The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong insisted that confessions will remain confidential under the city’s new national security law.
In a statement on 15 March, the diocese said it “recognises that citizens have an obligation to ensure national security” but the security law “will not alter the confidential nature of confession”.
The statement followed warnings from human rights campaigners that the legislation – which proposes a maximum prison term of 14 years for any person who does not report their knowledge of another’s treason – could force priests to disclose words said in the confessional.
Hong Kong Watch said the proposal “directly threatens religious freedom” and 16 international experts and organisations issued a statement calling for international action to defend freedom of religion in Hong Kong. The signatories include Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch, Frances Hui of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, Scot Bower of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Bob Fu of China Aid and 12 other leading activists working for human rights and religious freedom.
The Hong Kong authorities said the proposed criminal offence “has nothing to do with freedom of religion”.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) in the Diocese of Superior is not exempt from the state’s employment tax because its work is secular, not religious, and therefore does not meet the standard for a religious exemption.
The court declared that the work of assisting the aged and the poor that CCB and its “sub-entities” undertake would be the same if it was done by people with no religious motivation. “In other words, they offer services that would be the same regardless of the motivation of the provider, a strong indication that the sub-entities do not ‘operate primarily for religious purposes,’” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote for the majority.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nationwide advocacy firm that defended Catholic Charities in the case, said it would appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, where a series of decisions in recent years have endorsed robust exemptions for religious organisations from laws that the religious groups believe infringe upon their beliefs.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court got this case dead wrong,” said Eric Rassbach, vice-president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “CCB is religious, whether Wisconsin recognises that fact or not.”
Pope Francis named Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago a member of the Dicastery for Culture and Education for a five-year term.
The announcement on 16 March came three days before Cupich turned 75 on and submitted his resignation as required by canon law. The appointment indicated that the Pope has no intention of accepting Cupich’s resignation at this time.
Cupich was Pope Francis’ first major appointment when in September 2014 he sent the Omaha-born cleric to Chicago, the third largest city in America which has a significant Catholic footprint, with the largest Catholic school system in the country, a major seminary, several Catholic hospitals, and dozens of cemeteries. It is also home to Catholic Extension, an organisation that raises money to assist poor dioceses throughout the country.
Cupich already serves on the Dicastery for Bishops and the Dicastery for Divine Worship.
A district court judge temporarily quashed a subpoena seeking records from Annunciation House, a Catholic-run shelter for migrants and refugees in Texas.
The charity had refused to comply with the subpoena from the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that the information violated the confidentiality of the clients they served, prompting Paxton to sue the organisation.
“The Attorney General’s efforts to run roughshod over Annunciation House, without regard to due process or fair play, call into question the true motivation for the Attorney General’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides,” said Judge Francisco Dominguez in his court order.
“There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined.”
The lead counsel for Annunciation House, Jerome Wesevich of Texas Riogrande Legal Aid, praised the decision, saying: “Annunciation House needs to collect sensitive information, including health information, concerning its guests, and it is imperative for the safety and well-being of the community that the releasing of this sensitive information be handled with care and the law in mind.”
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has consistently backed the charity, saying Church organisations “will not be intimidated in our work to serve Jesus Christ in our sisters and brothers fleeing danger and seeking to keep their families together”.
Leaders of the bishops’ conferences of Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama were due to gather in Panama City, at a meeting convened by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development to address the fate of migrants in the Darién Gap – an inhospitable jungle region between Colombia and Panama that hundreds of thousands of migrants cross every year en route to the US-Mexico border.
Archbishop José Domingo Ulloa of Panama said: “We want to raise much more awareness. It’s to make people aware of the danger that our migrants face due to drug trafficking, the ‘coyotes’ [human traffickers] and the reality of that jungle where hundreds of migrant brothers have died.”
Pax Christi International said it was “deeply concerned” by the unfolding crisis in Haiti where over 100 gangs control 80 per cent of the metropolitan area. Fuelled by kidnapping, robbery and extortion, the gang violence has created a humanitarian disaster for civilians caught in crossfire.
While diplomatic efforts were underway, with representatives from the US, Canada, France, and the Caribbean meeting to discuss solutions, Pax Christi International demanded stronger international action is needed to address the causes of this crisis.
It called for immediate action to stem the flow of illegal weapons, urging the US to share data on the illegal trafficking of arms to Haiti. It also called on religious leaders “to break the silence and actively and consistently engage in amplifying the efforts and voice of the Haitian bishops”.
Pope Francis again remembered Haiti as a “beloved country, so fraught with violence” at the Sunday Angelus last week.
Franciscan Sister Marcella Catozza, who operates an orphanage and school in Haiti, said that the forced resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry “has set a dangerous precedent”. She reported that schools, hospitals and universities are under attack.
The South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference said mining and profit are more often the cause of war in Africa than religion or ethnicity.
Johan Viljoen, director of the conference’s Denis Hurley Peace Institute (DHPI), said: “The nexus between mining and conflict in Africa is quite clear.” He cited Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, where Boko Haram terrorists have driven out local communities.
Chinese mining firms are now exploiting blue diamonds in Borno state in northern Nigeria, said Viljoen. In conflict-stricken Mozambique, where “Catholic and Muslim families have been living for centuries,” he said the French oil company Total had begun establishing premises.
Last week, the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) held a seminar on mineral exploitation and war in Africa. Viljoen added: “If you look at any conflict in Africa, the first question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Who is profiting?’”
Catholic delegates at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development conference, held in Victoria Falls, have called for action on the escalated “loss and damage” support promised by developed countries.
Successive climate change conferences have recognised the need for rich countries to finance the poorer victims of climate change, but little funding has emerged. “This is an important conversation. We all desire that our planet is protected. To develop and protect climate justice we need finance,” said Fr Charles Chilufya, who heads ecology and justice at the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar.
The finance ministers met to agree the continent’s climate finance needs, with the Catholic agencies present appealing for more support for the poor. “We are interested in livelihoods, especially the poor and climate. The poor are the most hit by climate change,” Fr Gabriel Mapulanga, director of Caritas Zambia.
A diocese in Zimbabwe has begun partnerships with local businesses to help realise the revenue required to make it self-sustaining. The Stella Mundi initiative is intended to provide an economic vehicle as support from overseas donors declines.
The Diocese of Hwange lies in Zimbabwe’s north west, a region known for coal mining. Under the initiative, local dioceses will partner diverse service providers such as medical agencies, agriculture finance, and laboratory services, receiving a percentage of the business at affordable rates for parishioners.
“We did not see how funds to build our institutions were generated. Now we are trying to do it ourselves,” said Bishop Raphael Ncube of Hwange during a recent workshop to showcase and explain the partnership. These efforts have been necessitated in part by the retirement of missionaries who supported previously parishes and dioceses, with some returning to their countries of origin.
Catholic bishops joined other religious leaders in Benin to appeal for calm amid debates on the country’s electoral code.
“The leaders of Benin’s religious denominations call on the sons and daughters of Benin to remain calm, and on political actors of all persuasions to show wisdom and restraint in order to preserve peaceful coexistence, the guarantee of our country’s development,” said a statement earlier this month signed by leaders representing Methodists, Anglicans and Muslims as well as the Catholic Church.
“We must, at all costs, spare the Beninese people the violence that marred the last elections, by voting for an electoral code that guarantees peaceful, transparent, inclusive and democratic elections in 2026.”
Ahead of elections in Togo on 20 April, the country’s bishops called for a “credible” democratic process. The forthcoming polls will include elections of 113 members to the National Assembly, alongside the first regional elections.
“Elections period generally come with anxiety, worry and questioning due to suspicion, accusation of lack of transparency, irregularities, followed by violence with its dramatic consequences,” said the bishops in a statement on 1 March. “We, the Bishops of Togo express the wish that the forthcoming legislative and regional elections take place in the best possible conditions.”
They emphasised the importance of justice, fairness and transparency in the conduct of the vote and the announcement of its results.
The president of the Ghanaian bishops’ conference opposed the draconian “Human Sexual Rights and Family Value Bill”, passed by the country’s parliament at the end of February, saying that the prison sentences it imposes for LGBTQ people would increase the “practice” of homosexuality.
Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi of Sunyani called for “more of the corrective and reformative measures” for LGBTQ people rather than sentences in overcrowded prisons where “they are going to end up in the same room, and what is going to prevent them from going through these same activities in prison?”
International human rights organisations have appealed to President Nana Akufo-Addo not to sign the bill into law.
A priest from Burkina Faso has become the country’s first candidate for sainthood. Fr Alexander Toé served the sick of Rome while he was dying from cancer. He once wrote: “The love we receive makes us exist, but the love we give elevates our existence.”
Toé died aged 29 in 1996, a year after his ordination in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou as a religious of the Order of Ministers of the Sick, known as the “Camillians” after their eighteenth-century founder St Camillus de Lellis. At the time of his death, Toé was director of postulants for the order in Rome.
During the ceremony to launch the beatification process in the Lateran Apostolic Palace, Fr Pedro Tramontin, Superior General of the Camillians described Toé’s “short, intense religious life” as having left a “fragrance of holiness”. Approximately 20 per cent of Burkina Faso’s population are Catholic while 65 per cent are Muslim.
Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Yambio-Tombura has appealed for more support from international aid networks for South Sudan. He said that a complex emergency driven by conflict has trapped the people in many parts of the country, even in previously peaceful areas.
“On behalf of Caritas family in South Sudan, the office of the president of the Human Integral Development Commission, is appealing to Caritas networks, people of goodwill and the international community to consider stepping in…to rescue the people of South Sudan who on the brink of destitution,” said a statement signed by Kussala.
The Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, has accused Iraq’s supreme court of “unconstitutional” conduct, after it annulled the quota of 11 seats reserved for people of ethno-religious minorities in the Parliament of the Autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Minority parties and organisations that demand political representation for Christian communities complained against last month’s decision by the Iraqi Supreme Federal Court to annul the quota.
Representatives of the Chaldean, Syrian and Assyrian churches met President Abdul Latif Rashid at the Al Salam Presidential Palace in Baghdad by on 12 March. He told them Christian communities are “an integral part of the interdependent diversity of the country’s multicultural identity”.
On 9 March, Cardinal Sako expressed concern about political interference in the operations of the Supreme Court.
A priest based in Damascus has warned that Mass emigration threatens the future of Christianity in Syria.
Fr Basilios Gergeos, who ministers in St Joseph’s Dwel’a, told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) last week that “90 per cent of Syria’s citizens are thinking of emigrating”, adding: “If the Christians have a roof over their head and a job, they will stay here – it is their home, after all.” Syria’s Christian community is now estimated to number only about 175,000 families.
ACN’s project partner Sr Annie Demerjian said emigration is driven by poverty caused by more than a decade of civil war and rampant inflation. She said that “either we help the remaining Christians to see a future for themselves, or they will all leave”.
Around 50 migrants travelling from Libya died in a dinghy in the Mediterranean, survivors say. The 25 survivors – many from Senegal, Mali and Gambia – said the boat left Libya with 75 people on board.
The engine broke shortly after departure, and they found themselves adrift. The survivors said that the victims included women and at least one child and believed to have died from dehydration and hunger, not drowning. The survivors were picked up by the Ocean Viking, a vessel operated by the humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée.
These latest Mediterranean deaths highlight the need for safe migration routes, the United Nations International Organisation for Migration said last week, a call echoed by the Jesuit Refugee Service and other Christian groups which support migrants. There have been more than 300 deaths this year already in the Mediterranean.
A German priest appealed to African bishops to open causes for around 30 German martyrs killed in Africa.
Fr Helmut Moll began to compile biographies of the martyrs in 1994 at the request of the German bishops’ conference. “Your local churches should ensure that these German martyrs are raised to the honour of the altars,” said Fr Moll. He said the first step would involve African church leaders translating the biographies of the Germans into local languages.
Moll, who previously served the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and Congregation for the Causes of Saints, mentioned the martyrdom of Fr Franz Jäger, an Oblate priest killed in 1905 in present-day Namibia during the Herero uprising between local peoples and German settlers in south-western Africa.
Other German religious murdered in Africa include three Dominican missionaries – 43-year-old Sr Mary Magdala Lewandowski, 71-year-old Mary Epiphany Schneider and 59-year-old Mary Ceslaus Stiegler – killed in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1977.
Some of the martyrs’ biographies are being translated into Arabic, noted Moll, but publication has been held up by “difficulties with printing”.
One of Europe’s oldest abbeys has been stripped of its prestigious secondary school after several accusations of sexual abuse in its ranks.
The government of the canton of Valais ruled that the Abbey of Saint Maurice, founded in the mountains of southern Switzerland in the sixth century and directly under the Vatican, must give its school over to public officials to prevent further abuse, meaning it can no longer appoint the school administration and its monks can only teach there if they have the proper qualifications.
The monks cannot wear religious clothes and religion classes must be optional. The school will be known as the “Lycée-Collège de Saint Maurice”, retaining the town’s name and dropping its previous reference to the abbey. The Valais authorities considered this would complete the secularisation of the Saint Maurice school, which ranks among the leading secondary schools in French-speaking Switzerland.
Fr Jean César Scarcella, abbot of Saint Maurice, suspended his leadership in September while allegations of sexual abuse are investigated. His replacement, Fr Roland Jaquenoud, stepped down two months later amid similar charges. That prompted the Vatican to appoint the former superior of the Congregation of the Great Saint Bernard, Fr Jean-Michel Girard, as the apostolic administrator of the abbey.
Saint Maurice has pledged full cooperation with Church and civil authorities to investigate the allegations.
The Independent National Panel for Recognition and Reparation (INIRR), set up by the French bishops to compensate sexual abuse victims, reported that 1,396 people have now came forward to seek reparations.
The panel’s report two years after it was established said that nearly a third of the cases were referred by women. Its overall figures paled against the estimates of the CIASE commission, also created by the bishops, that some 330,000 people were sexually abused by clergy and Church personnel from 1950 to 2020.
INIRR head Marie Derain de Vaucresson said victims were slow to speak about their abuse and many did so for the first time. Some 42 per cent were abused for one to five years and 20 per cent for five years or more. Half of the victims who came forward were aged 11 to 15 years old at the time, and 39 per cent were aged 6 to 10.
The INIRR mandate runs until November but the bishops are expected to renew it. “We are certainly not going to abandon people in the middle of their journey,” de Vaucresson said.
Pope Francis set out 10 “discussion points” for the study groups working towards the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October.
In a letter to the head of the Synod office Cardinal Mario Grech, the Pope outline topics including relations with Eastern Churches, the digital environment and “theological and canonical issues regarding specific ministerial forms” – most prominently the ordination of women as deacons.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator-general of the Synod, emphasised after the announcement that it was not concerned with “ecclesiastical politics”.
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