Rome, Italy, Jun 26, 2018 / 06:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Though Humanae vitae has faced frequent dissent in the 50 years since it was published, that dissent does not detract from its truth, a law professor said at a recent conference on the encyclical.
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Vatican City, Jun 26, 2018 / 05:27 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Tuesday that Pope Francis has accepted the retirement of Cardinal Domenico Calcagno as head of the body managing the Vatican’s assets and real estate holdings, appointing Italian Bishop Nunzio Galantino to take his place.
Calcagno, who turned 75 in February, was appointed APSA’s secretary by Benedict XVI in 2007, and was later named its president by Pope Francis in 2011.
For a year before that appointment, the cardinal was also part of a commission tasked with the supervision of the Institute of Religious Works (IOR), known as the “Vatican Bank.” Though he was appointed for a five-year term, he was removed by Francis before that term was up.
Calcagno, who at one point was investigated for embezzlement in his previous diocese of Savona, stepped down after reaching the typical age of retirement for bishops, who are required to submit their resignations after their 75th birthday.
APSA is the office that handles the Vatican’s investment portfolio and its real estate holdings, as well as serving as the Vatican employment office and procurements agency.
The man taking Calcagno’s place is Bishop Nunzio Galantino, 69, who since December 2013 has served as secretary general of the Italian Bishops Conference, known by its Italian acronym as the “CEI.” Before that appointment, he led the small Italian diocese of Cassano all’Jonio.
Galantino is not generally seen by Italians as belonging to any specific camp in the Church. However, since stepping into his role at the CEI, he has been vocal on hot topics, such as migration and family issues, though he has at times been criticized for being too outspoken.
Vatican City, Jun 26, 2018 / 12:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A healthy human ecology begins with a respectful and holistic view of the body as God created it, Pope Francis told participants of the 24th General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
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Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jun 25, 2018 / 07:15 pm (ACI Prensa).- The Priest Emergency Service of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Argentina is inviting priests and lay people to join their volunteer team, which offers nighttime pastoral service for the … […]
“When he was conceived and born these saving acts were still in the future,” says the noted theologian and author of a new study of […]
Jos, Nigeria, Jun 25, 2018 / 06:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 80 people were killed over the weekend in clashes between farmers and herders in Nigeria’s central Plateau State.
This series of clashes is the latest in a several-years’ conflict between nomadic Fulani herdsmen, most of whom are Muslim, and the largely Christian farmers of the region, over resources.
This weekend’s violence was reportedly begun by an attack of Berom farmers on Fulani herders June 21, AFP reports. The farmers attacked a group of five herdsmen travelling with their cattle in the Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, fewer than 30 miles south of Jos.
The following day two Berom children were killed in area villages in apparent reprisal attacks.
There were then clashes in Berom villages Saturday and Sunday. Plateau State officials have said 86 bodies had been found a search of the villages after the violence. 50 houses were burned, and well as vehicles.
Berom youths erected roadblocks on Sunday, attacking travellers who looked “Fulani and Muslim”, the AFP reported.
The state government has imposed a 6pm – 6am curfew in the Barkin Ladi, Riyom, and Jos South local government areas to “avert a breakdown of law and order”.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari called the attacks “painful and regrettable,” and offered his “deepest condolences to the affected communities.”
“We will not rest until all murderers and criminal elements and their sponsors are incapacitated and brought to justice,” Buhari said on Twitter.
US Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa, stated June 25 that “The increasing cycle of violence and impunity we have observed in Nigeria over the past few months warrants a firm response from Nigeria’s civil leaders, beginning with President Buhari. I implore Nigeria’s moral voices, especially the Sultan of Sokoto, to speak out against the Fulani extremists’ growing disregard for the life and property of Nigerian Christians.”
There was a separate incident between Fulani herdsmen and Bachama farmers in Adamawa state June 22. Farmers prevented the herders from grazing in a field outside their village, and in the ensuing violence both Fulani settlement and Bachama houses were burnt down. Six people were killed, and seven injured.
The recent violence comes in the wake of other deadly attacks involving Fulani herders, including an incident in April when herdsmen opened fire at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Benue State, leaving 19 dead.
The International Crisis Group found the conflict tallied around 2,500 deaths from 2011-2016, according to reports from NPR.
The clash between farmers and Fulani herdsmen has been ongoing for years, particularly hitting the states in the Middle Belt, such as Benue, Taraba and Plateau. In 2016, dozens were massacred in southeast Nigeria by armed militants believed to be Fulani herdsmen who were targeting Christians.
The conflict has escalated over the years, as climate issues have pushed herders into the southern region Nigeria, where their cattle have overtaken some farmed fields.
In May, Nigeria’s Catholic bishops encouraged dioceses around the nation to unite in prayer and peaceful processions to honor the victims who have died at the hands of the herdsmen and for the end of violence.
Critical of the response of Buhari, who is himself Fulani and Muslim, the Catholic bishops in Nigeria have also called for his resignation, saying he “has failed in his primary duty of protecting the lives of Nigerian citizens.” However, it is expected that Buhari will run for re-election in February.
A group of bishops met with Buhari in February, urging him to step in and address the mounting conflict.
“Herdsmen may be under pressure to save their livestock and economy, but this is never to be done at the expense of other people’s lives and means of livelihood,” the bishops told Buhari at their meeting.
“As the voice of the voiceless, we shall therefore continue to highlight the plight of our people.”
Erbil, Iraq, Jun 25, 2018 / 05:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Sister Ban Madleen, a Dominican sister from Iraq who had to flee ISIS, has once again been denied entry to the United Kingdom.
Madleen was attempting to visit her sick sister, who lives in the cou… […]
Fr. C. Frank Phillips has been accused of misconduct involving adult men. He was removed as pastor of St. John Cantius March 16 by Cardinal Blase […]
Dublin, Ireland, Jun 25, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Former Irish President Mary McAleese has said that the baptism of infants is a form of coercion, calling on the Catholic Church to change its practice.
“You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 ‘here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to’ because the truth is they didn’t,” she said in a June 23 interview with The Irish Times.
Baptizing babies, she said, makes “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience.”
McAleese, Ireland’s president from 1997-2011, is a student at Rome’s Gregorian University, pursuing a doctorate in canon law. Her doctoral dissertation criticizes Catholic practices regarding infant baptism, The Irish Times reported.
“If your parents are Catholic and you are baptised in a Catholic Church, that baby becomes a member for life – according to the teaching of the church – of the church and it has rights and obligations,” she said.
McAleese said that in previous centuries, Catholics “didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away.”
“But you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking,”
“What the church has failed to do is to recognise that there has to be a point at which our young people, as adults who have been baptised into the church and raised in the faith, have the chance to say ‘I validate this’ or ‘I repudiate this,’” she added.
In the same interview, she said that the Church must respect the right of Catholics to dissent from Church teaching.
“Let’s be frank about it, very little of the magisterium – there are elements of it that are obviously infallible, things like the teaching on Christ and his divinity – but there are other things that over many, many centuries were taught with great passion that quietly now have been abandoned by the very magisterium that taught them.”
McAleese, who has previously advocated publicly for ending abortion restrictions in Ireland, same-sex marriage, and women’s ordination to the priesthood, drew headlines earlier this year when she spoke March 8 at a women’s conference in Rome held outside the Vatican.
The annual conference, “Voices of Faith,” had previously been held in the Vatican City State. In 2018, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, objected to some speakers, including McAleese, and would not approve use of the Vatican’s space for the conference. Organizers moved the event to the headquarters of the Society of Jesus.
“We are here to shout, to bring down our Church’s walls of misogyny,” McAleese said at that conference.
Referring to the Church hierarchy, she added that “I hope that all the hearing aids are turned up today!”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls on parents to baptize their children as soon as is possible after they are born.
“Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called,” the Catechism says.
“The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism.”
Philadelphia, Pa., Jun 25, 2018 / 03:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In his latest column, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia called out the Trump administration and Congress for putting families in jeopardy while further frustrating immigration reform…. […]
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