After contentious Catalan secession vote, bishops plead for peace

October 2, 2017 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Barcelona, Spain, Oct 2, 2017 / 03:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic leaders voiced pleas for peace after a Catalonian regional referendum vote on secession from Spain drew a strong police reaction.

“The situation of violence we have experienced today in Catalonia is deplorable,” Cardinal Juan Omella of Barcelona said Oct. 2. “We need to find a peaceful and democratic solution to our situation. Let us entrust this situation to the God of peace.”

Archbishop Jaume Pujol of Tarragona, who is president of the Tarragona bishops’ conference, also deplored the situation. “We must stop the violence and confrontations,” he said.

Spain’s Constitutional Court has ruled the referendum illegal. The European Commission’s chief spokesman said the vote was not legal, but said the rival sides should talk and avoid violence, the Washington Post reports.

About 2 million citizens in the region voted for independence Sunday, while about 177,000 voted against it. Turnout was about 42 percent of registered voters.

The facts of the situation are disputed. Catalan officials said 319 of about 2,300 polling places were closed by police, while Spanish officials said the figure was 92.

Police entered polling places seeking to shut them down, only for backers of the vote to conceal the ballot boxes and ballots. Clashes between police and voters were recorded on video, showing some police beating citizens with rubber truncheons and dragging them by their hair.

About 900 people suffered minor injuries in brawls with police, with two injured seriously. Madrid officials said 39 police officers were treated for injuries, with another 392 suffering scrapes and bruises.

Carles Puigdemont, the regional president, announced success on Sunday night after only a few thousand votes had been counted. He said that he would present the results to the Catalan parliament. The parliament had previously said it would seek independence if the vote favored it.

Shortly before polling places opened, the Catalan regional government had said that any registered voter could cast their vote at any location rather than their assigned polling places. However, the process involved several irregularities, such as problems registering voters and problems checking voter identification.

Spain’s interior minister has said the 5,000 extra police officers would remain in Catalonia as long as possible. Spanish authorities said the police response was professional and proportionate, according to the Associated Press.

Puigdemont said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy should accept international mediation, characterizing the secession effort as an issue relevant to all of Europe.

Catalonia has considerably more autonomy than other regions of Spain, but the central government in Madrid has control over taxation, financial policy and infrastructure projects.

 

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Public holiday marking St Brigid’s feast established in Ireland

February 1, 2022 Catholic News Agency 2
St. Brigid of Kildare building the Church of the Oak, detail from a window of St Etheldreda’s church in London. / Lawrence OP via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Dublin, Ireland, Feb 1, 2022 / 03:00 am (CNA).

The feast of St. Brigid of Kildare, Ireland’s female patron saint, will be a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland beginning in 2023, it was recently announced.

Her feast is Feb. 1, and the bank holiday will be observed on the first Monday in February, or on Feb. 1 when that day falls on a Friday.

The public holiday was welcomed by the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Kildare.

“It is very appropriate that a new public holiday will honour Saint Brigid. As the secondary saint in Ireland to Patrick, for too long she has been lost in his shadow. We warmly welcome the news that Brigid is being rightly, and long after time, acknowledged,” Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin, and Pat Storey, the Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Meath & Kildare, said Jan. 27.

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Tánaiste, said Jan. 20 that “From next year, Ireland will have an extra public holiday at the start of February to mark Imbolc/St Brigid’s day … This will be the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. It marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the equinox, the beginning of spring and the Celtic New Year. The creation of a tenth public holiday will bring Ireland more into line with the European average and it is one of five new workers’ rights that I am establishing this year.”

The fifth century abbess St. Brigid is one of Ireland’s three patron saints, along with St. Patrick and St. Columba. Most historians place her birth around the year 450, near the end of St. Patrick’s evangelistic mission.

Brigid was born out of wedlock to a pagan cheiftain named Dubthach and a Christian slave woman named Broicsech. The chieftain sold the child’s pregnant mother to a new master, but contracted for Brigid to be returned to him eventually. According to one of the more credible biographies of Brigid, Hugh de Blacam’s essay in “The Saints of Ireland,” the child was probably baptized as an infant and raised as a Catholic by her mother. Thus, she was well formed in the faith before leaving Broicsech’s slave quarters, at around age 10, to live with Dubthach and his wife.

After this, Brigid’s faith grew immensely. She gave generously to the poor and tended to the sick. One story says Brigid once gave away her mother’s entire store of butter, which was later replenished after Brigid prayed.

Once she was released from servitude, she was expected to marry. However, Brigid had no interest in marrying. She went so far as to disfigure her own face and prayed that her beauty be taken from her so no one would want to marry her. Because she refused to change her mind about marriage, she received permission to enter religious life.

Brigid, along with seven friends, is credited with organizing communal consecrated religious life for women in Ireland.

In 480, Brigid founded her monastery in Kildare, called “Church of the Oak”. The monastery sat on top of a shrine to the Celtic goddess Brigid. Throughout the rest of her life, she established several monasteries across Ireland.

Brigid rooted her life as a nun in prayer, but she also performed substantial manual labor: cloth making, dairy farming, and raising sheep. She also spent time traveling across Ireland founding new houses and building up a uniquely Irish form of monasticism. When she was not traveling, pilgrims made their way to Kildare, seeking the advice of the abbess.

Brigid died around 525.

Bishop Nulty and Pat Storey noted in their statement that “Every school child knows the song of Brigid and how her cloak covered the area we know today as the Curragh, Saint Brigid’s Field. Brigid is linked with the earth, with agriculture, particularly ploughing, sowing, milking, butter-making and, of course, vibrant Christian faith. Brigid was extravagant in her hospitality.”

[…]

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*