Americans have a new religious hero, Sr Jean Dolores-Schmidt (pictured), a 98-year-old nun who has served as chaplain to the Loyola-Chicago men’s basketball team for 25 years.
The team made it into the national collegiate championship tournament, known as “March Madness,” and scored two upset victories in the first weekend of play at the tournament. Many of the players attributed the surprise wins to the influence of Sr Jean. “I told them that we were going to win, that we could do it and that God would be on our side,” Sr Jean told reporters.
Marriage bias bill endorsed
The chairmen of two US bishops’ conference committees strongly endorsed a bill aimed at preventing the Government from discriminating against people who believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
The bishops said that the bill – the First Amendment Defence Act (FADA) – which Senator Mike Lee and 21 other Republicans reintroduced last week, is needed to protect those with “reasonable views on marriage that differ from the federal government’s view”.
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, chairman of the conference’s committee for religious liberty, and Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, chairman of the subcommittee for the promotion and defence of marriage, in a statement described FADA as a “modest and important measure”.
The Catholic Church will “continue to promote and protect the natural truth of marriage as foundational to the common good”, the statement said. The updated version of the bill also protects from discrimination those who believe marriage can be a union between any two people, including those of the same sex. President Donald Trump has said he supports the bill.
The cross “quite clearly” belongs in the public realm, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn told journalists in Austria when questioned on the recent decision by Vienna University that crosses should no longer be hung in the university’s lecture rooms. The cross must not be misunderstood or abused as a sign of demarcation, the cardinal emphasised.
“It must not be used against others. It is a rescue sign, an invitation, an offer without the use of force,” he said.
At the beginning of February, Vienna University closed three lecture rooms for necessary repairs that the Catholic Theological Faculty had used since 1884 and where crosses had always hung on the walls. The university announced that, as the faculty would now share the lecture rooms with other faculties, there would be no crosses because “a religious connotation in the form of a cross is problematic”.
Francis hailed as man of peace
The Grand-Imam of al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Islamic institution, has described the relationship between Cairo’s al-Azhar and the Coptic Church as “deep-rooted ... unbreakable”, in a speech at the Catholic University in Portugal last week.
He also hailed Pope Francis as a “man of peace”, describing his visit to Cairo last year as “extremely important”. The goodwill between Rome and al-Azhar does not mean that theological differences do not remain, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayed said. “The problem is when you try to force beliefs on another.”
Bishops in the Philippines have criticised President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to withdraw the country from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which last month opened a preliminary examination into his “war on drugs”.
The president’s decision showed that there might be a basis for the allegations made against him, Manila’s Auxiliary Bishop, Broderick Pabillo, said. “(He) is afraid of accountability. Duterte should be investigated,” he added. Duterte has accused ICC investigators of painting him as a “ruthless and heartless violator of human rights”. By law, the ICC can only investigate and prosecute crimes in situations where states are “unable” or “unwilling” to do so themselves.
Filipino bishops have also said that a proposed bill to introduce legal divorce “might end up destroying even those marriages that could have been saved”. On March 14, the House of Representatives approved a second reading of the draft bill.
The first lay-led parish is to open in Germany in the Diocese of Osnabrück later this year, as a response to the shortage of priests in the country. Michael Göcking, a lay employee, will start to lead the parish of Wellingholzhausen from 1 December. The parish will be overseen by a priest-moderator who will not be a resident there.
The Bishop of Osnabrück, Franz-Josef Bode, hopes to avoid parishes being clustered together into larger and larger parishes owing to the vocations crisis in Germany.
The Church in Nicaragua has warned against possible restrictions on social media announced by vice-president Rosario Murillo (above). “The state should not control or censor social media because it would limit freedom of expression, nor should it stand as a moral arbiter of people,” the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, Silvio José Báez, said last week.
Murillo has said she wants to “review the use of social networks” in the Central American country, claiming they are “negatively affecting Nicaraguans”. She is the wife of President Daniel Ortega, who began his third consecutive term in 2016. Journalists and activists have experienced censorship in recent years, and the Sandinista party controls many key media outlets.
Beer rip-off angers monks
A monastery in Belgium has protested after a Dutch supermarket chain sold its famous “not-for-resale” beer at inflated costs, increasing the cost of a bottle from €2.50 to nearly €10.
The Trappist monastery of Saint Sixtus in Westvleteren, a Flemish village near Ypres in western Belgium, brews beer that is regularly ranked as the best in the world.
The only way to buy the cult brew is by the glass at the monastery or under strict rules for sales by crate of 24 bottles. However, the Dutch supermarket chain Jan Linders recently announced it had 300 crates of the “Westy” variety, which sold out within hours.
“Every beer lover knows that the Trappists of Westvleteren do not pursue profit maximisation. They only produce as much beer as is necessary to provide for their livelihood,” a monastery spokesman said. The monastery is reportedly seeking legal advice to block any repeat sale.
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