News Briefing: global

The Justice and Peace Commission of the bishops’ conference of Venezuela has denounced the murder of 12 young people who were stopped by agents of Liberation of the People, a government security force which, according to the human rights NGO Provea, has been involved in more than 750 extrajudicial deaths since President Nicolás Maduro created it in July 2015. The denunciation comes as negotiations between the Maduro Government and opposition leaders stalled. The opposition did not attend the third scheduled session of the talks at the beginning of December, saying the Government had not honoured its undertaking to release political prisoners.

The Archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, said: “The Venezuelan bishops all agree with Pope Francis and we all want to support the efforts to find constitutional solutions to the crisis”.

 In October, Pope Francis named Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli to mediate talks between Government and opposition. Relatives of the jailed opposition member Leopoldo Lopez have begun a sit-in in front of the Vatican, calling for his release, on charges related to anti-government protests in 2014.  

Death penalty appeal
The Catholic Church in the Philippines has urged people to resist a “railroad attempt” to restore the death penalty in the country, a decade after it was abolished. The bishops’ conference (CBCP) has asked Catholics to engage with this week’s deliberations in the House of Representatives on the death penalty bill, resisting “this railroad attempt to pass this anti-life and anti-poor measure”. President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to bring back capital punishment as part of his war on crime.

A woman (pictured) recovers in hospital after the roof of a church in south-eastern Nigeria collapsed onto a congregation last Saturday, killing at least 160 people. The evangelical Reigners Bible Church in Uyo, capital of Akwa Ibom state, was packed for the ordination of a bishop when the roof, which was still under construction, caved in. State governor Udom Emmanuel was inside when metal girders and the corrugated iron roof crashed onto worshippers but was not injured. He said later that he “had shared the agony of the moment”. President Muhammadu Buhari issued a statement expressing his condolences “over the many deaths and injuries”. The state government has announced an inquiry to investigate if building standards were compromised.

After a plenary assembly on 2 December, Haitian bishops spoke publicly on the recent presidential elections in the country, saying the low voter turnout indicated a high level of political disillusionment. The Tet Kale (Bald Heads) party candidate, who comes from the business elite, won the elections in November but supporters of at least three other parties have questioned the results. In the country of 10 million people, Jovenel Moïse received only about 600,000 votes. However, with 55 per cent of the vote, he was able to claim victory without a run-off. “Haitians live with the sensation of having been cheated and used”, the bishops’ statement read.

Two leading Catholic philosophers have written to Pope Francis, asking him to condemn any “errors” that might result from “misuse” of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. John Finnis, professor of law at the universities of Oxford and Notre Dame, and Germain Grisez, emeritus professor of philosophy at Mount St Mary’s University, Maryland, sent an open letter to the Pope on 21 November asking him to condemn eight positions they say are contrary to the Catholic faith but are being, or could be supported by, the misuse of Amoris Laetitia. These include the belief that there can be exceptions even to divine commandments, the view that God’s commandments are really “rules” that we should strive to follow as best we can, the idea that following our conscience contrary to divine command may be construed as still doing our best respond to God and the belief that a relationship as a married couple can deteriorate until it ceases to exist, allowing divorce and remarriage.

Solidarity with immigrants
On 12 December, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Catholic churches across the United States held special Masses (pictured, a worshipper in Arizona) to demonstrate solidarity with immigrants. “So many families are wondering how changes to immigration policy might impact them,” said Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, vice-president of the US bishops’ conference. “We want them to know the Church is with them, offers prayers on their behalf, and is actively monitoring developments at the diocesan, state, and national levels to be an effective advocate on their behalf.”

The Vatican’s British head of diplomacy has urged European governments to do more to ensure a “climate of respect” for Christians, rather than viewing them as “just a negative factor in society”. Addressing a Hamburg session of the 57-country Organisation on Security and Co-Operation in Europe, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States, said: “Religions can be harnessed as an innately positive force, given the contribution believers strive to bring to their societies.”


Bonus call to VW bosses
In Germany, the Archbishop of Freiburg, Stephan Burger, has called on top managers of Volkswagen to shoulder responsibility for the emissions scandal and give back their bonuses. Between 2009 and 2015, when the scandal broke, Volkswagen programmed 11 million cars to activate certain emissions controls only during laboratory testing. Once on the road, the vehicles emitted harmful emissions. “If one presumes that a manager gets a bonus for his contribution to the success of the company, I consider it only logical that managers who make decisions that turn out to be fiascos should return their bonuses,” Archbishop Burger said.

Krakow appointment
The Pope has appointed a conservative 67-year-old to replace the retiring Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz as Archbishop of Krakow, the Polish diocese once headed by Pope St John Paul II. “As far as Catholic teaching is concerned, he certainly isn’t a liberal but a person strictly upholding orthodoxy,” said Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, president of Poland’s Bishops’ Conference, after the nomination of Marek Jedraszewski, currently Archbishop of Lodz.