San Justo, Argentina, May 9, 2018 / 12:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When Fr. Juan Carlos Cagliani goes on prison visits, he is not only seeking to bring Christ to the inmates, but to encounter Christ in them as well.
“I'm not going to bring Christ to the prison, I am going to meet Christ in the prison. I am not bringing Jesus, I am going to meet Jesus!” said of priest, who belongs to the Diocese of San Justo in Argentina.
Fr. Cagliani, who has spent 37 years working with prisoners, participated in the Prison Ministry Regional Meeting held in Neuquén, Argentina, April 28-30.
The theme of the regional meeting was “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9) In addition to ministers, government officials were present and spoke about recent changes to the Criminal Code.
Approximately 70 delegates from the Diocese of Patagonia listened to the presentation given by Fr. Cagliani, who said that “to embrace Christ behind bars is to discover the merciful gesture of knowing that we love each other as brothers.”
“You begin to discover the face of Christ in those faces, where you don't look at the crime but only go to find the love and mercy that come from God,” he said. “You find in those visits, in that human contact, in that closeness, in that presence, in that sharing, a God who loves you.”
The priest said that he experiences the love of God when he encounters each particular brother or sisters who is serving a sentence in prison.
“Often hated, cursed by so many brothers, including Christians, and they don't realize that Jesus is there in that place.”
Bishop Pedro Maria Laxague of Viedma, a member of the Bishops' Prison Ministry Commission, said that “God challenges us to take responsibility for our brothers.”
“He invites all of us to shepherd our brothers, the way he did,” the bishop said.
Bishop Laxague also noted that “prison ministry challenges us to be a Church closer to the people.”
He suggested that “the world of the prison” reveals underlying problems in society.
“Many things are going wrong in the neighborhoods, in the cities, in the towns,” he said, “and that is where all of us who are baptized live, where we carry out our service.”
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Members of the Sts’ailes First Nation at Holy Rosary Cathedral last year for the first Mass to integrate a First Nation language. A Cardus report presents the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking about their faith and distinguishing it from the traditional spirituality they’re often associated with. / Photo courtesy Nicholas Elbers, 2022
Vancouver, Canada, May 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
A groundbreaking report published by the Ottawa-based Cardus Institute has given voice to Indigenous Canadians who are frustrated by secular society’s unawareness of — or unwillingness to accept — the fact that almost half of them are Christian.
“I find that insulting to Indigenous people’s intelligence and freedom,” Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette said of the prejudice he regularly encounters.
Bouvette, who has mixed Cree-Métis and Italian heritage and now serves as vicar for vocations and Young Adults in the Diocese of Calgary, was one of 12 individuals interviewed by Cardus for the report “Indigenous Voices of Faith.”
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, left, leads a post-production discussion by Indigenous Voices of Faith participants. Photo courtesy of Cardus
Prejudice against Indigenous Christians has become so strong, even inside some Indigenous communities, “that Indigenous Christians in this country right now are living in the time of new martyrdom,” Bouvette said.
Although that martyrdom may not cost them their lives, “they are ostracized and humiliated sometimes within their own communities if they openly express their Christian or Catholic faith.”
Statistics Canada reported last year that the 2021 census found that 850,000, or 47%, of Canada’s 1.8-million Indigenous people identify as Christian and that more than a quarter of the total report they are Catholic. Only 73,000, or 4%, of Indigenous people said they adhere to traditional Indigenous spiritual beliefs.
In a new report, Cardus wants to “amplify the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking for themselves about their religious commitments, which sometimes clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Photo courtesy of Cardus
Ukrainian Catholic Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Faith Communities, conducted the interviews for the think tank last fall. He published his report in March at a time when Canadian mainstream media and many political leaders continued to stir division and prejudice through misleading commentary about abandoned cemeteries at Indian Residential Schools.
The purpose of the report, he writes, “is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of Indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”
Too often, however, “the public narrative implies, or boldly declares, that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous Canadians and Christianity or other faiths,” Bennett said. “[M]any Indigenous Canadians strongly disagree with those narratives.”
Father Bouvette is clearly one of those.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of [my Indigenous grandmother’s] time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to,” Bouvette said. “No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down.”
Bouvette said his “grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for 99 years and 11 months of her life. She was a Christian from the day of her birth, and she remained a Christian until the day of her death. And so that was not by the consequence of some imposition.”
Nevertheless, Canadians continue to labor under a prejudice holding the opposite view. “I do believe that probably the majority of Canadians at this time, out of some mistaken notion of guilt for whatever their cultural or ethnic background is, think they are somehow responsible for Indigenous people having had something thrust upon them that they didn’t want,” Bouvette said.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us,” Father Cristino Bouvette says in a Cardus report on Indigenous faith. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“But I would say, give us a little more credit than that and assume that if there is an Indigenous person who continues to persevere in the Christian faith it is because they want to, because they understand why they have chosen to in the first place, and they remain committed to it. We should be respectful of that.”
The executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, Christian Elia, agrees and says society should grant Indigenous Catholics the respect and personal agency that is due all Canadians.
“Firstly, I am not an Indigenous person, so I cannot speak for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but neither can non-Indigenous secularists who choose to ignore that Indigenous people in Canada continue to self-identify as Christian, the majority of these Catholic,” Elia said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
He said his organization has heard from many Indigenous Catholics who are “growing weary of the ongoing assumption that somehow they have been coerced into the faith, that it is inconceivable that they wish to be Catholic. This condescending attitude must stop.”
Deacon Rennie Nahanee, who serves at St. Paul’s Indian Church in North Vancouver, was another of the 12 whom Bennett interviewed. A cradle Catholic and member of the Squamish First Nation, Deacon Nahanee said there is nothing incompatible with being both an authentic Indigenous person and a Catholic.
“I’m pretty sure we had a belief in the Creator even before the missionaries came to British Columbia,” he said. “And our feelings, our thoughts about creation, the way that we lived and carried out our everyday lives, and the way that we helped to preserve the land and the animals that we used for food, our spirituality and our culture, were similar to the spirituality of the Catholic Church.”
“I believe that’s why our people accepted it. I don’t think anybody can separate themselves from God, even though they say so.”
Interviewed later by The B.C. Catholic, Nahanee said he is not bothered by the sort of prejudice outlined by Bouvette. “People are going to say or do what they want,” he said.
Voices of Indigenous Christianity
Bennett, program director of Cardus Faith Communities, interviewed 12 Indigenous Canadians, most of them Christian, about their religious commitments, “which often clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Here is a selection of some of their comments:
Tal James of the Penelakut First Nation in Nanaimo spoke about the relationship between Indigenous culture and his Christian faith:
Tal James and wife Christina. Photo courtesy of Project 620 – James Ministry
“I think … that our [Indigenous] cultures were complete, and in Jesus they’re more complete. I think that’s a big thing and a big step for a lot of us. You’re going to have a lot of non-Indigenous people look at you and question your actions based on your Aboriginal heritage. Don’t take that to heart. They’re the ignorant ones who don’t want you to flourish. Those of you who are Christians, First Nations Christians, you come to the table with the same gifting that non-Aboriginal people have. For them to say, ‘We want to make room for you at the table,’ correct them. You are already at the table, and encourage them to step back and allow your gifts to flourish. Because it’s one in the same spirit.”
Rose-Alma McDonald, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, which borders New York, Ontario, and Quebec, talked about re-embracing her Catholic faith:
Rose-Alma McDonald. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“I surprised everybody, including myself, in terms of embracing Catholicism after 20 years away. So I’ve had a few epiphanies in the sense that this is why my mother made me do so much in the church growing up. When I’m working, volunteering, and doing stuff in the church, I remember that. I keep remembering I’m Catholic and I’m still Catholic. I will stay Catholic because of the way I was raised.”
Jeff Decontie, a Mohawk from the Algonquin First Nations who lives in Ottawa, talked about being a person of faith in a secular world:
Jeff Decontie. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“Secular worldviews can sort of eat up everything around them and accept a whole wide range of beliefs at the same time. For example, you have the prevailing scientific thinking alongside New Age believers, and people in society just accept this, saying, ‘Oh, whatever it is you believe in, all religions lead to the same thing.’ No one questions it. How can these contradictions coexist? … Then we ask an [Indigenous] elder to lead prayer? Any other religion would be a no-no, but you can ask for an elder who’s going to pray a generic prayer to some generic Creator, and it’s not going to ruffle any feathers. I think that’s the danger of secular thought creeping into Canada: It goes unnoticed, it’s perceived as neutral, but at the same time it’s welcoming a whole wide range of beliefs. And it doesn’t just influence Indigenous thought. It’s influencing Christianity.”
Rosella Kinoshameg, a member of the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, spoke about being Indigenous and Catholic:
Rosella Kinoshameg. Photo courtesy of the Catholic Register
“Well, I can’t change being Indigenous. That’s something that is me. I can’t change that. But to believe in the things that I was taught, the traditional things, the way of life and the meanings of these things, and then in a church, well, those things help one another and they make me feel stronger.”
This article was originally published May 10, 2023, in The B.C. Catholic, a weekly publication serving the Catholic community in British Columbia, Canada, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
Bishop Rolando José Álvarez of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, was placed under house arrest by the police of Daniel Ortega’s regime in early August 2022. / Photo credit: Diocese of Matagalpa
Denver Newsroom, Aug 10, 2022 / 17:12 pm (CNA).
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference expressed its solidarity with the Church in Nicaragua, whose freedom of speech and religion is under attack by the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega.
“At this time of profound suffering, the bishops of Mexico wish to convey to you our fervent prayer, closeness, and support, imploring the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, the much-longed-for peace, justice, and harmonious coexistence of your people,” the conference said in an Aug. 8 statement.
The recent wave of repression against the Nicaraguan Church began Aug. 1, when the Ortega dictatorship ordered the closure of eight Catholic radio stations in the Diocese of Matagalpa.
Later, the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando José Álvarez, was placed under house arrest and threatened with prison for allegedly trying to “organize violent groups” to destabilize the government.
The cathedral in Managua was vandalized Aug. 6, cutting off electricity to it and other buildings on the grounds. From Aug. 1 through Aug. 4, riot police prevented Father Uriel Vallejos and a group of faithful from leaving the rectory of Jesus of the Divine Mercy parish in the town of Sébaco after the police forced their way into the parish to shut down the Catholic radio station that operated on the premises. Vallejos is the radio station’s director.
On Aug. 6, unidentified vandals stole the main switch to the cathedral’s electrical control system, leaving the cathedral and surrounding grounds without power.
“We express our solidarity with the bishops’ conference of Nicaragua for the deplorable events that they have been enduring and that have caused suffering and global outrage due to the suppression of individual guarantees, particularly their fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” the statement said.
The Mexican bishops also lamented “that in communities, families, consecrated life, priests, laity, children, and young people suffer from conditions that create fear, take away tranquility, and steal peace.”
“They even experience difficulty in worshiping, praying, and announcing the Gospel,” they added.
“As an ecclesial family, we join in raising awareness so that, in the face of these situations that cry out to God for social justice, there be added attitudes of dialogue and encounters that seek a healthy coexistence,” they continued.
At the end of their message, the bishops of Mexico implored “the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, Empress of America, her maternal intercession to find paths of dialogue that lead to respect and peace.”
Other Latin American bishops stand in solidarity
The Guatemalan Bishops’ Conference issued a statement Aug. 8 to express “its closeness, support, and solidarity,” especially to the priests deprived of their liberty and to Bishop Álvarez.
“Freedom of speech is part of the rights of man. Our love and support extends to all Nicaraguan Catholics to whom we recall the promise made by our Savior: ‘I will be with you all days until the end of the world,’” the message said.
The Bolivian Bishops’ Conference published a statement Aug. 5 assuring that it “is closely following … with deep pain the situation that the Church and the Nicaraguan people are suffering.”
“We want to express our most sincere solidarity and closeness in this difficult moment that you are going through. We ask you not to give up the effort to build a dialogue that is capable of achieving unity and peace in [the] land of Nicaragua. For this, you have our prayers for you, for the people you serve, and for the political authorities,” the conference stated.
The same day, the Costa Rican Bishops’ Conference lifted up “a prayer for peace to come and [that] paths of dialogue can be opened in search of the well-being of all the inhabitants of the sister country” of Nicaragua.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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