News Briefing: global

Life march off after deluge
The Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, announced that the annual March for Life, planned for today, has been cancelled to focus efforts on flood relief around the country. The El Niño weather system has been blamed for strong rains and flooding in Peru that have claimed the lives of at least 70 people and displaced 70,000. Caritas and local churches have been involved in flood relief. Cardinal Cipriani said that the decision to cancel the march was made with “great sorrow” but the goal was to “focus all the support that we have received towards the neediest people”.

Mass grave inquiry plea
The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference’s Peace and Justice Commission has called for an investigation into a mass grave found inside the General Penitentiary in Guarico state where 14 bodies were found on 9 March. Riots between gangs in the prison during September and October 2016 led to its temporary closure from 28 October. The discovery of the bodies has led to renewed calls for a thorough investigation of the prison system. The Peace and Justice Commission published a letter signed by the Archbishop of Coro, Roberto Lückert, who criticised “the impunity that not only violates the dignity of the deceased victims but their families who hope to see the perpetrators held responsible.”

The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, swept aside the challenge of the anti-Muslim, anti-EU populist, Geert Wilders, in parliamentary elections last week. His centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) won 33 seats, becoming by far the largest party in the 150-seat parliament. Wilders’ Freedom party (PVV) came second with 20 seats. There was no early analysis of the way Catholics voted. Limburg province, on the southeastern tip of The Netherlands, where Catholics are strongest with about 68 per cent of the population, showed the strongest support for the PVV. However, the second-largest area where the PVV was the largest party is a strip along the German border in the far northeast. The Groningen diocese there has the lowest percentage of Catholics in the country, at about 6 per cent.

90th anniversary Mass
A Mass was celebrated in Seoul Cathedral, South Korea, on 18 March to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Catholic Diocese of Pyongyang in North Korea. The main celebrant was Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, Archbishop of Seoul and Apostolic Administrator of Pyongyang. “It is important for us to keep the memory alive and not to forget how many people baptised in Pyongyang struggled right to the end to keep their Catholic faith,” Cardinal Yeom said.

Audience figures for Sunday Mass on Spanish public television rose dramatically after a left-wing party tried to eliminate the weekly broadcast. More than a million people watched the broadcast of Mass last Sunday, its biggest viewing figure since 2004. The Mass generally attracts around 303,000 viewers. Unidos Podemos, the third biggest party in Spain’s parliament, tabled a proposed law that would end the broadcast of the Catholic Mass on La2 television. It opposed the broadcast of religious rituals on state-funded television “in an increasingly multicultural and secular society”. The ruling conservative Popular Party campaigned against the move and an online petition against the elimination of the broadcast, organised by the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers, has so far collected almost 82,000 signatures.

The Catholic bishops of Bolivia are strongly opposing a move to liberalise the country’s abortion law to allow for legal abortion in cases when the mother is living in poverty or already has three or more children. “The proposal distorts the criminal justice system, introducing poverty as a reason for impunity for crimes such as infanticide and euthanasia,” the bishops said. Bolivian law allows abortion only in cases of rape, incest, risk to the mother’s life, or severe foetal malformation.

Church leaders have paid tribute to Cardinal Miloslav Vlk (above), the former Czech primate who died on 18 March, aged 84. “Everything was handed to him in a state of total devastation after the communist totalitarianism,” said Cardinal Dominik Duka, current Archbishop of Prague. “But he became a defining figure of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe.” (Obituary in The Tablet next week.)

Priest and imam honoured
A Catholic priest and an imam based in the city of Lahore in Pakistan have been honoured for their efforts to promote harmony between religions by a global interfaith network for peace and justice. A Dominican priest, Fr James Channan, and Abdul Khabir Azad, the Great Imam of the royal mosque in Lahore, which is one of the largest in Asia, received the “Award for Interreligious Harmony 2017” from the Africa branch of the United Religions Initiative.

Catholic bishops in Guatemala have called for a thorough investigation and greater accountability after fire killed 40 girls at a children’s home (above) near Guatemala City on 8 March. “The tragedy at the Hogar Virgen de la Asunción reception centre was not a simple accident but the tragic end of an irregular situation that had been denounced so many times,” said the President of the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala, Bishop Gonzalo de Villa y Vásquez. The fire began when mattresses were set ablaze during a protest by residents against alleged sexual abuse at the overcrowded youth shelter, which was meant for under 500 but housed nearly 750.

In Germany, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich told members of his diocesan council at their plenary on 18 March that he was against “larger and larger” parish clusters. “We would miss a great many opportunities if we were to withdraw from our territorial roots”, Marx said. Discussion on admission to the priesthood, including the ordination of married men, would have to continue, he said.

The Russian Orthodox Church has officially incorporated St Patrick (385-461), England’s first martyr, the third-century, St Alban, and other Western saints into its calendar for the first time, as a “reminder of the united Church” before the Great Schism of 1054.