Italy’s Catholic bishops have offered to care for a majority of the 140 migrants who had been prevented from leaving an Italian coastguard ship docked in a Sicilian harbour.
Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti (above), president of the Italian bishops’ conference, told state TV the bishops worked with Italy’s Interior Ministry “in a spirit of collaboration” to help end the stalemate over where the asylum-seekers whom the coastguard ship rescued would go.
Parishes will care for some 100 migrants, while Albania and Ireland will each accept about 20 under an arrangement announced late on Saturday night by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. The majority of the migrants, most of them young men fleeing Eritrea, were disembarked from the ship, the Diciotti, at a dock in Catania on Sunday.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had only allowed minors or sick passengers off the ship until fellow European Union nations volunteered to take the asylum-seekers. Except for Ireland, none did. Albania is not an EU member.
Amnesty to help build peace
The Catholic bishops of Ivory Coast have welcomed an amnesty granted to 800 political prisoners by President Alassane Ouattara. They say the move is an important step towards building a culture of peace in the West African country still deeply divided following a civil war that left 3,000 people dead.
Among those released on 6 August was Simone Gbagbo – the wife of former Ivorian leader, Laurent Gbagbo. It was Gbagbo’s refusal to leave office after the 2010 elections that led to the civil conflict. He is currently in the custody of the International Criminal Court facing charges of crimes against humanity. The former president’s wife was serving a 20-year jail term for allegedly endangering state security.
Michael Galloway, owner and operator of the Catholic Online website, was sentenced on 13 August to 21 months in prison for tax evasion, according to an announcement by United States Attorney McGregor Scott. Sixty-three-year-old Galloway, of Bakersfield, California, was ordered to surrender to police and begin to serve his sentence on 14 November.
The sentence comes after a jury in Fresno, California, returned a guilty verdict in March, convicting Galloway on four counts of tax evasion.
Catholic Online carries international, national and local news, finance, health, family, arts and entertainment features, together with articles on saints, and an assortment of videos on faith and other topics.
The site says it has 150,000 “unique users” daily, 4 million monthly and has 2.5 million followers on Facebook.
A Catholic priest who was one of the earliest critics of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on drugs gangs and dealers has gone into hiding. Fr Amado Picardal, 63, said on Monday that he has gone to a “secure location” after workers in a Catholic monastery that he visits in central Cebu city reported seeing motorcycle-riding men watching the compound, including a pair who asked for his whereabouts.
Joko Widodo last week paid his first visit as President of Indonesia to the headquarters of the country’s Catholic bishops’ conference in Jakarta.
The conference’s chairman, Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta, and its secretary-general, Bishop Antonius Subianto Bunjamin of Bandung in West Java province, as well as eight other bishops, welcomed the president. During their hour-long meeting each bishop was able to discuss issues affecting their respective dioceses with the president, who took office in 2014 and is looking for re-election in polls next year.
Cafod warns of disease after Kerala floods
The international Catholic aid agency Cafod has warned that families who have lost everything due to the Kerala floods now need to be protected against outbreaks of disease in relief camps.
The flooding caused by torrential rainfall in the south-western Indian state in recent days has left more than 300 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, with many still stranded, and running out of clean water and food.
Cafod is working alongside local partner Caritas India, which is responding with food and essentials such as hygiene products to more than 32,000 of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in Kerala.
“In addition to providing emergency assistance such as clean water, food and shelter, we must look at preventing outbreaks of diseases like cholera, which are likely to affect this extremely vulnerable group,” said Giovanna Reda, Cafod’s head of humanitarian programmes for Asia.
Young girl to be beatified
A 16-year-old peasant girl will be beatified as a martyr in Slovakia, seven decades after she was shot in front of her family for resisting rape by a drunken Soviet soldier.
Anna Kolaserova “embodies the faithful layperson living in their family, regularly receiving sacraments, praying the rosary and approaching God through good works. Her heroic testimony, drawn from a sincere spiritual life, is something every Catholic and believer can aspire to,” Archbishop Bernard Bober of Kosice, Slovakia, told Catholic News Service.
A Mexican priest in the state of Michoacán has been found murdered after disappearing earlier last month. Fr Miguel Gerardo Flores, 39, disappeared after celebrating Mass on 18 August in Uruapan. His body was found on 25 August in the municipality of Múgica. He is the 25th priest to be murdered in Mexico in the past six years. Fr Flores served at the Santa Catarina de Alejandría parish in Jucutacato, Michoación.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, as a delegate to October’s 25th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. He joins five other delegates elected by the United States bishops’ conference going to the meeting in Rome to discuss young people, the faith, and vocational discernment.
Cardinal Tobin’s fellow delegates are Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston; Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles; Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia; Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport; and Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles.
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