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Washington D.C., Feb 9, 2018 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- “Before his escape, when Seong-Ho was being tortured by North Korean officials, there was one thing that kept him from losing hope: over and over again he recited the Lord’s Prayer,” President Donald Trump said in his speech at the 2018 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Seong-Ho’s courage and faith were also highlighted by Trump during his State of the Union address in January.

Many North Korean defectors like Ji Seong-ho encounter Christianity through the missionaries who organize the underground railroad that makes it possible for them to escape to China, where they still face the constant risk of being repatriated back to North Korea.

The journey with the Christian missionaries often leads to conversion for defectors. Eighty to ninety percent of North Koreans who pass through the underground railroad identify as Christian after reaching South Korea, according to a 2015 study by Dr. Jin-Heon Jung entitled “Underground Railroads of Christian Conversion.”

One Catholic Church in Seoul baptized 60 North Korean defectors in one day in June 2016, after Father Raymond Lee Jong-nam catechized and assisted them with the transition to life in South Korea, according to UCA News.

“I thank Father Lee for showing us deep love like our father and I will live this new life to the full in this church,” one newly baptised North Korean told the Union of Catholic Asian News.

Ji Seong-ho, whose story gained national attention when he triumphantly raised up his crutches during the president’s State of the Union address last week, told EWTN that prayer sustained him during his escape.

“I offered so many prayers to my God…I started to pray save me, rescue me,” he said.

Ji escaped North Korea in 2006 by crossing the Tumen River into China, and then journeying 6,214 miles across China, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand to reach South Korea on crutches due to an earlier tragedy that left him an amputee.

Now that he has reached freedom, Ji Seong-ho said he feels called by God to rescue other North Korean refugees.

“God’s love needs to be conveyed to the people of North Korea and North Korean souls need God’s salvation. Under that conviction, I am doing what I am doing,” he said.

According to the Korean Ministry of Unification, more than 31,000 North Korean defectors have entered South Korea since 1998.

However, the annual number of North Koreans arriving in the South has declined since Chinese President Xi Jinping assumed power and cracked down on Christian missionaries.

Last year had the lowest figure for North Korean defections to South Korea since 2001, according to the Unification Ministry’s data.

For the more than 25 million people who remain within North Korea, human rights violations abound, according to the U.S. State Department.

“The DPRK regime detains more than 100,000 people, including children in political prison camps, where summary executions, torture, sexual violence, starvation, and other egregious abuses are committed under Kim Jong Un’s direction,” said State Department Spokesperson, Heather Nauert, on Feb. 6.

North Korea has consistently been ranked the worst country for persecution of Christians by Open Doors.

“The Catholic diocese of Pyongyang is vacant and the last bishop was appointed in March 1944. There are no native Catholic clerics in North Korea, but visiting priests occasionally say Mass. In 2008 Father Paul Kim Kwon-soon, a South Korean Franciscan, became the first priest to be granted a residency permit,” according to an Aid to the Church in Need UK report.

One French priest, Father Philippe Blot, has visited North Korea several times. He spoke to Parisians at Notre Dame Cathedral in April 2017 about his perspective on the country that singles out Christians for torture and execution.

“As a missionary and as a Catholic priest, I am speaking here on behalf of all those Koreans who for more than 60 years have been living the longest Way of the Cross in human history,” he said.

Father Philippe asked Catholics to pray “ardently every day for this crucified people.”

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Denver, Colo., Jan 28, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- During his homily on Sunday, Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver criticized pro-choice Catholics, adding that if life is not valued at the beginning and end then it will not be respected in between.

He spo… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 27, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Catholic leaders and academics have voiced their support following President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

Tributes to the Catholic judge and nominee followed Barrett’s official presentation in the White House Rose Garden Saturday evening, after a week of speculation that she was the president’s choice.

Announcing the selection, Trump called Barrett “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds,” Trump said, paying tribute to Barrett as “a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the constitution,” and “eminently qualified” for service on the nation’s highest court

Barrett graduated from Rhodes College before receiving a full scholarship to Notre Dame Law School where she graduated first in her class. 

Barrett went on to clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, before going into private practice. She returned to Notre Dame Law School and taught classes in 2002 before becoming a professor in 2010. She currently serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a position to which Trump nominated her in 2017. 

Speaking after the nomination was announced, Notre Dame University president Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, paid tribute to Barrett, saying that “the same impressive intellect, character and temperament that made Judge Barrett a successful nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals will serve her and the nation equally well as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“She is a person of the utmost integrity who, as a jurist, acts first and foremost in accordance with the law,” Jenkins said.

Writing in the Washington Post, John Garvey, an expert in U.S. constitutional law and the president of The Catholic University of America, recalled meeting Barrett when she was a student of his at Notre Dame Law.

“After she graduated from law school,” Garvey said, “I wrote a one-line letter of recommendation for her to [Supreme Court] Justice Antonin Scalia: ‘Amy Coney is the best student I ever had.’ He was wise to hire her as a clerk.”

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, also welcomed the announcement, saying on Twitter: “Congratulations to Judge Amy Coney Barrett, now nominated to the Supreme Court. May God bless Judge Coney Barrett and her beautiful family with grace and peace in the challenging days to come.”

President Trump noted on Saturday that Barrett received bipartisan support during her Senate confirmation in 2017 and that as “a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the constitution,” she is “eminently qualified” for service on the nation’s highest court.

Republican Senate leaders have indicated that they will move quickly to schedule confirmation hearings before the Senate judiciary committee and bring Barrett’s nomination to a full vote.

Barrett said Saturday that she “looked forward” to working with members of the Senate during the confirmation process.

“I will do my very best to demonstrate that I am worthy of your support,” she said, while conceding that she had “no illusions that the road ahead of me will be easy, either for the short term or the long haul.”

Judiciary committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he expects hearings to begin on Barrett’s nomination on Oct. 12, but two Democratic members of the committee, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CON), said they would refuse to meet with Barrett prior to the hearings.

In a statement sent to CNA Saturday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a Catholic, called Barrett “a well-qualified, highly respected nominee.”

“That’s why the Senate previously confirmed her,” Rubio said, while also noting that the judge’s Catholic faith would likely feature during the confirmation process.

During Barrett’s 2017 nomination hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned her on her personal faith and values, saying that “when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern.”

In the past week, media criticism has focused on Barrett’s Catholic faith and the size of her family – she has seven children, including two children adopted from Haiti.

On Saturday, Rubio called Barrett “a person who is strong in her faith. Sadly, I expect my Democratic colleagues and the radical left to do all they can to assassinate her character and once again make an issue of her faith during her confirmation process.”

Speaking on Friday, ahead of the formal announcement of Barrett’s nomination, Princeton University professor Robert P. George also noted the anti-Catholic tone of much of the criticism of Barrett.

“I’ll give Amy Barrett’s opponents some good advice, in blissful assurance that they won’t take it,” George said on Twitter.

“Don’t attack her faith. Don’t go near it. Stay a million miles away. Talk about health care, im

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