Christians in north-east Burkina Faso have “no freedom of worship” but refuse to submit to an Islamist insurgency, a local bishop has said. Following the massacre of 12 people during a Mass on 25 February, Bishop Justin Kientega of Ouahigouya said that “faith has grown” despite repeated attacks by jihadists on the region’s Christian minority.
“In this situation, some Christians accept to die,” he told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). “Many even refused to remove the crosses they wear. In some places Christian women were obliged to cover themselves, but they refuse to convert to Islam. They always try to find other ways to live their faith, and to pray.”
Bishop Kientega told ACN that the enforced closure of more than 200 schools – 30 of them Catholic – was particularly damaging, since they had educated Muslim and Christian children side-by-side.
Bandits in Nigeria’s volatile north-west region attacked a mosque last week and abducted around 40 people. The groups broke into the mosque on Tsafe, Zamfara state, before dawn prayer on 29 February, and seized those who had escaped by jumping out of windows of the building.
Communities across Zamfara have been affected by abduction raids, which often target religious congregations. Kidnapping has increased in Nigeria since January, as worsening economic conditions and political instability have compounded hardship in much of the country.
During the United Nations Environment Assembly in the Kenyan capital Nairobi last week, 12 Islamic scholars issued “Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth”, a compendium of Islamic teaching on humanity’s role as stewards of creation and its application in contemporary crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
Archbishop Hubertus van Megen, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP), said that the text “resonates in many ways the teachings of Laudato Si’”. He invited Christians and Muslims “to read them in tandem, as they raise together a harmonious song of praise to God who is the creator of the universe”.
The initiative was led by the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences, endorsed by the Muslim Council of Elders and facilitated by UNEP’s Faith for Earth Coalition. It urged Islamic nations and corporations “to transition swiftly from fossil fuels” and to encourage all Muslims to tackle global environmental challenges.
Pope Francis encouraged the bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church to “take up the cry for peace” as they visited Rome last Wednesday amid threats of conflict and religious persecution in their region. The Pope’s address to the bishops covered the geopolitical situation in Armenia and the importance of collaboration with the country’s Orthodox Church.
Last year, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to flee the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave after a military offensive carried out by neighbouring Azerbaijan. There are fears that another attack may follow.
Pope Francis called for prayers, “particularly for all those fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh and for the many displaced families seeking refuge”. He continued: “I pray for you and for Armenia.” Pope Francis concluded his address with a prayer from Saint Nerses the Gracious, a twelfth-century Armenian bishop recognised as saint in both the Catholic and Armenian Orthodox Churches.
A Pakistani court’s acquittal of two brothers accused of desecrating the Holy Quran is “a landmark breakthrough decision about blasphemy laws” according to a missionary. An anti-terrorism court in Faisalabad last Friday acquitted two brothers after accepting that they had been framed.
Fr Robert McCulloch SSC, who worked in Pakistan for 34 years, told The Tablet the decision was “thanks to the principled stand of the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who will not permit religious extremism and fundamentalist politicians to force through shaky legal decisions against Christians and others under the pretext of defending Islam.” He praised judges for not bowing to mob demands.
The case was registered in August 2023, after dozens of Christian homes and around 20 churches were vandalised and ransacked by mobs in Jaranwala. While police arrested more than 125 suspected rioters, the two brothers were also held on the accusation that they defaced pages of the Quran. However, a police investigation revealed that two other individuals – who reportedly had a personal enmity with the brothers – had plotted to implicate them in a blasphemy case.
A Catholic priest is among around 30 Christians still imprisoned in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who arrested on 5 February on charges of illegal conversion.
Fr Dominic Pinto is among those being held under the state’s harsh anti-conversion law. Bishop Gerald John Mathias of Lucknow led prayers for their release on 1 March after Fr Pinto’s bail application was postponed for the third time. The delay is “sad, unfortunate and discouraging”, he said.
Fr Pinto, the diocesan pastoral centre director, was arrested after a Protestant group conducted a prayer service in his centre. Christian leaders say persecution has increased since the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won state elections.
Church leaders in the central state of Chhattisgarh have refuted a pro-Hindu publication’s claim that 25 tribal people recently converted to Christianity. Bishop Paul Toppo of Raigarh said such claims were “a political tactic” of Hindu groups ahead of national elections.
The Diocese of Mangalore in western India suspended a priest from parish duties after video footage showing him manhandling an elderly man circulated on social media. The diocese said it was “deeply saddened” by the incident in the premises of Christ the King parish in Manela Periyaltadka, which show Fr Nelson Olivera dragging Gregory Monteiro across a yard and beating him.
Mr Monteiro informed local police Fr Olivera had assaulted him because he had failed to donate money to the parish. The incident is subject to a police investigation and the diocese also pledged to open a canonical inquiry into the assault.
A programme from the Australian Catholic University has provided online liturgy instruction for 60 Nigerian lay ministers, with a four-week course tailored to their pastoral needs. The programme covered the Church’s liturgical year, the Bible and Vatican documents and challenges in Nigeria, including pastoral practice and cultural diversity.
A liturgy educator at the Sydney-based university said the course was devised after consulting parish leaders in Nigeria: “The church in Nigeria places great importance on worship so they train their ministers well. We made changes to the translation of the Bible in the programme so that technical exercises corresponded to the lectionary used in Nigeria.”
A Catholic-run orphanage in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince has suspended its work after a gang ordered it to close.
“A gang affiliated with the G9 intends to take over our orphanage to defend itself from attacks from the sea by a rival gang,” reported Sr Marcella Catozza, a Franciscan nun who manages Kay Pè Giuss, in Warf Jeremie shantytown. “Absurd and unjustified violence” was the reason given after school activities were halted until further notice.
The complex includes a home for 150 orphans, a primary school for about 450 pupils and a day-care centre. In addition to education, the children receive two meals a day.
Sr Marcella said that for years the gang has “been asking us for money and food just to be able to move and allow the children to attend our school”. The gang has stolen the school bus and car and built a fence across the access road.
The Catholic Mobilising Network has criticised US President Joe Biden for failing to act on promises of death penalty reform. When Biden first ran for office in 2020, his campaign website stated that should he be elected, he would create “legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivise states to follow the federal government’s example”.
However, campaigners argue that he has not fulfilled his promise and have called on the President and his attorney general Merrick Garland to act. The Washington-based network has urged Biden to declare a moratorium on all executions at federal level and to commute the sentences of prisoners on federal death row.
It has also encouraged him to argue in Congress and in negotiations with states for the abolition of the death penalty in law. “These are actions President Biden can take immediately to begin to rectify the injustices of the federal death penalty system and to demonstrate a course correction from the Trump administration’s horrific execution spree,” it said in a statement.
A group of American bishops held a private meeting in January with transgender individuals, as well as theologians and ministers who engage with the transgender community.
The gathering at St Louis University was organised by New Ways Ministry, which ministers to the LGBT community. A similar gathering was held in 2023 at Georgetown University. These have taken place while the US bishops’ conference revises its ethical directives, including provisions for care to transgender people.
One of the bishops attending, Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, contradicted Pope Francis who has frequently denounced gender ideology, telling the National Catholic Reporter: “And if we would all stop and hear the struggles that individuals went through, we’d realise this is not just an issue of gender theory – it’s people’s lived experience.”
According to New Ways, “The focus of the discussions was how to respond pastorally to LGBTQ people and their family members, in order to show the welcoming invitation of the Catholic Church.”
The Vatican has reversed the closure of a parish in Newfoundland, according to a group of Canadian parishioners who purchased their parish church in a 2022 auction. However, the future of Holy Rosary Parish, in Portugal Cove-St Philips, remains uncertain.
Ed Martin, a Holy Rosary parishioner and procurator of the appeal against the parish closure, said he received a letter from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy last week, indicating that the dicastery had overturned plans of Archbishop Peter Hundt of St John’s to close the parish.
Martin said he was happy about the decision, but cautiously so. “I asked for a meeting with Archbishop Hundt to discuss it, but he’s not willing to meet at this point in time, so I don’t know what his next move is,” Martin said. Holy Rosary was one of 18 parish churches that the Archdiocese of St John’s, Newfoundland put up for sale in 2022.
A canonical court has ruled that Fr Johannes Rivoire, a French priest accused of molesting three Inuit youths in northern Canada while he was a missionary there over 50 years ago, will not be expelled from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI).
The order’s French province expressed disappointment that Rivoire, now in his nineties, would not face justice, despite its request to bring his case to trial. The province said it had “exhausted all canonical resources available to compel him to appear before the court”.
Rivoire has always denied the accusations, even to a five-member Inuit delegation he received in Lyon in 2022, but he has refused to face civil justice, which now considers his case beyond the statute of limitations. His lawyer argued that his failing health should also be taken into account.
Canada has issued an arrest warrant for Fr Rivoire and requested his extradition. French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said in 2022 that it could not extradite the priest, who returned to France in 1993 when the accusations arose, because that was not in its legal tradition.
Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 and promised a serious investigation of the charges. Last December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraged the Pope to “help resolve this matter”.
Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp denied that he had offered to resign his see to work exclusively with abuse victims, following reports in Belgium that his request to the Pope for a “rearrangement” of his duties would involve leaving the diocese.
“It is not my desire or intention to let go of Antwerp diocese,” he said in a letter to the Diocese of Antwerp, following his comments in a Flemish television interview where said he was “ready to do anything [to help victims] even if it means I have to put aside my task in Antwerp”. He clarified that he envisioned the appointment of an auxiliary, not his own resignation.
A senior Russian Orthodox bishop has called Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican document on “pastoral” blessings, a “radical innovation” and “a very serious departure from Christian moral norms”.
Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest chaired a meeting of the Moscow patriarchate’s Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission which discussed the document. He told Russian state media that the commission considered its provision for blessings of same-sex or other “irregular” couples to be “in radical contradiction with Christian moral teaching”.
In a statement last week, Russia’s Roman Catholic bishops said that “to avoid temptation and confusion” they reaffirmed “that the blessing of any type of couples that persist in relationships that are unregulated from the point of view of Christian morality (cohabitation, bigamous second marriages, same-sex marriages) is unacceptable”.
Police found bleach in a chalice used by an Italian priest known for his outspoken attacks on the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia.
Fr Felice Palamara was about to sip the consecrated wine and water during a Saturday evening Mass at the parish of San Nicola di Pannaconi in Cessaniti, Calabria, when he detected a strange smell. Laboratory tests detected bleach in the water inside the chalice. Fr Palamara said he had received several death threats and that his car had twice been vandalised in recent months.
The priest, who now has a police escort, wrote on social media: “My revenge is called love, my shield forgiveness, my armour mercy.” Another priest in Cessaniti targeted by the mafia discovered a dead cat on the bonnet of his car when he returned to it from dinner.
A text reportedly written by a cardinal on the “task of the next pontificate” claimed that the Church is “more fractured than at any time in her recent history”.
The document signed under the name “Demos II” – following the pseudonym used by the late Cardinal George Pell for a 2022 text criticising Pope Francis – was published on 29 February in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Polish, accusing Pope Francis of autocratic governance, intolerance of dissent and “a pattern of ambiguity in matters of faith and morals causing confusion among the faithful”.
Its various demands for the priorities of the next papacy prompted speculation about the identity of its author, who said he remained anonymous because “candour is not welcome, and its consequences can be unpleasant” under Pope Francis.
The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) which conducts liturgies exclusively in the old rite expressed “deep gratitude” to Pope Francis after he confirmed their exemption from Traditionis Custodes, the July 2021 motu proprio which restored restrictions on old-rite celebrations.
The order said its superiors had found the Pope “very understanding” at a meeting on 29 February, and that he had “invited the Fraternity of St Peter to continue to build up ecclesial communion ever more fully through its own proper charism”.
Founded in 1988 by 12 priests and 20 seminarians who formerly of the canonically-illicit Society of St Pius X – founded by the excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – the FSSP is now supervised by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. It has 368 priests worldwide in 146 dioceses, whose average age is 39.
Pope Francis decried the continued use of landmines as he marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty, which sought their elimination.
Speaking ahead of the 1 March anniversary of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, the Pope expressed sympathy for the victims of mines “that continue to target civilians years after hostilities end”. He thanked those who work to clear mines from contaminated land and assist landmine victims, saying their work is “a concrete response to the universal call to be peacemakers”.
He said landmines “remind us of the dramatic cruelty of wars and the price civilian populations are forced to bear”.
Catholic bishops in the European Union have joined a network of churches and trade unions campaigning for Sunday to be made an official day of rest for EU citizens.
The Commission of Bishops’ Conferences in the European Union (Comece) is part of the European Sunday Alliance, alongside the Protestant Church in German (EKD – Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) and the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI).
Ahead of the EU elections in June, the alliance is urging policy makers to ensure EU laws promote “the protection of a common weekly day of rest for all people living and working in the EU, which shall be in principle on a Sunday”. They claim the move would protect workers’ health and “foster adequate time especially for families and young workers for worship and community, social and religious engagement”.
The alliance describes “synchronised free time” as key to “addressing mental health issues and loneliness in our society”.
The Tablet’s correspondent Christa Pongratz-Lippitt died on 29 February aged 93, three days after filing her last report on the German Church. After a career with the British diplomatic service which brought her to Vienna in the 1950s, she covered German-language Church news from 1988 as a translator and reporter, enjoying friendly-but-critical relations with the Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Franz König and his successor Christoph Schönborn.
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