The Valley of the Fallen. / Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock.
Denver Newsroom, Jul 6, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
The Vox political party in Spain has filed a complaint against a journalist who encouraged blowing up the basilica and abbey located on the grounds of the Valley of the Fallen memorial complex northwest of Madrid. The complex is the site of the largest cross in the world.
Spanish journalist Héctor de Miguel from Cadena SER, a PRISA Group radio station, was cited in a legal complaint for a hate crime and for offending religious sentiments, covered in Articles 524–526 of the country’s penal code, because during a radio program he encouraged blowing up the abbey in the Valley of the Fallen with dynamite.
“The Valley of the Fallen is an (obscenity),” the journalist said during his rant before he proposed: “Why don’t we go in there with dynamite and blow it all up? If it could be on a Sunday, so much the better.”
The deputy secretary of legal action for Vox, Marta Castro, said that regardless of his political intentions, the journalist’s statements “attack and harm the religious sentiments of many citizens.”
The complaint was also filed against the director of the Hora 25 program, Aimar Bretos, and the director general of Cadena SER, Ignacio Soto Pérez. Castro pointed out that as stated in Article 28 of the penal code, those in charge of the media outlet must answer for their actions, as they are considered cooperators in the offense.
The Vox party also noted the “violent” intention that underlies the particular words the journalist used — “to blow up” with dynamite.
Vox highlighted the fact that the journalist said that the right time to blow up the abbey would be on a Sunday — the day when many faithful attend Mass at the basilica — “without caring about the lives of the citizens going to the church” to practice their religious faith.
The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers announced it has also taken legal action against Héctor de Miguel — not only for a hate crime and for offending religious sentiments but also for harassment.
The association stated in its complaint that the radio host accused it “of violent blackmail for running a petition drive calling for shutting down the program.”
The association also charged that the radio host compared it “to a terrorist or paramilitary gang” when he demanded on air “the dissolution and immediate surrender of weapons, as well as asking the victims for forgiveness.”
The journalist’s tirade led to more than 800 phone calls in three days to the association’s offices, which “has affected the daily functioning of the organization,” the attorneys charged.
The Valley of the Fallen is a monumental complex near Madrid which includes an abbey and basilica, the construction of which Francisco Franco ordered to honor the fallen of both sides during the Spanish civil war. The bodies of more than 30,000 victims of the war are buried in the complex.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 was fought between the Nationalist forces, led by Franco, and the Republican faction. During the war, Republicans martyred thousands of clerics, religious, and laity; of these, 11 have been canonized, and more than 2,000 beatified.
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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Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Rouen, France. / Credit: Archdiocese of Rouen
ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 17, 2023 / 18:40 pm (CNA).
During the night of Nov. 14–15, unidentified persons destroyed the altar and stole sacred vessels from the Basilica o… […]
Alfred Magero, Matthew Njogu, and Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi are three Catholic fathers from Africa who recently shared insights about being a present dad, protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and being a model of family values for their children with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa. / Credit: Photos courtesy of ACI Africa
ACI Africa, Jun 17, 2024 / 12:37 pm (CNA).
On the occasion of Father’s Day 2024, a day focused on the celebration of fatherhood, four Catholic men from different African countries recently shared their experiences of impacting the lives of their children.
The Catholic fathers — who hail from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria — talk about the importance of “being present,” of protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and of being a model of family values for their children, who they believe someday will become parents as well.
Tony Nnachetta, 68: Fatherhood is a full-time enterprise
Tony Nnachetta shares a moment with Pope Francis. The married father of four is a parishioner in the Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Tony Nnachetta is a married father of four who attends the Church of the Assumption Parish in Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Lagos. Nnachettahas been a parishioner there for 40 years, and he was wed there 38 years ago. A member of the Grand Knights of St. Mulumba, he originally hails from the Archdiocese of Onitsha.
I got married to my friend after we dated for four years. I was looking forward to fatherhood and I was mentally prepared for it. Here are the lessons I have learned along my fatherhood journey.
First, being a father means you watch your children grow and become independent. You watch them get to a point in their lives where they can engage in a debate with you and even disagree with you.
Fatherhood is a long process. You would be fortunate to go through the entire process and maybe see your children’s children. I have seen mine achieve excellence in school and even leave home and go across the world as they sought to become independent.
Wherever your children go, what is important for them is what they take away from home — what they take from mommy and daddy. I have always told mine to “remember the child of who you are.” This means that they are not allowed to break the Christian values in our family.
I taught them to always stand for the truth and never to flow with the tide. We have encouraged them to always say what they mean. These days, they have jokingly turned around the statement and they tell me, “Remember the dad of who you are,” and we laugh about it.
You can’t always be there to take the bullet for them, but you can support them through prayers. Our family relies a lot on the intercession of the saints. We call ourselves a family of Jesuits because the school my children went to is under the patronage of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Fatherhood is a full-time engagement. It is not like you can be a father in the morning and take a break in the evening. You worry about your children even when they are grown and have left your home. They preoccupy you everywhere. You wonder whether they are warm and if they have had their meal. But all this brings a father immense joy.
Young fathers in Africa are overburdened by poverty. Because of poverty they don’t have a way to help their families. Others are scared to enter the marriage institution. Poverty has made young men weak and helpless. Some are leaving their young families and going to faraway places outside the continent to make a living.
Poverty is eroding family values because some fathers do what they do, including stealing, for their children to survive. In doing so, they are setting a bad example for their children …
It is important for our leaders to confront this situation. They must accept that they have let us down.
Matthew Njogu, 75: Tips on being a present dad
Matthew Njogu is the moderator of the Catholic Men Association at St. Austin’s Msongari Parish of Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi. His children are now adults. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Fathers need to be present in the lives of their children. For a long time, it was assumed that it was the mother’s responsibility to take care of the young children; fathers kept off. But being absent in the lives of your children hurts your relationship with them. They end up growing up without you having any impact on their lives.
Unfortunately, some fathers assume that fatherhood ends at providing material things… They don’t pay attention to their children’s growth milestones. And when they eventually try to establish a connection, they find that the children are already all grown without knowing anything about their fathers.
Simple things like dropping your children off at school help you connect with them. While stuck in traffic on the way to school, you can talk about things that will help you understand your child and for him to know you.
Always try as much as possible to have dinner with your children and help them with schoolwork. And always try to make up for the time you don’t spend with them.
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi, 53: Raising a Christ-like family
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyia runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two, though he tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Nkamanyi runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two children ages 16 and 20. He tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many,” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Here are his insights into nurturing a Christ-like family.
It is the joy of every responsible young man to be called “daddy” or “papa.” Having a Christ-like family is the greatest gift for a father; a family like that of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
My appeal for Catholic fathers is to hold their families firmly, to provide for them, and to protect them from all dangers in the contemporary society, where values are being eroded.
I don’t believe that being a father is a challenging task. God already gave us the innate potential to be fathers. I believe that God can’t give you a role that you can’t perform.
It is unfortunate that many young men are choosing to be absentee fathers. From what I have seen, many children raised by a single parent end up adopting wayward behaviors.
Alfred Magero, 48: Being a present dad in a low-income setting
Alfred Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Catholic Parish of in the Nairobi Archdiocese. The father of three has been married for 29 years. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Parish of the Archdiocese of Nairobi. The father of three has been married for 29 years and shares his experience and that of other Catholic dads raising their children in a low-income neighborhood.
I am raising my children to become God-fearing adults. This is not an easy task in the community in which we live, where there is a lot of poverty, drunkenness, and other characteristics typical of a low-income [neighborhood].
Many fathers rarely interact with their children since their main focus is to provide for their families. They leave for work before their children wake up and come back at night when the children have already gone to bed.
The young men and boys we are raising are experiencing a different environment from ours when we were growing up. With the whole world brought to them on the palm of their hand by a simple tap on the phone, this generation is dangerously exposed. They need us, their fathers, to constantly give them direction. They need us to be their role models.
They need us to constantly remind them that they are in Africa and that they should not adopt alien cultures, especially those bound to destroy the family.
As fathers, we must remind our young ones to uphold African values that kept the family unit and the society glued together. Africans knew the importance of loving and caring for each other. Unfortunately, this value is being eroded, and in its place, now we have individualism. Older men in families would educate young men to be responsible adults. Unfortunately, we no longer have this kind of education.
Paris, France, Oct 10, 2017 / 06:07 am (ACI Prensa).- Patrick Canac was baptized, but like so many others, drifted away from the Church over time.
In recent months, however, the successful French businessman has had a change of heart, returning to the Catholic Church and even making a large donation for the construction of a new seminary in Avignon, France.
What caused the drastic change? The witness of Fr. Jacques Hamel, the priest killed in August 2016 by ISIS jihadists as he was celebrating Mass in the small French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen.
“I was brought up in the Christian faith. I was baptized and received all the sacraments of initiation, but then I drifted away from the practice of my faith for a long time,” Canac told CNA during a visit to Rome.
“Last year, the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in a church near Rouen really hit me,” he said. “For terror to make its way into that church reminded me of the darkest times of our civilization.”
“I had an immediate, reflexive reaction as if they had killed my brother. That someone can go into a church today and kill the celebrant is just terrible, it’s horrific, it’s the devil going into a church.”
The French businessman had an instant reversion to the faith, realizing, “we all have Judeo-Christian roots” which “must be defended and saved.”
“It’s the same problem they have the Middle East, where Christians are being killed,” he reflected. “And I had an inner reaction, telling myself, ‘I’m a Christian and I’ve got to do something, put my talents to use’.”
Canac promptly made a large donation to build the new Redemptoris Mater seminary in Avignon. The project is gradually becoming a reality, and Pope Francis blessed the building’s cornerstone at his Sept. 4 general audience in Saint Peter’s Square.
“I think it’s important for our Western countries – (including) France, of course – to be evangelized, that people be encouraged to return to the Church again. Because the Church is the cradle of our civilization,” Canac said.
“I think of the first Christians, those who were pioneers, those missionaries and martyrs that spread the Gospel throughout the world. And that’s why I have put my business success to work by helping with the building project for the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Avignon.”
He explained that seminary will help to re-evangelize Europe by forming the priests who will become modern-day missionaries, “priests that will evangelize people like me so they can return to the Church.”
He continued: “After the murder of Fr. Hamel, I felt that our Judeo-Christian civilization is being threatened. Anything that will form people who will spread the Gospel, a Christian message of peace and love, must be helped.”
Last October, Pope Francis allowed the opening of Fr. Hamel’s beatification cause, waiving the normal five-year waiting period after his death.
“I am in complete agreement with Pope Francis proposing him for beatification,” Canac said. “Fr. Jacques in a martyr. What I have learned about his past life before he was killed is that he was a true Christian, worthy to be a martyr. He tried to convince his murderers that they were doing evil. His attitude was extraordinary and exemplary for everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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