An Orthodox bishop was stabbed on Monday while delivering a liturgy in Sydney, Australia.
Bishop Mar Mari Emannuel of the Assyrian Church was attacked by a man at The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley. A livestream recording of the evening liturgy showed an attacker dressed in black stabbing the bishop in the face and body while parishioners tried to intervene.
A 16-year-old was arrested in connection with the attack, which police said they were treating as a terrorist incident.
The attack came two days after a man killed six people in a Sydney shopping centre before he was shot dead by police, after which Pope Francis expressed “his spiritual closeness to all affected by this senseless tragedy, especially those who are now mourning the loss of a loved one”.
The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference has issued a new national code of conduct to improve safeguarding in the Church. The document “Integrity in our Common Mission” covers physical and emotional boundaries, responding to complaints, the use of social media, abuse in the workplace and financial ethics.
The bishops described the 32-page code as a means “of furthering the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s ongoing commitment to the safety of children and vulnerable people”. At the behest of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, the code combined the contents of two earlier codes, one for clergy and religious and another for lay workers.
The bishops said the code aimed to “assist in the formation and induction of clergy and lay pastoral leaders to reflect integrity in all aspects of their lives”.
Bishop Greg Bennet, the chair of the bishops’ Commission for Professional Standards and Safeguarding, said the documents’ principles had been developed “to guide, form, strengthen and affirm those behaviours which are expected of all engaged in the ministries of the Church”.
A leader of Brazil’s Yanomami people asked Pope Francis to give his backing for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s efforts to protect the Amazon and its indigenous peoples.
Davi Kopenawa said he visited the Vatican last week at Francis’ invitation, to brief him on the plight of the Yanomami and the Amazon, where deforestation surged to a 15-year high during the previous administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. The Yanomami Indigenous Territory was ravaged by thousands of illegal gold miners, who received encouragement from Bolsonaro’s government.
At the meeting on 10 April, Kopenawa gave Pope Francis a letter laying out the concerns of the Yanomami. He reported that Francis said he would speak to President Lula, who took office in January 2024.
Government satellite data showed that deforestation had fallen by half in the first year of Lula’s term, but after the initial success illegal miners have been returning. “One person alone cannot solve everything, and that is why I asked the Pope to support him, to reinforce the work, to defend the people,” Kopenawa said.
In the Brasilia the same day, the Holy See’s secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin met Lula, during his visit to lead a retreat at the Brazilian bishops’ general assembly. Parolin said their “fruitful meeting” addressed Brazil’s “major internal challenges, such as poverty, inequality, hunger, and justice and the problems of today's world and, above all, the theme of peace”.
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has criticised a Texas law that increases the state’s role in deterring illegal immigration to the US and denounced the “anti-immigrant” rhetoric of the country’s two major political parties.
Bishop Seitz, who chairs the Committee on Migration of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, was speaking on 11 April during an immigration meeting jointly hosted by the bishops’ conference and the Catholic University of America.
Since December 2023, illegal border crossing has been a state crime, and state police can arrest people who enter the US illegally through Texas. The bishop said the law threatens the right to seek asylum by denying “the opportunity to be processed and to see if their claims to asylum are legitimate or not.”
The US Border Patrol has reported 34 undocumented migrant deaths in the El Paso sector of the border this year.
A 60-year-old priest died in north-east Spain after his vestments caught fire while he was lighting the Paschal candle during the Easter Vigil.
Fr Javi Sánchez suffered 50-per-cent body burns, after a blaze engulfed the candle and ignited his robes during the Mass at Santa Isabel convent in Zaragoza. He died after five days in intensive care at Miguel Servet hospital, Zaragoza.
Originally from Madrid, Sánchez was known as the “rocker priest” for his penchant for singing and playing the guitar. He launched three records featuring his rock and pop-style compositions as well as ballads. He was a member of Zaragoza’s Holy Week Confraternity of Humility as well as chaplain to the Franciscan-Conceptionist sisters in its convent.
He once described the topics of his songs – which he would upload to Youtube – as written “from the standpoint of a believer, but not explicitly so. I want to leave the lyrics always very open to interpretation. They are about values, and optimistic.”
At his funeral on April 5, the Archbishop of Zaragoza Carlos Escribano said Sánchez’s “legacy could become…the soundtrack of our lives and the expression of our faith”. He said that the diocese still felt “a little unsettled” by Sánchez’s death.
The Church in France has appointed four bishops to monitor and comment as the government introduces and parliamentarians debate legal reforms to allow assisted suicide. The four will present the Church’s view to the public as the bill, introduced on 10 April, goes through months of parliamentary debate before likely being signed into law.
They are Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours, Bishop Matthieu Rougé of Nanterre, Bishop Pierre-Antoine Bozo of Limoges and Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard of Digne, Riez and Sisteron. The first three are members of the bishops’ end-of-life commission, while Gobilliard has long experience as a chaplain to the elderly in Italy and France.
France’s present end-of-life law allows only deep sedation and palliative care, but the latter option has not been widely available.
Last week in Belgium, where assisted suicide has been legal for 20 years, bishops voiced alarm after the head of the Christian Mutuality health insurance group gave an interview favouring euthanasia for patients “tired of life”.
A statement said: “It is with amazement and disappointment that the bishops of Belgium learned of this proposal.” Luc Van Gorp, head of the group, said his comments had been taken out of context.
The Vatican warned that a French court may have gravely violated freedom of religion by ordering Cardinal Marc Ouellet and the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit to pay more than €200,000 in damages to a nun expelled from her traditionalist convent.
The decision to reimburse Mother Marie Ferréol for being removed “without motive” disregarded the cardinal’s immunity as a Vatican official and used secular jurisprudence in a canonical affair, the Vatican said in a note verbale to the French Embassy to the Holy See.
“Cardinal Marc Ouellet was never asked to testify at the court in Lorient,” it added. The court decision “could raise not only important questions about immunity” but also religious freedom because of “the internal discipline and membership in a religious institution”.
The court in Brittany said it judged on the basis of civil law, according to which the ex-nun could not defend herself against a canonical dossier that neither she, nor her lawyers nor the court could consult.
Catholicism is no longer part of the identity of many Maltese people, an anthropologist has said. Ranier Fsadni described the island’s low birth rate as “a symptom of Catholicism’s decline, although it is not the only factor”, adding: “It is evident that many Catholics do not consider the papal teaching of ‘openness to life’ to be authoritative.”
Fsadni, an assistant lecturer of Anthropological Sciences at the University of Malta, was responding to the news that there are no new seminarians in Malta this year for the first time since the 1980s. Fr Charles Mallia, provincial prior of the Carmelite Order in Malta has attributed this partially to a low birth rate.
Although Fsadni told the The Malta Independent on Sunday that he did not think lifting celibacy requirements was a complete solution to the vocations’ crisis, he suggested it might “provide some relief”.
He added that a social taboo on non-attendance of Mass had vanished but that did not mean that religion was “declining in Malta”. According to a 2022 study, 36 per cent of Maltese residents attended Sunday Mass, while 83 per cent defined themselves as Catholic.
The Vatican has lifted its opposition to moral theologian Fr Martin Lintner OSM becoming dean of the Philosophical-Theological College of Bressanone (Brixen) in German-speaking northern Italy.
Fr Lintner, who begins his one-year appointment in September, credited the appointment of Cardinal Victor Fernández as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for Rome’s unexplained change of opinion.
Lintner, a former head of the European Society for Catholic Theology, has expressed reformist views on sexual morals in books mentioned by the Dicastery for Culture and Education last year, in its initial refusal of the nihil obstat required for him to take up the post.
This decision triggered a wave of international criticism by leading theologians, especially in the German-speaking world. “The rejection attracted enormous media attention…this was probably not expected,” he told the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit.
The Catholic Theological Faculty Association said Lintner was “a highly respected, esteemed and renowned professional colleague” whose “publications on relationship ethics…develop sexual morality theologically-ethically in such a way that it can be a positive, true-to-life and fruitful contribution for people today”. The association added that “the largely non-transparent nihil obstat procedure contradicts the synodal spirit invoked by Pope Francis”.
The latest Church statistics recorded a steady increase in religious vocations in Africa as well as growing numbers of Catholics on the continents, despite economic and political turbulence.
The number of priests increased by more than three per cent in the past two years, while the number of seminarians in Africa increased by 2.1 percent, according to the 2024 Pontifical Yearbook. This contrasted with declining numbers of priests on other continents, with significant numbers of parishes in Europe and the US closing.
The number of women religious in Africa also grew more than anywhere else in the world, increasing by 1.2 per cent to 83,000. Africa also registered a three percent growth in the number of lay Catholics, from 265 million to 273 million in the past two years. African dioceses continue to pursue new ways to evangelise, encouraging priests to be innovative in preaching the Gospel.
Catholic bishops in Rwanda said the 1994 genocide caused the country pain “the depth and breadth of which only God knows”, as they prayed for reconciliation on its thirtieth anniversary.
“Hearts still bleed, wounds are still fresh,” the bishops said in a statement issued on 7 April, as Rwanda commemorated the nearly one million people killed, largely from the Tutsi ethnic minority, over a 13-week period.
The bishops offered “a message of consolation and closeness to the survivors of the genocide in this moment of deep pain for the loss of their loved ones”.
Bishop Anaclet Mwumvaneza of Nyundo, who signed the statement as chairman of the Rwandan bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, said the anniversary “gives us the opportunity to look back on this painful past and opens us to a radiant future that we want to experience together as a national community”.
“Forgiveness requested, given and received constitutes the foundation of good human relations,” he said, asking that “those who have been convicted of the crime of genocide to humble themselves and sincerely ask for forgiveness and the survivors to offer this beautiful gift of forgiveness”.
After years of criticism for its failings during the genocide, the Church in Rwanda issued an apology in 2016 for the complicity of some clergy in the 1994 massacres.
Bishops in Zambia have called for increased investment in irrigation, as climate change drives worsening drought in southern Africa. The country recently declared the current El Niño-induced drought a national disaster and has appealed for food assistance to feed millions after crops wilted under increasing temperatures.
The Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops noted that the impact of climate change manes farmers need new methods to deal with poor rainfall. “Climate change is here to stay,” said Fr Francis Mukosa, secretary general of the bishops’ conference. “It is time to think of serious irrigation systems that can cushion farmers,” he said, noting that rain-fed agriculture was not working.
Kenya’s President William Ruto has commended the country’s Catholic bishops for their role in education and health as well as their strong stance on moral issues. He said his government fully recognised their roles and urged them not to relent on those issues.
Moses Wetangula, speaker of the Kenyan parliament, delivered Ruto’s address at the consecration of Simon Peter Kamomoe and Wallace Ng’ang’a Gachihi as auxiliary bishops for the Archdiocese of Nairobi, on 6 April. “The Church has fully journeyed with us in these areas,” he said.
The apostolic nuncio Archbishop Hubertus Van Megen, assisted by Archbishop Philip Anyolo of Nairobbi, presided at the service, which was attended by the former president Uhuru Kenyatta.
Last week, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) called on the government to address the concerns of striking doctors now in their fifth week of industrial action. Nearly 7,000 doctors, pharmacists and dentists went on strike on 15 March, demanding the payment of salary arrears and the immediate hiring of trainee doctors.
The arrears are part of a collective bargaining agreement struck between the government and the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union in 2017. The union also wants the government to end salary delays and start paying the doctors who work in public hospitals in line with their higher degree qualification.
The two sides have held talks over the strikes, but the government has ruled out any higher pay, saying it does not have the money. The doctors have said they will continue with strike, insisting the industrial action will benefit health care in the country.
In a statement from their plenary on 11 April, the bishops urged the government to pursue dialogue. “The situation is deplorable and we continue witnessing the misery of the sick,” it said. “Many have died and many are deteriorating in their sickness because of the current standoff.”
A further statement at the conclusion of their meeting expressed solidarity “with those who cannot afford to get food on the table, to take children to school, and to pay medical bills”, criticising “over-taxation” and corruption in government services.
Calls to re-establish monarchy and abolish secularism in Nepal, making it a Hindu state, are a threat to religious minorities, community leaders have said.
“It is unfortunate to see a regressive call and movement led by those who are responsible for safeguarding the religious and cultural rights of their citizens,” said BP Khanal, inter-faith coordinator of the Nepal Christian Society, following a march on 9 April by thousands of Hindu nationalists in the Kathmandu. Organised by the Hindu nationalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party, it saw clashes between marchers and security forces.
Muslims and Buddhists also reported a rise in religiously-motivated attacks. “It is unfortunate to see the political leaders raking up religion to motivate their voters and disrupting the social-cultural environment,” said Seema Khan, chair of the Nepal Muslim Women Welfare Society.
Japan’s Catholic bishops “learn peace and nonviolence from the people of Okinawa”, according to one of the participants in their ad limina visit to the Vatican last week.
The American-born Bishop of Naha, Wayne Berndt OFM Cap, said that his diocese on the island of Okinawa, with its population of 10,000 Catholics, have “known and appreciated the Franciscan charism and associated it with the proclamation of the Gospel of Peace” for 80 years.
Most of the US troops in Japan are based in Okinawa, where Berndt said “relations with China or the tense situation in Taiwan are clearly noticeable”. He was one of the 17 bishops to travel to Rome.
Pope Francis will travel to south-east Asia later this year, visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore between 3 and 13 September, after accepting invitations from the respective heads of state and Church authorities.
Indonesia is home to 242 million Muslims and around 29 million Christians – 8.5 million of whom are Catholics. “I believe this will be a special gift for the Catholics,” religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas said on 30 March. “This will be an honour for Indonesia.”
The Holy See’s secretary or relations with states, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, travelled to Vietnam last week, the first senior Vatican official to visit the country since it broke diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1975.
His meetings with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chính and the Vietnamese hierarchy prompted renewed discussion of papal visit, for which the government has previously issued an invitation.
Marking the sixty-first anniversary of Pacem in Terris last week, Fr Joseph Thomas said John XXIII’s encyclical “still packs resonance”. Writing in the National Catholic Register, he said the text “continue[s] to challenge us to see beyond the material questions of military might, political power and national identity and give priority to those spiritual ideals that are necessary for a lasting peace”.
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