News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales is to gather the views of thousands of young people on the future of the Church through a mobile phone app. The app will be launched at the Flame Congress on 11 March in Wembley Arena, London, and will be one of the ways that young people will be consulted ahead of the forthcoming Synod on Young People, due to be held in Rome in 2018. The Congress is the largest Catholic youth event in England and Wales, and the 2017 guest line-up includes Cardinal Bo of Myanmar and music from Grammy Award winner Matt Redman.

Blasphemy case protest
Christians in Scotland have held a demonstration to protest against the continued imprisonment of Asia Bibi, a mother-of-five who was jailed under Pakistan’s blasphemy law for drinking from a well designated for Muslims. She was sentenced to death in 2010. Protesters included members of Glasgow’s Pakistani Christian community and braved temperatures of -2 degrees to gather outside the Pakistani Consulate last Saturday. Wilson Chowdhry of the British Pakistani Christian Association said Asia Bibi had been failed by the Pakistani legal system. She had never contemplated leaving her faith, he said, even though accepting Islam under duress could set her free.
 
Neeson integration plea
The actor Liam Neeson has called for more integration in the schools system in Northern Ireland. In a video released on 8 February by the Integrated Education Fund Neeson asks why more Catholic and Protestant children are not taught together. “As Northern Ireland moves forward from division, who do we look to for a future we can share? Our children – so why do we continue to educate them apart?” he asks. Just seven per cent of children in Northern Ireland are taught at schools that are integrated.

Pusey House Library, a reference library in Oxford specialising in church history, patristics and Anglo-Catholic theology is to make 35,000 records available online. Although the conversion of the old card catalogue will take five to 10 years to complete, volunteers have recently finished a crowdfunded project to digitise the card catalogue as an interim online resource.

The Diocese of Westminster launched “Called to Serve the Sick” on 11 February, a period of special focus on the sick and the obligation to care for them and their families which will continue until the diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes in July. Cardinal Vincent Nichols described the initiative as “a follow-up to the Year of Mercy”.

Emma Rigby (below), the Catholic actress who played Hannah Ashworth in Hollyoaks, has been made a celebrity ambassador for the UK aid agency Cafod. Ms Rigby said growing up in a deprived area of Merseyside showed her the devastating impact poverty can have on a community.


The last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots was on show at the National Library of Scotland for six hours last Wednesday. Written at 2am on the morning of her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, it asked Henry III of France to remember in his prayers a fallen monarch who had once borne the title “Most Christian” and who died a Catholic, “stripped of all her possessions”. Bishop John Keenan of Paisley said that the letter, written in French, was “very comforting”.

At a meeting with Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev (above centre), faith leaders including the Archbishop of Birmingham raised the topic of a two-state solution to the current “impasse” between Israel and Palestine. The meeting last week at Singers Hill Synagogue included Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist representatives. Archbishop Bernard Longley said they discussed the need to bring together young Israelis and Palestinians, the West Bank wall and the settlements.

Our Lady of the Rosary and St Patrick in Walthamstow has become the second parish in Brentwood Diocese and the 24th in England and Wales to attain the Livesimply parish award, a Cafod initiative to encourage sustainability. It opened the parish hall to the homeless, initiated a “Walk to Mass” Sunday, installed bike racks and a water butt, started a vegetable patch, and banned the use of disposable crockery and cutlery amongst other measures.  

Today Cardinal Vincent Nichols is to crown the National Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Westminster Cathedral. The World Apostolate of Fatima in England and Wales is celebrating this centenary year of the 1917 apparitions with a programme of visitations by the statue, which was presented to England by the Bishop of Fatima in 1968.