News Briefing: Church in the World

Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne said proposed changes to assisted suicide and euthanasia legislation in Victoria were “deeply distressing” and “marginalised” protection for the vulnerable. Victoria was the first Australian state to pass assisted suicide legislation in 2017. 

This came into effect in 2019 and was subject to a review last year, which the government said would not consider changes to the law itself, but Comensoli said it was now “proposing numerous changes to the law, including to force medical practitioners who conscientiously object to [voluntary assisted dying] to provide information about it to patients”. 

He said this would “send a chill down the spines of the many hard-working healthcare professionals who want no part in causing death, as well as many vulnerable patients who fear being pushed down a path that they do not wish to take”.

The Filipino Catholic Church joined celebrations on 25 February for the thirty-ninth anniversary of the bloodless People Power Revolution that ousted dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986. Priests and nuns joined thousands along Metro Manila’s main highway, EDSA, to commemorate the 1986 uprising.  

In the evening, around 600 people attended Mass at the 300-seater EDSA Shrine to celebrate the Feast of Mary, Queen of Peace, also known as Our Lady of EDSA. Leading Catholic schools also suspended classes on 25 February, defying the decision of the dictator’s son and namesake President Ferdinand Marcos Jr not to declare a holiday. 

“Even if the state does not commemorate it, the Church will continue to do so,” said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Filipino Church celebrates 39 years since ‘People Power’ revolution

Churches lead protests against Philippines government at historic shrine

Civic and church leaders in the Philippines paid tribute to its Muslim minority as the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan began on 2 March. 

In a statement, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr described Ramadan as “a period for personal reflection, spiritual growth, and renewed commitment to faith”. He said the fasting month, by emphasising discipline and gratitude, “serves as a powerful and profound catalyst for social transformation”. Vice President Sara Duterte, who is embroiled in a feud with Marcos, urged Muslims “to help us pray for peace and forgiveness as we navigate every adversity we face in our personal lives and as a nation”. 

The Roman Catholic Prelature of Saint Mary in Marawi, an Islamic city in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, expressed “our solidarity and fraternal greetings to our Muslim brothers and sisters”. “May this holy month of Ramadan make you closer to your family and your prayers be heard,” its statement told Filipino Muslims. Ateneo de Zamboanga University, a leading Jesuit school in Mindanao, said it “stands with solidarity” with Muslims during Ramadan “in the spirit of unity, respect, and our shared commitment to dialogue and understanding”.  

The Philippines has a Muslim population of around 6.98 million, or 6.4 per cent of the population, most of whom live in Mindanao. Islam, which reached the Philippines in the fourteenth century, dominated many parts of the country until Spanish colonisers arrived in the sixteenth century and established Catholicism as the official religion.

A nineteenth-century doctor from Venezuela will be declared the country’s first saint. The Vatican has approved the canonisation of Bl José Gregorio Hernández, who was born in 1864 in an Andean village.  

After qualifying as a doctor in the Venezuelan capital Caracas, he turned down a job there to return to his village because it had no doctor. His mentors persuaded him later to study internal medicine and bacteriology in Paris on a government scholarship. Returning to Venezuela, he became one of the first doctors to work with microscopes and founded the country’s first bacteriology laboratory.  

Famed for treating the poor for free, he would display a bag of money during medical consultations. If the patient could afford to pay, they would put money in the bag – and if they could not, they could take some money instead. A daily Mass-goer, Hernández attempted to join two monasteries in Italy but was forced by sickness to return to South America. He died in 1919 after being hit by a car while collecting medicine from a chemist.  

The miracle that prompted his beatification involved the healing of a 10-year-old girl shot in the head in 2017 during an attempted robbery.

Vice President J.D. Vance said he was surprised by the reaction of the United States’ bishops and of Pope Francis to the administration’s immigration policies. He told the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast: “While yes, I was certainly surprised when [Francis] criticised our immigration policy and in the way that he has, I also know that the Pope, I believe that the Pope, is fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians under his leadership.” 

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, previously suggested the bishops’ opposition was motivated by financial interests in government contracts with the bishops’ conference to help settle refugees. “My goal is not to litigate when I’m right and when [the bishops are] wrong or vice versa,” Vance said. “My goal is to maybe articulate the way that I think about being a Christian in public life when you also have religious leaders in public life who have a spiritual duty to speak on the issues of the day.”  

Vance’s remarks were greeted warmly by the mostly conservative crowd but a group of protesters outside held a sign reading “Catholics Stand With Pope Francis. All Human Beings Have Dignity … Including Immigrants.”

The Jesuit Refugee Service in the US warned that the pause to foreign aid by the Trump administration could harm efforts to combat Christian persecution.

Kelly Ryan, president of JRS/USA, reported last week that the halt has impacted nine of the countries in which the charity operates, leading to some redundancies “to comply with the stop-work order”. She said that while JRS/USA serves people without regard for race, religion, or ethnicity, some programmes impacted are designed to combat anti-Christian persecution. 

Five of nine cooperative agreements with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration have been terminated, including programmes in Thailand, Iraq, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda. “We’re scrambling and trying to be judicious in being able to send resources now to keep lifesaving activities going,” Ryan said, citing particular concern about the organisation’s work with refugees in South Africa, and Yazidis and Christians in Iraq.

Church agencies warn ‘ruthless’ cuts to US foreign aid threaten lives

The assault on solidarity

The US Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man who has been on death row for 25 years, concluding he did not receive a fair trial and ordering a new trial. The decision was a reversal of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence which has tended to uphold lower court rulings.  

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision. Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurred in part and dissented in part, arguing the case should be decided in state courts. Another conservative jurist, Justice Neil Gorsuch, recused himself from the case which had come before him when he served on a lower court. 

Advocates for abolishing the death penalty welcomed the decision. “His case shows how arbitrarily death sentences are handed down, with the undisputed killer, Mr Glossip’s co-defendant, receiving a life sentence compared to Mr Glossip’s sentence of death,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilising Network.

The Catholic Climate Covenant and Laudato Si’ Movement criticised the reversal of US domestic and international climate policies by the Trump administration.

In a joint statement titled “Protecting Our Common Home: A Catholic Appeal to the Trump Administration”, they said: “Rather than embrace and advance this country’s essential role in domestic and global responsibilities to confront this existential crisis, this new administration has chosen to relinquish scientific and economic potential, freeze US commitments, and abdicate leadership on climate policies.”  

Criticisms include withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, cutting global adaptation funding, “gutting” environmental organisations and agencies, and halting development of renewable energy. They said the reversal of environmental commitments “not only calls into question the administration’s claims of caring for our country and its economic well-being, they threaten the rights to life and dignity of all people, which are key to Catholic Social Teaching.”

South Africa’s Laudato Si’ Movement urged the government to recognise the rights of miners as part of demands for social justice and human dignity in the country. The call followed a crisis which left hundreds of illegal artisanal miners trapped underground for months with the government refusing to launch any rescue efforts. The government eventually relented to pressure and rescued the miners – after some had already died. 

The Laudato Si’ Movement’s lay leaders met last week in Cape Town where they said the death of miners was “a grim reminder of the hidden suffering endured by those forced into dangerous underground work”. In a statement on 27 February they said: “Mining in South Africa has long been a double-edged sword – providing economic opportunity while inflicting immense suffering.  It continued: “The lay leaders are united in the South Africa chapter of [the] Laudato Si’ Movement, which inspires and mobilises Catholics for ecological justice.”

Regulate mining to top exploitation, bishop urges South African government

Once a miner

The coordinator of the Justice and Peace Commission of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon cautioned Catholic communicators against the spread of fake news and misinformation ahead of a presidential election in October this year.

Sylvanus Shulika Binla was speaking on 25 February during the eighth session of Cameroon’s National Council of Catholic Communicators. In his presentation on “Process and Challenges of the Electoral Year in Cameroon: Promoting Human Freedoms and a Climate of Peace Before and After Elections”, he said fake news and disinformation especially during elections have the capacity to disrupt public peace. 

“Online disinformation campaigns, whether national or foreign, could distort public opinion and jeopardize the peaceful conduct of elections,” he warned. He emphasised the importance of reportage giving citizens access to reliable and diverse sources of information. 

“Independence and impartiality are essential to ensure balanced and transparent information on candidates and electoral issues,” Binla said, and urged the Catholic communicators to carry out voter education, mobilisation and advocacy. After 43 years in power, Cameroon’s 92-year-old President Paul Biya is expected to seek an eighth term of office.

Nigeria’s wave of clergy kidnappings continued with the abduction of Fr Matthew David Dutsemi and Fr Abraham Saummam on 22 February. The Bishop of Yola Stephen Dami Mamza confirmed the abductions in a statement the next day, calling on the faithful to unite in prayers for the safe return of the priests.  

“It is with a heavy heart and deep concern that I must bring to your attention the distressing news of the unprovoked kidnapping of Fr Matthew David Dutsemi of the Catholic Diocese of Yola and Fr Abraham Saummam of the Catholic Diocese of Jalingo,” he said.According to Bishop Mamza, armed assailants stormed the rectory in Gweda-Mallam, Demsa Local Government Area of Adamawa State, in north-eastern Nigeria, where the two priests were staying, and took them away.

Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, the Archbishop of Juba in South Sudan and president of the Episcopal Conference of Sudan and South Sudan, said that as leaders in both countries “navigate the financial challenges facing our church, advocating for the exemption of the Catholic Church from taxation is essential”. 

Addressing the conference’s meeting on 18 February, he said an exemption would “enable us to allocate more resources towards our pastoral activities and community services”. He said the Church “must remain a vibrant presence in our communities”, acting as “not only a spiritual beacon but also a crucial player in the social and economic landscape of our communities”.

Catholic bishops in Kenya urged the government to pay its debts to faith-based health institutions, warning that the delay in payments made it difficult for the institutions to offer services to poor citizens. The bishops demanded the payment of the KES 2.5 billion (£15 million) debt, accumulated through the recently-replaced National Health Insurance Fund.   

“As Catholic bishops, we are still very unhappy that our hospitals which serve mainly the underprivileged, are grounding because the government is not keeping its promises to remit funds owed to them,” said Archbishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba of Kisumu, the chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

The bishops issued the statement as Makumba led the launch of their Lenten campaign in the coastal city of Mombasa on 28 February. He said the hospitals had received promises after the bishops’ previous appeal in November, but the government payment covered only part of debt. 

“We could have served more patients had we received the dues since 2020 … We need commitment from the government on when this amount will be paid and not mere promises,” he said. Religious groups run nearly 60 per cent of health services in Kenya.

Bishops call on government to pay debts to Kenya’s Church-run hospitals

Kenyan bishops clash with government over corruption charges

The Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) met the African Union Chaplaincy to discuss responses to historical injustices affecting the African continent. 

The meeting on 27-28 February in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa came amid increasing calls by African countries for former colonial powers to return looted artefacts and pay reparations. “For centuries, Africans and people of African descent have endured the consequences of historical injustices, including economic disenfranchisement, social marginalization, and psychological trauma,” the bishops said in a statement ahead of the meeting. 

The meeting was called to build “efforts by amplifying the voices of faith-based and ethical organisations in the pursuit of justice” and to begin a larger discussion, with the collaboration with the African Union as part of efforts to advance “justice and restitution for Africans and people of African descent”.

More than 100 Christian leaders issued a call for G20 finance ministers to work for an end to a debt crisis they said was crippling efforts to tackle poverty and the climate crisis. In a letter to finance ministers meeting in Johannesburg last week, they argued that the “Common Framework” set up by the G20 in 2020 “is failing to produce the timely and adequate deals upon which millions of lives and livelihoods depend”. 

The letter – signed by cardinals, bishops and leaders of religious congregations, as well as ecumenical partners – urged G20 finance ministers to establish a “fair and functional global debt system” in the Jubilee year. Signatories included the Archbishop of Johannesburg Cardinal Stephen Brislin, the Archbishop of Tokyo Cardinal Isao Kikuchi, who is president of Caritas Internationalis, and Sr Teresa Hougnon, president of the Maryknoll Sisters.

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, expressed the Holy See’s “deep concern” over “the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons and their proliferation” at the United Nations’ 2025 Session of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on 26 February.  

“Immense military expenditures, that often go far beyond what is necessary to ensure legitimate defence, foment the vicious circle of an exhausting arms race that diverts vital resources away from poverty eradication, justice, education, and healthcare,” he said. “Together, as a family of nations,” he added, “we can take just and courageous actions for a general, balanced, and complete disarmament under effective international control.” 

Archbishop Gallagher recalled Pope Francis’ recent appeal “to use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a Global Fund to eradicate hunger and facilitate in the poorer countries educational activities aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change”. 

He reminded participants that Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems, capable of identifying and striking targets without direct human intervention and control, “are a cause for grave ethical concern because they lack the unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making”.

The inauguration of the Church of Abraham of the Chaldeans in Ur, four years after Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq, is “a Christian ‘sign’ in a place with a huge Muslim majority”, said the Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako. 

He hoped that it would become “a meeting place for all religions”, since it is dedicated to Abraham, the “common father” of Christianity and Islam. “It will help others understand Christians and respect their faith, looking at the points of union and accepting the elements of diversity, to live in peace and stability,” he said.

Cardinal Sako also wished to encourage Iraqi Christians, whose numbers have dwindled in the past 30 years from around 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand. The opening was scheduled for this week’s anniversary of the Pope’s visit but will now be held after Lent and Ramadan.

A sign of hope: Ramadan and Lent

The need to hear and understand these communities of Iraq

A report on the humanitarian crisis in Syria from the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs Youlian Jacques Mourad showed the threat to the “historical continuity” of the Christian presence in the region. He presented the report to the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (Comece), whose president Bishop Mariano Crociata said: “The erosion of Christian communities would be a tragic loss not only for Syria but also for the stability of the region and the world.”  

Comece urged the EU and the international community to recognise the vulnerability of Syria’s Christian communities. During his recent visit to Lebanon Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, met Syrian refugee families at the Kfardlakos refugee camp. In Beirut, he met migrants accompanied by Jesuit Refugee Service.  He told the refugees, “we weep for your suffering.”

Pope Francis offered a prayer for peace in the “tormented” Holy Land on Sunday. A Catholic chaplain for youth in West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, told Aid to the Church in Need that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which came into effect six weeks ago “has made the situation worse”. Fr Louis Salman reported that the Israel Defence Forces “have closed even more roads, made travelling even more difficult, and because of the prisoner exchange they have tightened security”. 

Sami El-Yousef, chief executive at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, reported that “we have seen more annexation of land in the West Bank, as well as the eviction of around 16,000 people from refugee camps in Jenin, with the physical infrastructure being razed so they have nowhere to return to”. He described the West Bank as “now completely fragmented with 185 gates and over 900 checkpoints”. He added: “I don’t know how we are still standing; the tide is very much against us.”

A Spanish Poor Clare abbess criticised a rule established by Pope Francis that communities of female Religious with fewer than five nuns should be dissolved. Sr María Victoria Triviño OSC, abbess of the Monastery of Santo Cristo de Balaguer in Lérida province, observed that the Cor Orans instruction, published in 2018 to implement the Apostolic Constitution Vultum Dei Quaerere, “affects women’s monasteries around the world, not men’s”.  

In an article for the magazine Catalunya Cristiana, she referred to the recent closure of the 700-year-old Monastery of María de Pedralbes in Barcelona saying Poor Clares were dealing every day with “hurt, perplexed” queries from people about the closure.  

She observed that a female monastery’s closure implied loss on several levels including the loss of production of liturgical items, of intercessory influence on the surrounding area and of a presence bearing witness in a secular environment to the fact that “God exists and makes us happy”. A further loss would be the monastery’s cultural, musical, and artistic legacy. 

“After all this, there will always be regret for de-sacralising a sacred place,” she said, lamenting the loss of monasteries including St Clara of Salamanca, founded by St Clare of Assisi in 1238.

Sequela Christi

Excommunicated Spanish nuns plan to open ‘cloistered’ restaurant

The Archdiocese of Burgos in northern Spain has launched an “escape room” video game to introduce players to the spiritual and historical treasures of Burgos Cathedral. 

“El Secreto de la Catedral” is set in a virtual replica of the gothic-renaissance-baroque cathedral where the Spanish medieval hero El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) is buried. Set in 1813, after Napoleonic troops invaded Burgos, the game invites players to help police locate a secret document the French emperor supposedly intended to hide in the building.  

Players must answer a series of questions about the cathedral correctly, and find objects and cards concealed in the building. Then, after finding the document, they must crack a secret door code to escape before the Papamoscas, an automated figure of a man who opens his mouth and strikes a clapper with his arm to mark the hour, strikes 12 times. Each player has an hour and a half to complete the game.

The cathedral chapter is offering free guided visits to each of the first five participants to complete the game. Building work on Burgos Cathedral began in 1221 and was largely complete by 1567, although it continued to be modified until 1795.

The original image of Our Lady of Fátima will travel from Portugal to Rome at Pope Francis’ request for the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality in October, as part of the official programme for the Jubilee of Hope. 

There are several copies of the image, called “pilgrim images”, which are often sent to other countries for special occasions, but the original very rarely leaves the shrine of Fatima where it can be found in the Chapel of the Apparitions. In the 105 years since it was made, the image has only left Fátima on 13 occasions, mostly to other locations within Portugal and twice to Spain. It has also been sent to Rome three times, always at the personal request of the Pope.

In a statement published by the Dicastery for Evangelisation, its pro-prefect Archbishop Rino Fisichella said that “the presence of the beloved original image of Our Lady of Fátima will allow us all to have an experience of closeness to the Virgin Mary”, and describing it as “one of the most significant Marian icons for Christians in the world”.

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