An estimated two million Filipino Catholics attended the Black Nazarene procession in Manila on 9 January, the first held since 2020.
The historic statue of Christ, first brought to the Philippines in the seventeenth century, was drawn in a carriage along the 3.7-mile route through the Spanish capital, with crowds trying to touch the carriage’s ropes and the statue’s glass casing which was used for the first time to protect it.
William Lai Ching-te won Taiwan’s presidential election last Sunday, as voters rejected Beijing’s calls not to vote for the candidate of the pro-sovereignty Democratic People’s Party.
The People’s Republic of China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has never foresworn using force to take it, insisted that the vote did not alter the island’s status.
In his victory speech, 64-year-old Lai praised voters for refusing to be swayed by “external forces”. He said he wanted to cooperate with China and maintain peace and stability, but would not be cowed by aggression.
Taiwan’s bishops did not comment on the result, but Maryknoll missionary Fr Joyalito Tajonera said that its people “are not looking for trouble”, encouraging politicians to be “realistic and practical”.
A study has found that the legalisation of assisted suicide in the Australian State of Victoria failed to reduce the rate of “unassisted” suicide.
Research by Prof David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, found that since the state legalised “Voluntary Assisted Dying” (VAD) in 2017, “suicide among older people in Victoria has increased by more than 50 per cent”.
Prof Jones said the argument that 50 people with terminal illness were dying by suicide each year had been “pivotal” in bringing VAD into law, but rather than a corresponding reduction in “unassisted” suicides in the years since legalisation, there had been 54 more suicides per year among the over-65s.
“The experience in Australia is that offering people the chance to die by ‘voluntary assisted dying’ has not alleviated the problem of unassisted suicides in older people,” said Prof Jones.
A Wisconsin judge suspended a sex abuse against Theodore McCarrick, citing dementia which makes it impossible for the former cardinal to assist in his own defence. This follows a similar ruling by a judge in Massachusetts last year.
The Wisconsin case was brought by a man who alleges McCarrick, now 92 years old, abused him multiple times 45 years ago. He claimed that McCarrick abused him over a number of years when visiting Wisconsin, and even brought the young man to parties where other men abused him.
Wisconsin has not lifted the statute of limitations, but that statute is suspended when an alleged perpetrator has left the jurisdiction.
McCarrick was laicised by the Vatican in 2019 after multiple allegations surfaced involving both minors and seminarians. He is the highest-ranking prelate to face criminal charges in the decades-long sex abuse crisis that has rocked the Church in United States.
A priest in the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri has been barred from hearing confessions after he was found to have solicited sex in the confessional. Fr Ignacio Medina was also barred from celebrating Mass without the explicit permission of his bishop.
The case began with a complaint filed at the diocese’s abuse hotline on 15 April, 2022, which referred the case to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Medina retired that June. The dicastery’s decision announced on 1 January this year came after an administrative disciplinary process conducted under its auspices. Medina had been suspended previously after a diocesan tribunal found him guilty of financial misconduct.
“I thank the victim in this case for stepping forward, and I pray for healing,” Bishop W. Shawn McKnight said in a statement, which also said the diocese had offered the victim “assistance for healing.”
The Diocese of San Diego has divested its financial holdings from the fossil fuel industry, a move described by the Catholic Climate Covenant as a “significant and important marker”.
The diocese, led by Cardinal Robert McElroy, has removed direct and indirect investments in companies involved in the extraction and production of coal, oil and gas from its portfolio of trust funds, retirement funds and health funds. Roughly 70 per cent of its 97 parishes have installed solar panels and parishes have been encouraged to start “creation care teams”.
San Diego is one of 20 US dioceses to enrol in the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform, a project endorsed by Francis for Catholic institutions and individuals to live out the messages in the Pope’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ on “Care for Our Common Home”.
The bishops who minister along the Mexico-US border region issued a joint call on 10 January for public officials to take steps to address the humanitarian crisis in the region.
Mexican and US bishops, including Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of Ciudad Juárez and Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso appealed for “safe and legal humanitarian corridors for the most vulnerable migrants and refugees” and “adequate and decent accommodation” for migrants travelling north from Central America through Mexico to the border.
They said the “Church does not advocate open borders but rather laws that respect basic human rights”, adding that “governments must create laws that include both a secure border and a humane immigration policy”.
The International Organisation for Migration documented 686 deaths and disappearances of migrants on the US-Mexico border in 2022, making it the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide.
The bishops said current immigration policies have caused “uncertainty, rejection, persecution, and violation of their human rights, exposing them to falling into the hands of criminal organisations in order to reach their destination”.
Following an outbreak of gang violence in early January, Ecuador’s Catholic bishops issued a statement insisted that “violence will not prevail”.
In a statement on 9 January, they said that “violence, wherever it comes from, must find us united, with a look towards the future and with the necessary strength for Ecuador to be what it has always been, a place of peace, of work, of fraternity”. They urged people not to panic at “a moment of great anxiety in the country” and to pray for peace.
The Ecuadorian government declared a state of emergency from 8 January after a notorious gang leader escaped from a prison. This triggered uprisings in other prisons, with gangs seizing control of prisons and holding 180 hostages. The unrest rapidly extended into Ecuador’s cities, as gangs attacked civilians and seized a television station.
Security forces had largely regained control of the prisons and rescued the hostages by last weekend.
Newly-elected President Daniel Noboa has outlined plans to combat organised crime, including building new maximum-security prisons, designating 20 drug trafficking gangs as terrorist groups and tackling Ecuadorian criminal gangs with close links with Colombian, Mexican and Albanian drug traffickers.
Archbishop Jose Mannuel Imbamba of Saurimo has condemned prison overcrowding in Angola.
Speaking after visiting a Saurimo prison on 4 December, Archbishop Imbamba said that prison authorities should urgently address the congestion of inmates, emphasising that prisons should be places of education, not frustration.
He said that the prison population must not exceed the capacity of its estate and create situations which offend the dignity of human person.
“There is need to improve living conditions of inmates at Luzia Prison in the country’s Lunda Sul Province,” he said, observing that the facility designed for 475 inmates was currently housing 625, of whom 57 are female.
Churches in Zambia have been ordered to limit worship time to curb the spread of cholera, while funerals and family burials are prohibited.
Churches must now provide handwashing points and make available alcohol-based hand sanitizers to their congregations. Worshippers are strongly advised to refrain from handshakes and hugs.
The directive, issued by the office of the vice-president on 9 January, aimed to mitigate the impact of the epidemic, emphasising the collective responsibility of religious institutions to safeguard public health. Zambia is dealing with one of its worst cholera outbreaks in recent years, with nearly 351 dead and nearly 9,000 active cases registered.
Cholera is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water. Experts have warned of more epidemic in future, as climate change causes heavy rainfalls which can contaminate drinking water in crowded areas.
The Archbishop of Juba, Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, encouraged the people of South Sudan to hope that their country can hold successful elections in December 2024.
Speaking at Christmas, he said “many have challenged me on why I say we can hold elections, and I told them in these remaining 11 months, many things can happen”.
The cardinal confirmed the Church’s support for the “revitalised” peace agreement, signed in September 2018 to end the civil war that began in 2013 between rival groups led by Salva Kiir, the current president, and Riek Machar, the country’s first vice president.
Last month Nicholas Haysom, the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, reported that the country is currently in no position to hold free, fair or secure elections. However, he outlined key conditions required by April 2024 for moving ahead, saying, “we believe that with the necessary political will, a sense of urgency and compromise, the South Sudanese could indeed establish the conditions for elections in December 2024”.
These include a new permanent constitutional framework, voter registration details, an election security plan and a mechanism for resolving disputes over results.
Since independence in 2011, South Sudan has seen repeated conflicts and humanitarian crises which have killed 400,000 people and displaced millions more.
The father of the “skateboard hero” Ignacio Echeverría has founded an association to promote his son’s values.
On 3 June 2017, Echeverría lost his life trying to protect citizens in London from jihadi terrorists in the London Bridge attack. An enthusiastic skateboarder, he wielded his board against the attackers to protect passers-by, but died after one of the terrorists stabbed him.
His father Joaquin Echeverria, who launched the foundation in Madrid on 18 January, said his son, a practicing Catholic, had a “formation as a person forged a character in him that would not accept injustices and defended the weak. He was a non-conformist, had a can-do attitude based on a willingness to make an effort and enjoyed life.” He added: “These are the values the association wishes to convey to society as a whole, especially to young people.”
The Tablet reported last January that the process to canonise Echeverria had opened in Madrid.
Pope Francis told a 150-strong delegation from France that the Church there was on a “path of purification” after confronting the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
“The darkest moments are often those that precede the light. In Marseille, I could see how much vitality there is in the Church of France,” the Pope said on 12 January during an audience in the Vatican, remembering his visit to Marseille last September.
“Do not hesitate to share through communication all the good that there is in your dioceses, congregations, movements,” he said, according to the printed text he did not read aloud because he said he had difficulties from “a little bronchitis”.
The delegation – about two-thirds representing dioceses and the other third from orders and other Catholic groups – was in Rome to help prepare for 2025’s Jubilee Year.
In a major report in 2021, an independent commission estimated that 330,000 French children had been abused in Church organisations, two-thirds of them by clerics. It also admitted in 2022 that 11 bishops were under judicial investigation for committing or covering up clerical sexual abuse.
By last summer, about three-quarters of all French bishops had attended special Vatican sessions in Rome on recognising and reporting sexual abuse of minors, the first time so many of any country’s hierarchy had received such training.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine awarded Cardinal Matteo Zuppi the Order of Merit Second Class for his “personal role in supporting Ukraine and the mission to return Ukrainian children” as the Pope’s peace envoy.
“I am very proud of our cooperation and appreciate everything you do for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” said Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskiy’s office, in a conversation on 8 January.
Addressing a Ukrainian youth delegation in his Archdiocese of Bologna on 5 January, Zuppi said: “There are two actors in war – the perpetrator and the victim. But there must be a third party capable of contributing to peace who will find the strength to say enough is enough! And help find a way to peace.”
The World Day of the Sick on 11 February will take the theme “Healing the Sick by Healing Relationships”.
In a message for the occasion, Pope Francis said: “Our lives, reflecting in the image of the Trinity, are meant to attain fulfilment through a network of relationships, friendships and love, both given and received.” He continued: “We were created to be together, not alone.”
Calling for a “therapeutic covenant” between people who are ill and their carers, the Pope observed: “To those of you who experience illness, whether temporary or chronic, I would say this: Do not be ashamed of your longing for closeness and tenderness! Do not conceal it, and never think that you are a burden on others.”
Pope Francis will preside at the canonisation of Argentina’s first female saint, Maria Antonia of Saint Joseph, on 11 February at St Peter’s. She was noted for promoting Ignatian retreats after the suppression of the Jesuits in the late eighteenth century.
Last week Javier Milei, the newly-elected Argentine president, formally invited the Pope “to visit our beloved homeland”. In a letter date 8 January, Milei said Pope Francis would “bring fruits of pacification and brotherhood to all Argentines” at a time of economic and social hardship.
In a television interview on Sunday, the Pope said he was considering the “possibility of making a trip to Argentina in the second half of the year” and “would like to go”.
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