St. Paul, Minn., Mar 11, 2021 / 12:53 am (CNA).- A baseball card collection worth thousands of dollars was a split second away from being dropped into a trash can and disappearing forever in a landfill.Father John Ubel, rector of the Cathedral of St. P… […]
Santa Fe, N.M., Mar 10, 2021 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- The New Mexico legislature could soon pass an assisted suicide bill that is “the worst in the nation”, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe has said, lamenting “bills that threaten vulnera… […]
Columbus, Ohio, Mar 10, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Several pro-abortion protesters who disrupted a pro-life Mass in Columbus, Ohio in January have been charged with misdemeanors and arraigned, with pretrial hearings scheduled for the coming months.
On Jan. 22, more than a half-dozen pro-abortion protesters disrupted the Respect Life Mass at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in downtown Columbus, where Bishop Robert Brennan was presiding at an event marking the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Those involved, masked and holding hand-made signs, chanted slogans such as “Two, four, six, eight, this church teaches hate.” “Fund abortion, not cops,” said one of their signs. “Abortion on Demand. End Hyde Now,” said another, referring to the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal funding for abortion.
Police and church officials escorted the protesters outside, where some protesters appeared to make obscene gestures at them. The protesters continued to chant at slogans outside the church.
Three of the protesters— two women and one man— were later charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass, both misdemeanors.
A fourth person, a woman, faces those same misdemeanor charges in addition to a criminal damage charge; she is set to be arraigned March 19.
All three protesters arraigned March 5 pleaded not guilty, and are scheduled for pretrial hearings in March and April, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
No arrests were made on the day of the protest, but the city attorney’s office filed the charges Feb. 18.
“We are…thankful for the proactive concern shown by our city’s leaders in supporting people of faith and their right to worship in peace and free of disruption,” Bishop Brennan said in a statement Monday.
Pro-life groups active in the state also praised law enforcement for taking action against the protesters.
“Even our pro-choice city attorney recognized that the rule of law must always apply and our churches are sacred institutions,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, in a statement.
“Menacing others and yelling vulgarities at a church service at which young children were present is both unlawful and unconscionable…Such displays of irreverence towards women and children practicing their faith is tragic and uncalled for.”.
The charges drew ire from several pro-abortion organizations, who say the protesters’ actions— despite taking place inside the church and taking the form of occasionally vulgar slogans and gestures— were justified.
Several of the pro-abortion organizations likened the disruptive protest that took place in the cathedral to the pro-life witness of religious people outside abortion clinics.
A group called the Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice— a group aligned with the dissident group Catholics for Choice— said in a statement that they “stand firm in our continued support of the pro-abortion activists” who engaged in what they called “a brief peaceful protest.”
“No church can claim to be an inviolable sacred space when it abuses its power and authority to promote a political agenda and demean those seeking abortion care,” the group claimed, implying that the protest at the cathedral was, in part, retaliation for pro-lifers’ “organized sidewalk harassment at clinics throughout Ohio.”
Pro-abortion groups Women Have Options Ohio, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, and Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity all released similar statements of support for the protesters.
Several of the pro-abortion groups cited a 2019 incident during which a rock was thrown through a window of Toledo’s only abortion clinic as evidence that pro-lifers “attack” women seeking abortions and abortion providers, despite no evidence that the rock was thrown by a pro-life protester.
“After a pattern and practice of spewing vile and hateful insults at patients, following patients to cars, and throwing rocks at a Toledo clinic these extremists claim protesting a public event is harassment,” Women Have Options Ohio said.
Peter Range, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Toledo’s Director of the Office for Life and Justice, disavowed any violence against the abortion clinic and its patients when the rock-throwing incident took place.
CNA Staff, Mar 10, 2021 / 05:28 pm (CNA).- Global hunger has reached an alarming level and could grow worse as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, said Catholic Relief Services this week.The organization issued a new analysis identifying food crises in… […]
Little Rock, Ark., Mar 10, 2021 / 05:12 pm (CNA).- Arkansas is the latest state to pass legislation banning almost all abortions, in an effort to prompt the Supreme Court to revisit and overturn Roe v. Wade. Governor Asa Hutchinson on March 9 sign… […]
Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mar 10, 2021 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, thanked Pope Francis for his solidarity on Wednesday, after his prison sentences were annulled.
Lula was serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering. According to the BBC, the ex-president was also sentenced 17 years on another charge and a third case is yet unresolved.
“I want to thank Pope Francis (@Pontifex_pt) that when I was in prison he made a point of sending me a letter. And for having me at the Vatican as soon as I left prison for a conversation about combating hunger and inequality,” the former Brazilian president wrote on Twitter March 10.
The BBC reported March 8 that Federal Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin nullified all the convictions handed down against Lula by the federal court in Paraná state, which was part of the anti-corruption investigation Operation Car Wash.
The Attorney General’s Office said it will appeal Fachin’s ruling, “which would take the individual decision of the magistrate to the plenary session of the 11 member Supreme Court, or to the Second Chamber of the (Supreme) court, which would have to uphold or reverse this Monday’s ruling,” the BBC stated.
The Supreme Court ruling by Fachin said the lower federal court in Paraná did not have legal jurisdiction to try those cases.
According to Infobae, Lula served 580 days in prison.
Pope Francis wrote a letter to Lula in May 2019, in response to a letter from the former president. In the letter, the Holy Father explained the importance of understanding politics as a form of charity and encouraged the former president in the face of the “difficult trials” he had experienced, such as the death of his wife Marisa Leticia, his brother Genival Inácio, and his seven-year-old grandson Arthur.
The Roman Pontiff also encouraged Lula to respect human life and freedom, and exhorting the politician to trust in Christ.
Lula was imprisoned for 19 months in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná state. He was released Nov. 9, 2019 after the Supreme Court voided a norm established in 2017 that stipulated that defendants should be jailed as soon as they were sentenced by a lower court of appeals. Now, to go to prison the sentence must be final without further appeal to a higher court.
In February 2020, Pope Francis received Lula in a private audience at the Vatican in a meeting that lasted approximately one hour.
On that occasion, diplomatic sources told ACI Digital, CNA’s Portuguese language news partner, that the reason the meeting was not listed on the pope’s schedule was because Lula, visited the Roman Pontiff as a private citizen and not as a former president.
Lula is an influential figure in Brazil, despite his incarceration. The founder of Brazil’s first major socialist party, he was the country’s president from 2003 until 2010.
He led Brazil during a period of significant economic growth and significantly expanded social welfare programs for the poor. However, his administration was controversial among Catholics, especially because of his support for legally protected abortion and for an increasingly secularized approach to problems related to marriage and the family.
Having considered man’s obligations to God on the first table of the Decalogue, we now move to the second for our responsibilities toward our neighbor. We begin with the duty to honor one’s parents, which […]
The “power of positive thinking”—a phrase made famous by Norman Vincent Peale’s famous 1952 self-help book by the same name—has been, in various forms and ways, the long-time mantra of the modern self-help movement. There […]
Washington D.C., Mar 10, 2021 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- As Congress passed a massive COVID relief package on Wednesday, leading U.S. bishops called the lack of abortion funding restrictions in the bill “unconscionable,” while commending other prov… […]
CNA Staff, Mar 10, 2021 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- A United Nations Human Rights Council report on Islamophobia risks “polarizing the international community,” according to a Vatican diplomat.
Addressing the 46th Session of the Human Rights Counci… […]
© Catholic World Report