Healing prayers with Francis
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (pictured) has revealed that Pope Francis prayed for him when he had a fractured hand and it healed. The president said it followed a meeting between the two men at the UN General Assembly in New York, in 2015. “I had fractured my hand accidentally by hitting something, and when I was coming from the podium after making a speech and he was going to make his, he prayed for me and my fractured hand healed,” Mr Museveni said at a Mass at Namugongo Catholic Shrine on 29 October.
Seminarian slump in France
The number of seminarians in France has dropped by about one-third since 2000, from 976 to 662, according to the latest figures presented to a plenary session of the French bishops’ conference in Lourdes. One quarter of those seminarians are from abroad, mostly Latin America, Asia and Africa. The Community of Saint Martin, which seconds its priests to dioceses on condition they live in groups of at least three, has bucked the trend by expanding from 18 seminarians in 2000 to 109 last year. Five diocesan seminaries already account for half of all seminarians. The Community of Saint Martin alone trains one-sixth of all seminarians in France.
The Student Activities Committee at Georgetown University in Washington, DC has voted 8-4 not to take disciplinary action against a student group, Love Saxa, that defends traditional Church teaching on marriage. Two LGBT activists had asked that the group be penalised as a “hate group”. The Jesuit-run university’s director of student engagement will make a final decision on the controversy.
Thousands join cross protest
More than 72,000 people have signed an online petition to the main political groups in the European Parliament to block a French court’s ruling that a cross atop a statue of Pope St John Paul II in Brittany be removed because the memorial stands on public land. The decision, which the Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydlo, denounced as “political correctness terrorising Europeans”, has prompted the mayor of Zakopane – a southern Polish mountain resort where the late pontiff used to hike and ski – to offer to place it in his town if it is moved from France.
France’s top administrative court gave the town of Ploërmel six months to remove the cross. The petition on the website CitizenGo said that the cross “reminds us of Europe’s Christian heritage. Any attempt to censor public space by removing this symbol, synonymous with Europe’s identity and culture, is a manifestation of separation from its foundation”.
The President of Malawi’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference has acknowledged the importance of lay people in pastoral planning, saying the Church is growing in Malawi, “thanks to the laity”. Archbishop Thomas Msusa of Blantyre said last week that, “the Church is very active at a pastoral level and counts on the precious contribution of the laity”. His archdiocese has 41 parishes and some have 1,000 candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation.
Meanwhile, Catholic lay faithful from all 10 of Haiti’s dioceses have been urged by participants in the National Congress of Laity held in Port au Prince from 31 October to 3 November to identify pressing problems facing the country, study their causes and apply the values ??and principles of the social teaching of the Church.
The German bishops have evaluated the responses to the Youth Synod questionnaire from all 27 German dioceses but have not yet given any statistics as to how many young people took part in the exercise. They forwarded the responses and their analysis to the Vatican and reminded young Germans that the Vatican questionnaire, www.youth.synod2018.va, is online until 30 November.
The responses so far showed that many young people had sought the Church’s help and accompaniment, which, unfortunately, they were not always able to find, the bishops admitted. The German young “quite clearly distance themselves from what the Church has to say on marriage and the family”, they said.
Five friends from Argentina were among the eight people killed in a terrorist attack in New York on 31 October. The men were on a trip to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their college graduation. They were riding rented bicycles along the bike path in Lower Manhattan when the attack took place.
Sayfullo Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, drove a truck down the bike path, killing eight people and injuring 11. Saipov did not have formal links to so-called Islamic State but appears to have followed its online instructions for attacks.
The Archbishop of Rosario, Argentina, Eduardo Martín, expressed his condolences.
“I am deeply saddened by the terrorist attacks of these last days in Somalia, Afghanistan and yesterday in New York,” Pope Francis said on 1 November, when he greeted pilgrims in St Peter’s Square. “I call on the Lord that he may convert the hearts of the terrorist and free the world of hate and that crazy homicide that abuses the name of God to disseminate death.”
Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, Archbishop of Ranchi, has opposed a move to marginalise tribal people in India’s Jharkhand state. Aimed at tribal people who traditionally have large families, the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state government intends to disqualify people with more than two children from local elections. “It is a human rights violation,” said the cardinal.
The Abbot of Einsiedeln, Urban Federer OSB, who is also a bishop and heads the Swiss bishops’ conference’s liturgy commission, has welcomed Pope Francis’ motu proprio Magnum Principium and hopes it will lead to new translations of the Missal.
He told the German section of Vatican Radio that the new translation of the French Missal, for example, had not been approved as it was considered “too complicated linguistically”.
Federer also said that the Swiss bishops’ conference was on good terms with the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Archbishop Arthur Roche. “He has even visited us here and I am very confident that we will now be able to solve hitherto unsettled problems,” he revealed.
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