CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 03:47 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is urging Catholics to fast every Friday for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.
“In addition to adoration, we have to reclaim an authentic and serious s… […]
CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 03:13 pm (CNA).- A U.S. citizen on trial for blasphemy in Pakistan was killed at a court hearing Wednesday, drawing strong objections to the country’s blasphemy laws from the U.S. State Department.
Tahir Ahmad Naseem was charged with claiming to be a prophet. He was being escorted by police in a courtroom in Peshawar, more than 100 miles west of Islamabad, when he was attacked and killed July 29.
Video shared on social media showed his body slumped over the seats in court, BBC News reports.
His attacker was arrested at the scene, and video shows him handcuffed and accusing Naseem of being “an enemy of Islam.”
Police are unsure how the attacker, named only as Khalid, acquired a gun in the courtroom. A police spokesman said he may have pulled the gun from a policeman’s holster, Agence France Prese reports.
The U.S. State Department said it was “shocked, saddened and outraged” by the killing.
“The U.S. government has been providing consular assistance to Mr. Naseem and his family since his detention in 2018 and has called the attention of senior Pakistani officials to his case to prevent the type of shameful tragedy that eventually occurred,” said State Department spokesman Cale Brown.
The State Department said he had been lured to Pakistan from Illinois.
Naseem was born into the Ahmadi sect, a marginalized group which faces persecution in Pakistan. However, an Ahmadi community spokesman said Naseem had left the sect and now describes himself as a prophet. The man in his YouTube videos claimed to be a messiah. The spokesman suggested he had been mentally ill, Agence France Presse reports.
In 2018 a Peshawar teenager named Awais Malik accused Naseem of blasphemy. Naseem, while living in the U.S., had begun speaking with him online.
Malik told BBC News he met Naseem in a shopping mall in Peshawar to discuss religion, and he then filed a case with police. Malik said he was not present at court and had no knowledge of the shooting.
The country’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.
The State Department urged Pakistan “to immediately reform its often abused blasphemy laws and its court system, which allow such abuses to occur.” It urged prosecution of the suspect in Naseem’s killing to the full extent of the law.
The Centre for Research and Security Studies reported that at least 65 people have been killed by anti-blasphemy vigilantes since 1990. According to the U.S. Commission on Interreligious Freedom, up to 80 people are imprisoned on blasphemy charges in Pakistan, and half of them face life in prison or the death penalty.
In 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the blasphemy conviction of Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who was accused in 2009. Her initial conviction had also been upheld by the Lahore High Court.
The Ahmadi religious group self-identifies as Muslim, but many Muslims do not identify them as Muslim. The movement was founded in 1889 in British-ruled India. They consider their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad a “subordinate prophet.” Other Muslims see this as a violation of the tenet that Muhammad was the last prophet.
There are about 500,000 Ahmadis in Pakistan and up to 20 million adherents worldwide. Some observers estimate the Ahmadi population in Pakistan is higher, but persecution encourages Ahmadis to hide their identity.
Both government authorities and mobs have targeted their places of worship. In October 2019, police in Punjab partially demolished a 70-year-old Ahmadiyya mosque, according to the 2020 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In May Pakistan’s government declined to include the Ahmadi religious group in its National Commission for Minorities.
In January 2020, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia wrote to Pakistan’s prime minister on behalf of Philadelphia’s Pakistani Catholic community, encouraging him to shape a culture of religious freedom in the country.
Since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has invented thousands, or perhaps even millions of labor-saving devices. We travel faster than ever before imagined over land, sea, and air. Most of the world, even in the most […]
CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- The Chinese Communist Party is offering monetary rewards to those who report the presence of home churches in their communities, the magazine Bitter Winter reported on Thursday.
The rewards appear to be … […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:28 pm (CNA).- A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a “hero” to the Hawaiian people, after a prominent congresswoman claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and “patriarchy and white supremacist culture.”
St. Damien “gave his life” serving the isolated leper colony at Kalaupapa peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, said Dallas Carter, a native Hawaiian and a catechist for the diocese of Honolulu, in an interview with CNA.
“Any Hawaiian here who is aware of their history–which most Hawaiians are–would absolutely, Catholic or not, defend the legacy of Damien as a man who was embraced by the people, and who is a hero to us because of his love for the Hawaiian people,” Carter said.
“We did not judge him by the color of his skin. We judged him by the love that he had for our people,” Carter told CNA.
In an Instagram story on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) asked why there were not more statues honoring women historical figures, at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection. The collection includes statues honoring historical figures from all 50 states.
“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told – and virtually no one else,” Ocasio-Cortez posted, with a picture of Fr. Damien’s U.S. Capitol statue in the background.
In 1969, Hawaii chose to honor St. Damien alongside Kamehameha I in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US capitol.
Ocasio-Cortez noted on Thursday that Hawaii’s statue was of Fr. Damien and not of “Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii,” implying that it was an example of “colonizers” being honored instead of historical figures who are native to states.
“This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue,” she said, arguing that “patterns” among the “totality” of the statues in the Capitol reveal they honor “virtually all men, all white, and mostly both.”
“This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like!” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office told CNA that “it’s the patterns that have emerged among all of the statues in the Capitol: virtually all white men. Each individual could be worthy, moral people. But the deliberate erasure of women and people of color from our history is a result of the influence of patriarchy and white supremacy.”
St. Damien of Molokai was a religious priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who spent the last 16 years of his life caring for lepers in the Hawaiian Kingdom.
He was born Jozef De Veuster in Belgium in 1840, and he entered the Picpus Fathers in 1859, taking the name Damien. He was sent to the mission in Hawaii in 1864, and was ordained a priest that May.
Shortly after that, the Hawaiian government and King Kamehameha V passed a law mandating that lepers quarantine themselves in an isolated colony on the island of Molokai. The local bishop asked for volunteers to minister to the leper colony, and Fr. Damien presented himself, beginning his work there in 1873.
Carter noted that the Hawaiian government of the time “did not know how to deal with leprosy,” and that “no one wanted to deal with Kalaupapa [colony].”
Damien himself was afraid to go and minister to the lepers, Carter said, but “over a period of time—his journal is very clear, and the writings of the Hawaiian people in that town are very clear—that he fell in love with the people.”
Eventually, Damien was given an ultimatum by his religious superior to either leave the colony or remain there permanently. He chose to stay.
The priest served the colony for the rest of his life, attending to both spiritual and temporal needs of the lepers. By 1884 he had contracted leprosy, and he continued to minister until his death in 1889.
St. Damien is beloved by native Hawaiians, Carter said, and then-princess Lili’uokalani—who Cortez implied should be given a statue instead of Damien—made Fr. Damien a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalākaua in 1881, for his “efforts in alleviating the distresses and mitigating the sorrows of the unfortunate.”
Damien is also the only priest-saint in the Hawaiian martyrology “that spoke the native Hawaiian language,” Carter said. “He loved the Hawaiian people, he embraced our culture,” he said, and in turn “he was part of our kingdom. he was one of us.”
The priest was canonized Oct. 11, 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said that “his missionary activity, which gave him such joy, reached its peak in charity.”
On the occasion of the canonization, U.S. president Barack Obama expressed his “deep admiration for the life of Blessed Damien De Veuster.”
“Fr. Damien has also earned a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians. I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out,” Obama, who was born on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, said.
“Following in the steps of Jesus’ ministry to the lepers, Fr. Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and, ultimately, sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many.”
CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is appealing to the Congressional Black Caucus to support families who opt to send their children to non-public schools, including Catholic schools. The letter … […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- New details have emerged about the links between the two Italian businessmen at the center of the Vatican financial scandal.
In the months before Gianluigi Torzi was asked by the Holy See to act as middle man for the final purchase of the London property at 60 Sloane Ave. from Raffaele Mincione, a company owned by Mincione secured a multi-million-euro loan from a company controlled by Torzi.
Last month, Torzi was arrested by the Vatican and charged with a range of financial crimes. The following day, Vatican-state media accused Mincione of a “conflict of interest” in his management of investments for the Secretariat of State.
The Financial Times reported on July 30 that in January, 2018, Sunset Financial, a Malta based company controlled by Torzi, provided a 26.4 million euro line of credit to Pop 12 Sarl., a Luxembourg company owned by Mincione.
Corporate filings in Luxembourg, examined by CNA, show that the credit line, from which Mincione’s company borrowed nearly 14 million euros in January 2018, was secured against an investment in the Italian Banca Carige.
The filings also show that in 2018, Pop 12 paid Torzi’s company more than 700,000 euros for the arrangement of the loan and for other “legal consulting fees” related to its Carige shares.
In February 2018, Mincione’s company borrowed an additional 12 million euros from a line of credit extended Global Prime Partners, Ltd (GPP), a European prime broker. The line of credit was secured with the same collateral as the credit line from Sunset Financial: the Carige bank shares.
According to filings by Pop 12, since the GPP credit line was secured against “all the Carige shares held by the company,” the Sunset debt was subordinated to the GPP debt – meaning that, if necessary, Torzi could be repaid only after GPP.
Over the course of 2018, the share value of Carige collapsed, and Pop 12 reported a loss of nearly 17.5 million euros on the value of 24.9 million euro holding in the bank, leaving it unable to cover the loans from GPP and Sunset.
In November 2018, Torzi was asked by the Vatican Secretariat of State to broker the final purchase of the London building from Mincione.
Corporate filings in Luxembourg examined by CNA show that weeks after the final sale of the building to the Vatican, Mincione loaned millions of euros from his Athena Capital Real Estate and Special Situations Fund 1 (through which he owned and sold the building) to Pop 12 to repay part of the loan from GPP, which, because of the company’s debt structure, made it more likely Pop 12 could eventually repay its debt to Torzi’s company.
Both men have denied that the Pop 12 – Sunset loans played in Torzi’s role in the Vatican’s purchase of the London building from Mincione.
A spokesman for Mincione told CNA that “the suggestion that any commercial relationship between Pop 12 and Sunset Financial had any influence on the Vatican’s decision to appoint Mr Torzi as agent, is entirely wrong.”
CNA asked Mincione if Torzi, or Sunset Financial Ltd., were involved in Pop 12 securing the line of credit from GPP, and if there was any discussion, professional or social, between Torzi and Mincione of the Vatican’s investment in the London property prior to November 2018.
Mincione’s spokesman characterized the dealings between Pop 12 and Sunset as “a very usual commercial arrangement” and said “it doesn’t seem necessary for us to respond to [these] points.”
Details of the pre-existing business relationship between Mincione and Torzi come nearly two months after Torzi was arrested by Vatican authorities on charges of “extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and self-laundering,” in relation to his part in the deal.
Following Torzi’s arrest, Mincione said that Torzi’s involvement in the London deal came at the instruction of the Secretariat of State without any input from him.
Speaking to ADN Kornos in June, Mincione said Torzi was a “counterpart,” not a “partner,” and characterized their personal connection casually as “two Italians in London.”
While dismissing their personal acquaintance, saying they knew each other slightly since their offices were off the same square in London, Mincione also told AN Kornos that he had in his possession a photograph of Torzi with Pope Francis. A similar image was subsequently released online.
The building at 60 Sloane Avenue was bought by the secretariat in stages between 2014-2018 from Mincione, who at the time was managing hundreds of millions of euros of secretariat funds. CNA has previously reported that Mincione also invested Vatican funds in other companies and projects owned by or connected to him.
The Vatican cut ties with Mincione in 2018, acquiring the whole of the London property and withdrawing its remaining investment with Athena, asking Torzi to broker the final transfer of ownership, which he did using his own Luxembourg holding company, Gutt SA, as a pass-through, earning Torzi some 10 million euros in the process.
Before Torzi’s arrest, CNA reported that Fabrizio Tirabassi, a lay secretariat official who oversaw investments, was appointed a director of Torzi’s company while the businessman was finalizing the Vatican’s purchase of the London property from Mincione.
On June 6 this year, Vatican News described Mincione’s management of Vatican investments as “speculative” and a “conflict of interest.” Later that month, Mincione, through two of his companies, filed lawsuits against the Secretariat of State and the holding company which controls the London building, and which he sold to the secretariat.
Earlier this month, Vatican prosecutors, working with Italian authorities, executed a search and seizure warrant against Mincione. Italian media reported that Mincione, accompanied by his lawyers, presented himself to police by prior arrangement, who seized electronic devices, including cellular phones and iPads.
Vatican action against Mincione was the latest development in a 18-month-long ongoing investigation into financial dealings by the Secretariat of State.
A series of raids by Vatican authorities, beginning in October last year, have resulted in the suspension of several serving and former employees at the secretariat, including Tirabassi, as well as Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, whose home and office were raided earlier this year.
CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 10:15 am (CNA).- The largest Catholic archdiocese in the United States has requested that its parishes and schools stop playing music composed by David Haas following the recent allegations of sexual misconduct.
“… […]
CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Since 2014, Fr. Roger Dawson has run a retreat house in the idyllic countryside of north Wales. When the U.K. went into the lockdown in March, he was forced to cancel retreats. But he was determined to find a … […]
Vatican City, Jul 31, 2020 / 06:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Friday accepted the resignation of Vatican diplomat Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto as an apostolic nuncio.
Pinto, 68, resigned in April 2019 as nuncio to Croatia, a post he had held for just a year… […]
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