A Catholic video game based around the life of Pope St John Paul II will be launched at the Australian Catholic Youth Festival in Sydney next month. It will give players the chance to play as Karol Wojtyla, and collect saints’ medals, bibles, cakes and rosaries, while evading the dangers of falling boulders, bullets and Nazis. Sydney auxiliary bishops Richard Umbers and Anthony Randazzo tried it out last week, with both bishops achieving the same number of points. Sydney is expecting 18,000 young Catholics from around the country to attend the Australian Catholic Youth Festival.
Cardinal Bechara el-Rai, the head of the Maronite Catholic community in Lebanon, said on Monday that the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Beirut, from Saudi Arabia, where he recently announced his resignation, would restore normal life to the country. Speaking before departing for Riyadh, Cardinal Rai told reporters that the Lebanese people have been “unsettled” since Mr Hariri’s resignation on 4 November, and he would raise the matter with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Cardinal Rai had planned his two-day visit before Mr Hariri announced his resignation.
Tribute to martyrs
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the largest historical and social research centre in the People’s Republic of China, has paid tribute to the missionary martyrs of the “massacre of Zhengding Church”.
The reference is to the 80th anniversary of the massacre committed in Hebei Province on 9 October 1937, when Bishop Frans Schraven, the Dutch Apostolic Vicar of Zhengding, was burned alive by Japanese occupiers, along with eight European mission companions, because he had welcomed and defended thousands of Chinese displaced persons who had found refuge in his church, including 200 Chinese girls the military wanted as sex slaves. The Academy said that the Catholic missionaries acted out of their Christian faith.
African and European Bishops have appealed for stronger measures to tackle human trafficking and the brain drain from Africa. In the lead-up to the African Union and European Union Summit, to be held in Ivory Coast later this month, the bishops called on African and European politicians to work together in order to give young Africans a future through job creation and an environment of sustainable development.
“We hope for a strong statement by the participants of the AU-EU summit on migration and especially the fight against human trafficking,” the bishops said.
Blasphemy laws ‘abused’
“The Pakistani Government is not seriously addressing the issue of the abuse of blasphemy laws and the urgency of eradicating Islamic extremism from Pakistani society,” a Pakistani lawyer insisted on the third anniversary of the burning alive of a Christian couple accused of blasphemy. “It is time to take bold action to combat religious extremism and the first step is to repeal or reform the blasphemy laws”, said Christian lawyer Sardar Mushtaq Gill. On 4 November 2014, Shama and Shahzad Masih were burned alive in a brick kiln after a false accusation of blasphemy.
Wildlife corridor protest
Catholic bishops have joined indigenous people in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand to oppose a planned corridor for wild life, as it threatens to displace around 25,000 people. Bishop Vincent Barwa of Simdega, who is based in Jharkhand, says the people are bewildered “because on one hand the government claims to be acting to protect the forest and tribal people, but on the other it moves to displace them”. The Government says that the three-kilometre-wide corridor is needed to help elephants. However, Bishop Barwa has accused it of favouring companies that want to develop tourism projects.
Trump threats warning
The former Benedictine Primate, Notker Wolf, who has visited North Korea more than 10 times, as his order runs a hospital there, has warned against threatening North Korea with total destruction, as US President Donald Trump has done. Asked how the world should deal with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Wolf replied that it should meet him on an equal footing; direct talks were the way forward.
Activists in Chile have burned a bus and left pamphlets critical of Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the Araucania region in the south of the country. The Mapuche, an indigenous group, are critical of the Church in the area, which remains contested between the group – who see it as their ancestral territory – and the Chilean Government. Pope Francis will visit Chile from 15 to 18 January, including a visit to the Diocese of Temuco in Araucania. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile, and seek to reclaim lands that the Chilean Government seized during the “Pacification of the Araucania” in the nineteenth century.
Earthquakes damage
Pope Francis sent messages of condolence to people in Iran and Iraq after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake killed more than 400 people, mostly in Iran, on Sunday. The Pope “assures all affected by this tragedy of his prayerful solidarity”, said the messages, released on Monday. “In expressing his sorrow to all who mourn the loss of their loved ones, he offers his prayers for the deceased and commends them to the mercy of the Almighty,” said the telegrams, signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State. The US Geological Survey said the quake was centred 19 miles outside Halabja, Iraq.
Catholic chic
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that it is embracing the Catholic Church for one of its leading exhibitions in 2018. The title of the fashion extravaganza is “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” the largest show to date of the Met’s Costume Institute. The exhibition, running from May to October, will include ecclesiastical attire borrowed from the Vatican, religious art from the Met’s own collection and 150 designer garments that pay aesthetic homage to Catholicism. The opening night gala will involve several prominent names in fashion, and the exhibition will include a Chanel wedding gown inspired by First Communion dresses.
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