News Briefing: Church in the World

The Archdiocese of Luxembourg ended its nine-year collaboration with the Mexico-based Verbum Spei Fraternity after learning that Pope Francis had laicised a member priest who had fathered two children with a woman follower.  

The archdiocese reported that after inquiries it found that the fraternity had split from the Brothers of Saint John and still supported the “harmful” teachings of the order’s sexually abusive founder, the late Fr Marie-Dominique Philippe, whom the order renounced in 2019. “The pastoral collaboration between the archdiocese and the Verbum Spei Fraternity is terminated with immediate effect,” the archdiocese said. 

The Philippe brothers were Dominicans who used a theory of “friendship love” to justify sexual abuse. The archdiocese’s statement said the “new knowledge of the potential danger of the philosophical doctrine” and the “harmful consequences if put into practice” had led to the decision.

Pope Francis made Amsterdam’s Basilica of Saint Nicholas, which dominates the skyline outside the Centraal train station, the co-cathedral of the Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam, giving the Netherlands’ official capital its first official cathedral. The city was not even mentioned in the diocese’s name until 2009, when Amsterdam was added to the previous title of Haarlem. 

“This new status is granted to the Basilica of St Nicholas in this Holy Year, in which the 750th anniversary of the Dutch capital is also being celebrated,” said Bishop Johannes Hendriks of Haarlem-Amsterdam, who will officially take possession of his co-cathedral next month. “St Bavo’s Cathedral … in Haarlem will remain the main church of the diocese… but the presence of a second episcopal see makes the Catholic Church even more visible in the capital of the country.”

Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm voiced his grief at increasing violence in Sweden after 11 people, including the gunman, were killed on 4 February in the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history.

He said Catholics were mourning “victims of the violent act in Örebro”, a city 125 miles west of Stockholm. “Violence and shootings only seem to increase and increase,” he said, adding that “we ask for God’s help so that goodness and harmony may prevail in our country.” 

The Conference of European Churches offered solidarity with Churches in Sweden after the killings at an adult education centre popular with immigrants. Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack.

Digital regulations may oblige the Catholic prayer app Hallow to shut down in the European Union. 

The US-based app’s chief executive Alex Jones wrote on social media: “The EU is shutting us down by over-regulation, apparently targeting any religious app, making it effectively impossible for us to operate in the EU.” He described the move as “honestly pretty heart-breaking”, adding: “We were just discussing plans to expand our Polish, French, Italian, and German content and teams. If this is accurate, those efforts will be essentially impossible.”

Hallow – which features prayers, bible readings and the voice of actors including Liam Neeson and Jonathan Roumie, the Catholic star of the internet television series The Chosen –has been downloaded more than 22 million times since its launch in2018.  Last July, Hallow was removed from the App Store inChina.

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A man climbed onto the main altar of St Peter’s in Rome last week, throwing six candelabras off the altar to the ground.  He began to remove the altar cloth before security guards intervened.  

Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, said: “This is an episode of a person with a serious mental disability, who has been detained by the Vatican police and then placed at the disposal of the Italian authorities.” The Spanish daily ABC reported that the man was arrested because the basilica’s alarm was activated when the man, of Romanian origin, stood on the altar.

The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life approved “in a definitive manner” the statutes of the Regnum Christi Federation, the “spiritual family” incorporating the Legionaries of Christ and other groups associated with Marcial Maciel’s Regnum Christi movement. 

This approval concluded a four-year trial process for the statutes approved ad experimentum in 2019. This followed a 10-year Vatican investigation of abuse by Maciel, who died in 2008. A state from the federation announcing the approval of the statutes on 5 February said this “process of renewal … sought to express clearly the unity of the charism shared by the Legionaries of Christ, the Consecrated Women, the Lay Consecrated Men and the lay members”.

Pope Francis extended Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re’s term as dean of the College of Cardinals, shortly after making a similar extension for the vice dean Cardinal Leonardo Sandri. In a 2019 motu proprio following the resignation of the then-dean Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Francis modified the dean’s term of office from an indefinite election to a five-year term which the Pope may renew.

Bishop Christian Carlassare of Benitu urged the warring Dinka and Nuer communities in his diocese to forgive one another and foster a wider peace in South Sudan. 

The communities have historically fought over grazing land and water resources, but the fighting took on a national political element in 2013 when President Salva Kiir – a Dinka – dismissed his Nuer vice president, Riek Machar, inciting wider ethnic conflict. Speaking at the conclusion of a peace dialogue on 5 February, Bishop Carlassare called on those affected by the conflict to begin the process of forgiving the system that had fostered divisions between the two communities. 

“If South Sudan is to have any hope of peace, our communities must find the courage to forgive, not just the individuals who have wronged them, but also the larger system that has perpetuated division and violence,” said Carlassare, an Italian-born missionary who is Bentiu’s first bishop.

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Nigeria’s bishops have called on the government to improve public safety after a fire killed 17 people last week. The fire at an Islamic school on 4 February was blamed on poor safety standards. 

“It is our collective duty to take immediate action to protect the sanctity of human life in our nation, recognizing that every life is sacred and deserves to be safeguarded,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria said in a statement on 6 February.

“It is disheartening to acknowledge that we have witnessed too many avoidable deaths, especially due to the lack of proper safety standards. We urgently call on the government and relevant stakeholders to enforce stringent safety standards,” they said, noting that there is an urgent need “to prevent the occurrence of such devastating incidents in the future and ensure that no life is lost due to avoidable negligence”. 

There was further criticism of government failings after a priest was kidnaped in the Federal Capital Territory. The Diocese of Shendam reported that Fr Cornelius Manzak Damulak, a student at Veritas University in Abuja, was abducted on 6 February. “We invite all Christ’s faithful and all people of goodwill to storm the heavens with prayer for his quick and safe release from the hands of abductors,” said the diocese’s statement.

The former Archbishop of Lubango called for a revision of the Angolan constitution better to reflect citizens’ aspirations.  Preaching in the chapel of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Angola and São Tomé (CEAST) on 5 February, the 90-year-old Archbishop Emeritus Zacarias Kamwenho said: “The constitution we have today remains a party-based document, modelled after Marxist-Leninist constitutions, and not all Angolans identify with it.”   

Since independence, Angola’s constitution has seen several changes, from the initial version enacted in 1975 to mark the end of colonial rule to a new version introduced in 1992 as Angola transitioned from a one-party system to a multi-party democracy. The current constitution was drawn up in 2010 and revised in 2022. 

Kamwenho said debates on the document were not transparent or participatory. “Unfortunately, in Angola today, discussing the constitution remains a taboo, as if it were something sacred that cannot be questioned,” he said.

The Jesuit Institute of South Africa urged the government to create economic opportunities to wean the country’s millions of unemployed off state social grants. It called for economic reforms that align with the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, in a statement issued on 7 February after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s outlined plans for socio-economic development in his state of the nation address. 

“The institute agrees in principle with social grants but maintains that this scale of dependency on the state is excessive,” the Jesuits said.  “The state’s role is to create an environment enabling people to thrive without direct handouts from the national fiscus. This aligns with the twin principles of Catholic Social Teaching, of subsidiarity and respect for human dignity, which encourages self-reliance and using our gifts to support our families.”

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The Indian Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on a dispute over the burial of a Christian convert in his local cemetery. Villagers in Chhindawada, in the central state of Chhattisgarh, opposed the burial of Pastor Subhash Baghel in the cemetery where his family were interred because of his conversion to Christianity. 

The court’s ruling on 27 January was divided over whether “religious identity” or “communal harmony” should determine burial rights. Baghel was buried in a cemetery 12 miles from the village, but the court ordered the state to designate more Christian cemeteries in the locality.

India’s 204 Latin rite bishops discussed topics suggested by the laity at their plenary assembly. The thirty-sixth plenary assembly of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) ran from 28 January to 4 February in Bhubaneswar, the capital of the eastern state of Odisha.  

It was the first time that lay Catholics suggested the topics for the bishops’ discussion, in response to a preparatory document which guided the assembly’ working document, according to the CCBI deputy secretary Fr Stephen Alathara. The meeting at the Jesuit run Xavier Institute of Management University, focusing on the theme “Discerning Synodal Pathways for Mission”.  

The bishops issued a letter of gratitude to the People of God, reaffirming their commitment to a Synodal Church and emphasising their priorities of communion, participation, and mission.

Bishop Celso Ba Shwe of Loikaw celebrated a “Jubilee in exile” because the Myanmar military still occupies his cathedral in the eastern state of Kayah.

“Since we could not use the cathedral church as the Jubilee church, we have designated the Mother of God parish church in Sondu, where Bishop Celso Ba Shwe of Loikaw currently resides, as the co-cathedral,” reported Fr Paul Pa, diocesan representative for the 2025 Jubilee. 

At the opening service of the Jubilee, the bishop encouraged the congregation to “hold on to hope” because “the Lord is with us”. He added that “hope comes from solidarity and mutual charity in this time of desert, darkness, suffering, displacement, a time of exile when everyone longs to return home but cannot because of the widespread violence”. 

About 90,000 members of the diocese are scattered in an area marked by fighting between the army – which seized power in a 2021 coup – and opposition rebels.

In a joint pastoral letter, six Filipino bishops deplored “aggressive incursions of the Chinese into our maritime zones” in the West Philippine Sea off Luzon Island. “The widespread destruction of coral reefs, marine sanctuaries and the habitat of fish and sea-dwelling animals has wrought havoc on the lives of our fisherfolk,” said the bishops, including Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan.

They said fishing vessels “have to venture far into the open sea and tremendous risk to their safety to able to make a catch – and then still face the threat of being bullied by Chinese fishing and naval vessels that, by their size and power, can easily outmanoeuvre and frighten our fisherfolk.” They urged that, “all legal means must be exhausted so that what nature has so bountifully bestowed on us may be ours and may feed generations of Filipinos yet to be born.”

A group of Lithuanian pilgrims, led by Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, celebrated the start of the Jubilee Year by walking the part of the Camino de Santiago network in Taiwan. 

Laima Andrikienė, a former MEP and the initiator of the Camino de Santiago network in Lithuania, told The Tablet:  “The culmination of our Taiwan Camino experience was a traditional New Year’s Eve procession, which started from one of the oldest Catholic churches – the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Wanjin – and led through narrow village streets, among the banana and palm plantations, surrounded by the chirping of cicadas, among the homes of the indigenous people of other religions, and also among the many Catholic family homes, decorated with nativity scenes and lights, ending at Our Lady of Fatima church in Pingtung.” 

She continued: “It’s hard to say how many participants there were, I would turn around in the dark and see a huge column of people with candles walking behind me.” The Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, in Vilnius, is the only Taiwanese office in a European state to use that title rather than “Taipei”.

Lithuanian pilgrims open Jubilee Year with Taiwan Camino

Taiwan wary of Vatican hopes for renewed China relations

The Maryland state Supreme Court voted 4-3 to uphold a 2023 law lifting the statute of limitations on charges of sexual abuse of a minor. This will allow dozens of lawsuits to be filed against both the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which covers most of the state, and the Archdiocese of Washington, which includes several Maryland counties. 

The statute of limitations for child sex abuse was amended in 2017, requiring victims to bring lawsuits before they turned 38 years old, which would have offered some protection to the Catholic Church because most cases of clergy abuse date from the 1960s and 1970s. But the court ruled the 2017 did not permanently shield certain defendants. 

Both archdioceses have faced financial difficulties. Last year, the Baltimore archdiocese, the nation’s oldest, announced it was reducing the number of parishes in Baltimore city and country from 61 to 23. A letter to Washington priests from Cardinal Wilton Gregory last year announced increases in the amount of money parishes would be taxed in order to defray expenses. The Maryland court ruling makes it likely both archdioceses could enter into bankruptcy proceedings.

The Pope announced he would publish a document on the rights of children. Speaking at the end of the Children’s Summit in the Vatican’s apostolic palace on 3 February, Francis said: “Children are watching us to see how we are going about living.” He said the one-day summit was a kind of a “open observatory” where speakers explored “the reality of childhood throughout the world, a childhood that is unfortunately often hurt, exploited denied”.  

Participants discussed children’s right to food, health care, education, a family, leisure and the right to live free from violence and exploitation. The 50 speakers, including the former US vice-president Al Gore, shared suggestions for protecting children’s rights. Gore praised the Pope for highlighting “the spiritual crisis we face” stemming partly from a “wilful blindness” about how “our economic system” was driving towards “the exploitation of both people and the planet at the expense of our moral values and the future of children”.

World Mission Day on 19 October will take the theme “Missionaries of Hope Among all Peoples”. In his message for the day, Pope Francis reminded the Church “of our fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope”. He thanked missionaries, saying “your lives are a clear response to the command of the risen Christ, who sent His disciples to evangelise all peoples”. And he urged Christian communities to be “harbingers of a new humanity” in the world.

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