Maduro victorious
Nicolás Maduro (pictured) was named the victor of Venezuela’s presidential election on 20 May, winning a reported 67.7 per cent of the vote. Voter turnout was a reported 46 per cent. Henri Falcón, a former governor, ran against Mr Maduro and won 21.2 per cent of the vote.
The “MUD” coalition of opposition groups boycotted the election. Mr Maduro will serve a six-year term from 2019 to 2025. Under his Socialist Party government the economy has all but collapsed. The Venezuelan bishops published a statement on 23 April, calling for the elections to be postponed because, “they can lead [the country] to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis”. More than 4 million people out of a population of 32 million have fled the country.
The national dialogue in Nicaragua between protesters and the government of President Daniel Ortega began on 16 May, mediated by the Catholic Church, at the Our Lady of Fatima Inter-diocesan Seminary, in the west of the capital, Managua. Student protesters confronted Mr Ortega at the first session, reading out a list of students who have been killed during protests since April. Human rights groups put the total number of those killed at 66.
The administration of US President Donald Trump is planning to deny “Title X” funding, ear-marked for family-planning services, to organisations that carry out abortions or refer clients to abortion providers. The change would effectively end most federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country.
Title X was created in 1970. It has always prevented direct funding of abortion, but critics of the programme charge that the fund supports abortion indirectly, because groups like Planned Parenthood can use the money for contraceptive services, freeing up funds to provide abortions.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chair of the US bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, welcomed the decision. “Most Americans recognise that abortion is distinct from family planning and has no place in a taxpayer-funded family planning programme,” he said. “For too long, Title X has been used to subsidise the abortion industry,” he added.
Prayers for air-crash victims
Pope Francis and Juan Díaz Ruíz, Bishop of Ciego de Avila in Cuba, called for prayers for the families of the victims of the 18 May air crash. A flight leaving José Martí international airport in Havana crashed after take-off, killing 111 people. Two passengers survived. The Mexican company that operated the plane had been subject to safety complaints and will be investigated. Ten evangelical leaders from the Nazarene Church were killed in the crash, along with their spouses.
Church bells rang throughout Egypt on 14 May to celebrate the return of the remains of 20 Coptic Christians beheaded in Libya in 2015 by Islamic State. Their remains were transported by plane from Misrata in Libya to Cairo, where they were met by Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II and an Egyptian government representative.
The coffins were transported to the village of Al-Our, in Minya province, where the Church of the Martyrs of Faith and Homeland, dedicated to the victims, was inaugurated in February in anticipation of their repatriation. On 15 May, the victims’ families gathered at the church for the burial.
Priest held at Laos border
A Redemptorist priest was stopped by Vietnamese army officers at the border with Laos when he tried to leave to travel on to the US. Officials held Fr Joseph Dinh Huu Thoai on 14 May, saying they were acting under orders from superiors. He was not under any police ban. However, Fr Thoai regularly speaks out against human rights violations and abuses of religious freedom in Vietnam, and supports former South Vietnamese soldiers who have lived in extreme poverty since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Adoption bar welcomed
Three bishops who chair committees of the US bishops’ conference applauded the decisions of the states of Kansas and Oklahoma to pass laws that protect faith-based adoption and foster care agencies from violating their moral convictions by awarding children to same-sex couples.
“Kansas and Oklahoma are keeping kids first by allowing all capable adoption and foster care providers to serve children in need,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, Bishop Frank Dewane and Bishop James Conley, chairs respectively of the committees for Religious Liberty, Domestic Justice and Human Development, and the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. Seven other states have adopted similar proposals. In some states, requirements that adoption agencies award children to same-sex couples threaten to force Catholic agencies to close.
A bishop in northern Myanmar has reported that more than 7,000 Christians of the Kachin ethnic minority have been forced to abandon their homes due to escalating violence between the Burmese army and Kachin independence rebels. Bishop Francis Daw Tang (above) of Myitkyina, in Kachin State, said that since early April the Burmese army had been attacking villages and schools. “Many people have been trapped in the jungle for at least three weeks, without food and without freedom to move, suspected of being rebel collaborators,” he said.
In a new document, the Vatican says that a “profoundly amoral culture” is damaging the world’s financial systems, and calls for a global system of oversight. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Integral Human Development Dicastery on 17 May released “Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones: considerations for ethical discernment regarding some aspects of the present economic-financial system.”
(See Clifford Longley, page 10.)
The Catholic bishops of Nigeria have directed that every diocese should stage a peaceful demonstration on 22 May against the killings of two priests and 17 others by Muslim Fulani herdsmen on 24 April at St Ignatius Catholic Church, in Gwer East, Benue state. Alfred Adewale Martins, Archbishop of Lagos, said the “atrocious terrorist attacks” called attention to the “failure on the part of the government to ensure the security of lives and properties of its citizens”.
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