News Briefing: global

Church collapse warning
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where tradition has it that Jesus was interred before he rose from the dead, is at “very real risk” of “catastrophic collapse”, say archaeologists and experts who have recently completed restoration work on the Aedicule. This is a small structure within the Holy Sepulchre that encloses the remains of a cave that has been venerated since at least the fourth century as the tomb of Jesus. They recommend a £5.2-million project to shore up the unstable foundations of the whole church. The complex of the Holy Sepulchre, reports Greek archaeologist Antonia Moropoulou, chief scientific supervisor of the restoration project, is threatened by “a significant structural failure” and “the failure will not be a slow process, but catastrophic”. The recent £3.2-million restoration project of the Aedicule revealed that much of the shrine and surrounding building are built on unstable foundations of crumbled remnants of earlier structures, honeycombed with tunnels.

The Archbishop of Puerto Rico, Roberto González, and the Bible Society, led by the Revd Heriberto Martínez, have written to the US Congress seeking changes to austerity measures introduced last year, saying their impact on children is too great. The US Congress passed the PROMESA act in June 2016 to restructure Puerto Rico’s staggering debt. PROMESA put Puerto Rico’s finances in the hands of an oversight board in New York that has sought $3 billion (£2.4bn) in spending cuts over a two-year period. González and Martínez wrote: “We want to prevent financial crises that have an impact on all children.”

Haitian and Dominican bishops met in the diocese of Barahona in the Dominican Republic with migration at the heart of the meeting. The neighbouring countries have come into conflict since the Dominican Republic has not recognised the Dominican citizenship of thousands of descendants of Haitian migrants. “Our Church has the mission to work for the welfare of the two peoples, to preserve harmony and respect for the dignity of migrants, in particular of vulnerable children and the voiceless,” a joint statement read. The Bishop of San Juan de la Maguana, in the Dominican Republic, José Dolores Grullón, stressed the importance of integrating Haitian-descended children.

Penalties for those who smoke and drink, prohibitions against women leaving the house and the death penalty for blasphemy were some of the 14 “rules of behaviour” that the Islamic State militia wrote inside the Chaldean Catholic church, dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Mosul.

They were found last weekend after Iraqi forces (above) took the neighbourhood of the church during its push to retake western Mosul from IS after liberating east Mosul. The church had been emptied of all its Christian symbols.

A bishop in north-eastern Nigeria, whose diocese is blighted by starvation and conflict, has lamented that corruption often prevents aid that goes through government channels from reaching people in need. “They always insist it must go through the government agencies and such interventions go directly into the pockets of some individuals,” reported Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme of Maiduguri in Borno state. “Most of our politicians are corrupt,” he complained. Yet he underlined that the Christian Churches have efficient structures to assist those facing food insecurity. Bishop Doeme was speaking to members of a recent international delegation of Aid to the Church in Need, visiting Maiduguri to show solidarity with a diocese at the centre of attacks by the Islamists of Boko Haram.

One day in Milan
Pope Francis made a packed one-day trip to Milan last Saturday. After arriving in northern Italy’s financial and fashion centre, he headed for the Forlanini housing project, and went to the home of a Muslim immigrant from Morocco, Mihoual Abdel Karim. He then visited 82-year-old Nuccio Onete whose wife, Adele, had been hospitalised with pneumonia three days earlier, before he went to Milan’s large San Vittore prison, where he ate a meal of risotto, schnitzel and artichokes cooked for him by inmates. Afterwards, Francis headed to a park in Monza where he celebrated Mass attended by a million people. He called at Milan’s Duomo Cathedral where he was greeted by Cardinal Angelo Scola and met priests and consecrated men and women. This was followed by a meeting with young people at the city’s San Siro football stadium.

Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri, the Bishop of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, took part in a panel at the European Parliament in Brussels and spoke about the implications of US President Donald Trump’s threats to stop undocumented immigration to the US. He said that the Guatemalan economy is heavily dependent on remittances from migrants in the US, which totalled $6.4 billion (£5.1bn) in 2016. Ramazzini said if remittances “are reduced, cut or taxed, the consequences will be disastrous [and] could anticipate new civil wars”. Most Latin American migrants arriving in the US are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Immigration from Mexico has slowed.

Water appeal
People must become activists for the protection of water sources to prevent a future with no clean water, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town has said. “End indifference to the importance of water,” Archbishop Thabo Makgoba (above) told delegates at a Water Justice conference at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town on 24 March. The message that the world needs to protect water was made also at the United Nations in New York by the Vatican’s permanent observer on World Water Day on 22 March. Without water “there is no life”, said Archbishop Bernardito Auza.

Sweeping criticism
A government advertisement in Pakistan singling out Christians, Hindus and Shia Muslims for the most menial jobs has drawn criticism from Church and human rights activists. Local government officials in Bannu district in north-western Pakistan placed the ad in an Urdu daily on 17 March. World Watch Monitor reports minority representation in sanitation work in Pakistan as above 80 per cent.