CNA Staff, Oct 12, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Ante Jozić, who was appointed apostolic nuncio to Belarus earlier this year, arrived in the country Sunday, being met by both ecclesial and state authorities.
His arrival comes as relations between the Holy See and Belarus are strained over claims the Church in Belarus is being used to exert foreign influence, and the exile of the head of the Belarusian bishops’ conference, amid unrest over a disputed presidential election.
Belarus has seen widespread protests in recent months following a disputed presidential election. Protests began Aug. 9 after president Alexander Lukashenko was declared to have won that day’s election with 80% of the vote. Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since the position was created in 1994.
Archbishop Jozić arrived in Minsk Oct. 11, and was met at the airport by nunciature staff, representatives of the local Church, and state authorities.
Bishop Iosif Staneuski, auxiliary bishop of Grodno and secretary general of the Belarusian bishops’ conference, greeted the nuncio, who was accompanied by Father Maher Shammas, secretary of the nunciature, and Father Victor Gaidukevich.
From the airport, Archbishop Jozić went to the apostolic nunciature.
Archbishop Jozić, 53, was appointed apostolic nuncio to Belarus May 21, and he was consecrated a bishop Sept. 16 by Cardinal Pietro Parolin in his native Croatia.
He was ordained a priest in 1992, and began preparing for diplomatic service to the Holy See in 1995 at the Pontifical Diplomatic Academy. Beginning in 1999 he served at the nunciatures in India and Russia.
The diplomat was appointed apostolic nuncio to Ivory Coast and Titular Archbishop of Cissa in February 2019. He was to have been consecrated a bishop that May, but he was hospitalized in critical condition after a car accident in early April.
Archbishop Gábor Pintér was the previous apostolic nuncio to Belarus, serving there from 2016 until November 2019, when he was transferred to the nunciature in Honduras.
In Belarus protests have taken place across the country since the August election, and thousands of protesters have been detained. At least four people have died in the unrest.
Electoral officials said that the opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, earned 10% of the vote. The opposition claims that she actually garned at least 60% of votes.
Tsikhanouskaya was detained for several hours after complaining to the electoral committee. She and several other opposition leaders are now in self-imposed exile in Lithuania or other nearby countries.
The US, UK, and EU no longer recognize Lukashenko as the Belarusian president. Canada, the UK, and the EU have placed sanctions on senior Belarusian figures.
Lukashenko secured a $1.5 billion loan from Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this month, and Putin has denounced “external pressure” on Belarus.
On Oct. 10 Lukashenko met with jailed opposition leaders, reportedly discussing constitutional reform.
Belarus has recalled its ambassadors to Poland and Lithuania, which are hosting opposition figures, and both those countries recalled their ambassadors to Belarus in turn.
Following that, eight more European countries withdrew their ambassadors from Belarus.
Russia continues to support Lukashenko; it recently put Tsikhanouskaya on a wanted list.
On Sept. 29 the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev denied reports from Russia’s foreign intelligence agency that the Church in Belarus is being used by the US, calling them “complete nonsense, fake information.”
“Some media outlets published information provided by the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service Sergey Naryshkin. This is a fake, this is nonsense. He spoke about some provocations, about the fact that the United States, the CIA and other organizations are trying to use the Catholic Church to undermine the state system in our country. This is complete nonsense, fake information, lies that have nothing to do with the truth … This is information that should be treated with a touch of irony,” Bishop Yury Kasabutski said during his homily at a Mass in Minsk.
Naryshkin is director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. The Russian news agency Interfax reported Sept. 29 that Naryshkin had said, “the United States is also unceremoniously interfering in the religious situation in Belarus … The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church are being asked to openly criticize the Belarusian authorities and to use religious events, including sermons, prayers, religious processions, to conduct opposition political propaganda among believers.”
The Russian foreign intelligence director added that “According to the plan of the Americans, this should force Minsk to take harsh retaliatory measures against the Roman Catholic Church.”
Naryshkin said the Belarusian opposition is planning a “resonant provocation” during which a high-ranking cleric “would be arrested or even wounded or killed,” with the intention of increasing opposition sentiment among Catholics in the country.
The president of the Belarusian bishops’ conference, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk-Mohilev, was exiled in August. Lukashenko has suggested the archbishop might be a citizen of more than one country.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz’ passport was invalidated, and he was blocked from returning from Poland by border guards Aug. 31. The archbishop has spoken in defense of the protests following the presidential election.
The archbishop told CNA: “I was accused that I received from Warsaw some instructions, or something, but I didn’t visit Warsaw.” He said he had visited eastern Poland to celebrate the First Communion of a relative.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz wrote to Archbishop Jozić after his episcopal consecration, saying: “Your Excellency, on the day of your episcopal ordination, I cordially greet you on my own behalf, as well as on behalf of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus and all Catholics of our country … For the development of our pastoral and social activities, as well as relations with the state at this turning point in our history, we need your support as a representative of the Holy See.”
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Over a year ago, Bishop Voderholzer proposed a revised script for the German “synodal path,” and was stiffed by the clericalists. Refreshing news, here, to find a German bishop speaking common sense, as if the truth mattered and still exists. The pygmies should have listened. They’ve been upstaged by one of the adults in the room.
Yes, forward (!) to the “central questions”: “Is it meaningful to speak of God? Can God have revealed himself in Jesus Christ? Is this revelation recognizable, and is it liberating for me? What does grace mean? How do grace and freedom go together? Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
Yes, one of the few outstanding German bishops. “They all knew that the revelation of God is self evident” (Voderholzer). That truth, Christ revealing of his Father’s essence is divine love, pure love, infinite, the supreme truth. It requires no supporting arguments, or proofs. We assent to what cannot be denied.
One German bishop who has something to say.
“Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
For 100 years, science has known that the universe does not exist without a conscious observer, who we know to be Adam kind, in it. It takes a conscious observer to physically experience the universe, which causes ‘wave collapse’, for a physical universe to exist. When man is not experiencing the universe, a physical universe no longer exists. This is non-intuitive, meaning, scientists could never have imagined this to be the case, until scientific data proved that this is the case.
The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Believer. Scientifically, there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes to look, touch, smell, hear, taste, and experience his Reality of their being a universe.
Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho
Why does the world not know that there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes? Because atheist scientists don’t want you to know about it. So once the truth comes out about how the universe does not exist before Adam opens his eyes as a conscious observer, Christian Creationists are justified as the correct interpreters of when Creation happened. Creation happened on the week Adam was made. This will be a strong shot in the arm for the Christian faith.
Neils Bohr VS Albert Einstein.
Neils Bohr says that there is no universe when a conscious man is not looking at it. Albert Einstein says, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” After over a century of fierce debate and mountains of scientific research to settle the debate, Neils Bohr’s ‘ ‘Peek A Boo’ universe, a universe which does not exist when man is not looking at it, is dominating the debate, over Albert Einstein’s “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” By the end of the following video, the narrator indicates that there is only a slim chance that Albert Einstein’s ‘Realism’ can be salvaged. Proven science says there is no universe when Adamkind is not looking at it and experiencing it.
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Neils Bohr
“Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run the world.”
Scientists are up to sending 800 atom molecules through the double slit experiment. There is a, seen by man, 800 atom molecule coming out of the particle gun, but then there is only a fuzzy mixture of all possibilities going through the double slit, provided man is not looking at it, and then there is an 800 atom molecule, seen by man when hitting the screen. In other words, the 800 atom molecule exits, coming out of the gun with man looking at it, then does not exist when man is not looking at it going through the double slit, and then the 800 atom molecule is seen by man on the screen it hits. An 800 atom molecule just popping in and out of existence. Wow!
Not only does God know our every thought, hear our every prayer, know our soul, but our individual universe is completely controlled by God. When two people have different, individual Realities, the two Realities collapse into one, common Reality, when they discuss with one another their different Realities. Wow!
Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/
So what proven science is telling us, is that Adam kind is at the center of all that physically exists, and that God can select from all possible Realities, what an individual human being will experience as their Reality. Talk about having a personal relationship with our God! Wow!
When a subatomic particle is in wave form, it possesses all possible properties, which can be chosen from by God, to become all possible outcomes. All of these, ‘all possible outcomes’, are bouncing off one another to produce the wave effect, when traveling through the double slit. When man goes to experience his individual Reality, now only one, of ‘all possible outcomes’, is selected by God, to become a specific physical particle, with specific properties, in a specific place, and the rest of the ‘all possible properties’ no longer exist. In the case of a star, infinite subatomic particles make the wave collapse simultaneously, with all particles taking their single specific property, in their specific place, in their specific atom, in their specific molecule, in their specific star. Then when man is no longer looking at the star, all the infinite subatomic particles immediately return back to being a soup of all possibilities again. Wow! It is only God Who has the Power to do something like this! It is God’s miraculous, great Power selecting the property, and position that all, infinite, subatomic particles will transition into, from their wave state of all possible properties, when man looks at a star and triggers wave collapse. Wow! Wow! Wow! And when a man looks at a star, he is usually looking at a sky full of our one septillion stars!
There is no way a universe which only exists when man is looking at it, can come in and out of existence, without the miraculous power of God making it so! I believe the reason God allowed mankind to see His miraculous work at the quantum level, is that God is waving to atheist scientists, the world, and we His Church on earth. The atheist scientists are doing everything in their power, especially through Scientism, to silence our God’s miraculous Presence at the quantum level. The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Creationist Believer.
Grasping the reality and seriousness of abortion, or, contraception, and trying to share it in your parish and community, is not “doing politics”. Four points about this:
1. It goes back to the first Council, the Council of Jerusalem: you are not “tearing up the seamless garment of the Church” when you preserve it. Look out; because people can try to demean you and belittle the subject matter, “calling it out” via wrong senses, like, “being controversial”, or, “doing heavy-duty evangelizing”, or, “running for office”/”want to stand out”, or, “stuck on ethics”.
2. What is happening today is not 3 abortions every 5 years by teens sneaking out to the malpractice doctor. It is a widespread phenomenon carrying ideological affects and developing alongside an organized industrial enterprise extracting and manipulating human flesh -all highly publicized and integrally promoted and defended.
3. We laypeople are meant to be in politics as well as apostolate.
4. There are and will continue to be attempts from many sides, to diminish and even snuff out pro-life politics as well as apostolates; but also trying to find ways to neutralize/anasthetize them.