns that Darfur is returning to the years of brutal fighting and atrocity last witnessed two decades ago, when 300,000 people were killed and millions of others displaced.
Aid to the Church in Need is supporting the Sisters of St Joseph of Lyons and the Congregation of Jesus and Mary distributing Christmas gifts to 35,000 children in Syria and 10,000 in Lebanon whose parents cannot afford to purchase presents.
The charity is also supporting religious in the region to provide warm winter clothing for the children of families struggling amidst economic hardship.
Sr Annie Demerjian CIM said that “many families here [in Syria] can only dream of new clothes for to buy a pair of trousers, a shirt and shoes these days in Syria you need two months of minimum wage”.
Cardinal Grzegorz Rys of Lodz, who chairs the Polish bishops’ Committee for Dialogue with Judaism, condemned an incident when a far-right Polish politician extinguished Hanukkah candles in the country’s parliament. He said he was “ashamed” and apologised to Poland’s Jewish community.
MP Grzegorz Braun provoked outrage on 12 December when he used a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles lit by Rabbi Szalom Ber Stambler and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Piotr Zgorzelski during a parliamentary event with members of the Jewish community.
The Polish parliament has lit menorah candles for Hannukah has taken place for the last 17 years. Poland’s newly-elected Prime Minster Donald Tusk said: “This must never happen again – this is a disgrace.”
The first woman to be appointed an undersecretary to the Synod says it involves “a learning by doing” and “opening up new spaces.”
Sr Nathalie Becquart XMCJ told Forbes that the Synod was implementing the changes of the Second Vatican Council, which had “put the first focus on our common vocation as baptised [people] before all differences and vocations.” She continued: “Of course, there is a hierarchical dimension in the Church but first of all we are brothers and sisters in Christ, first of all we are a community.”
Becquart said: “What we are doing now is really to continue the reception of the Second Vatican Council.” Becquart, who was appointed to her role in 2021, added that the news she had become the first woman in a post traditionally occupied by male clergy had evoked “a rather warm welcome” from cardinals, bishop and priests.
The Pope urged the international community to adopt a binding international treaty to regulate artificial intelligence in his message for the 57th World Peace Day on 1 January.
“We must make sure that AI is put at the service of peace in the world, rather than being a threat, and that it makes a beneficial contribution to humanity’s future,” he said.
Pope Francis warned of the risks to democratic societies and peaceful coexistence of the dominant technocratic paradigm behind AI and the cult of unlimited human power. He expressed particular concern for the “weaponisation of artificial intelligence”.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) issued a letter last week emphasising that single mothers “should be encouraged to access the saving and consoling power of the Sacraments” and not be excluded from communion by “rigorism”.
The letter, signed by the DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, said that “pastoral work should be done in the local Church to make people understand that being a single mother does not prevent that person from accessing the Eucharist”.
Earlier in the week, the DDF had responded to questions on the disposal of cremated human remains, confirming that “ashes must be kept in a sacred place” but said that they could be comingled with other persons’ in a common site designated by Church authority.
It also said that a minimal part of a person’s ashes could be kept in a place of importance to the deceased, “provided that every type of pantheistic, naturalistic, or nihilistic misunderstanding is ruled out”.
In an interview last Tuesday, Pope Francis revealed that he plans to be buried in the Basilica of St Mary Major – home of the Marian icon Salus Populi Romani – because of his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Rome’s homeless and migrants were among the 3,000 guests at a Vatican concert for the poor. First launched in 2015, the “Concert for the Poor and With the Poor” includes a dinner for guests, with blankets distributed among them.
The annual event run by the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, was held for the first time since 2019, and featured the Opera Nova Onlus and the choir of the Diocese of Rome, who sang excerpts from masterpieces by Mozart, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven.
Thanking the organisers, Pope Francis said: “By involving so many people, you manage to offer a free concert to thousands of poor people, and with your music, you offer a moment of meeting and sharing, and then a meal and blanket, in other words: fraternity.” He said this was “very consistent with the message of Christmas”.
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