Father Jesús Silva Castignani, a priest of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain, questioned the spirituality that governs the World Economic Forum now holding its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland: “What spirit governs Davos?” he asked in a Jan. 17 post on X.
As part of a plenary session on Wednesday titled “Climate and Nature: A Systemic Response Is Needed,” Chieftess Putanny Yawanawá of the Amazonian Yawanawá tribe, located in the Acre region of northwest Brazil, performed a shamanic rite.
After making some invocations while rubbing her hands together, the woman representing the Indigenous blew on the heads of the participants, among whom were the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva; the president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga; the CEO of IKEA, Jesper Brodin; and the billionaire André Hoffmann.
After learning of the event, Silva posed four questions on social media about what happened: “a) Would it have occurred to you to invite a priest to say a prayer? b) Do we know which spirits the lady is invoking? c) Christianity is obscurantist but the heart-ripping Indigenous were not? d) What spirit governs Davos?”
The host for the event justified the presence of Chieftess Puttany by stating that “to look to the future we must look back and see what the wishes of our ancestors were.”
Before performing the shamanic rite, Puttany stated that “we can join our hands, unite our hearts, unite our thoughts in the same direction, for the healing of the planet and spiritual healing” while assuring that “when we unite in our thinking and our heart, our Mother Earth will listen to us.”
At the conclusion of the rite, the shaman encouraged the participants to join their hands and raise them in unison.
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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Anna Del Duca (right) and her daughter, Frances, traveled from Pittsburgh to attend a pro-life rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021, in conjunction with oral arguments for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 4, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Three legal experts are expressing optimism for a pro-life victory in the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationside.
“I am hopeful that the court will take the opportunity in Dobbs to correct the grievous error of Roe v. Wade, and get the court out of our nation’s abortion politics,” Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, told CNA after the Supreme Court heard arguments on Dec. 1.
The case involves a Mississippi law restricting most abortions after 15 weeks and centers on the question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional,” or whether states can ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
In Roe v. Wade, the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before viability, which the court determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. In 1992, the court largely upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. If Roe is overturned — one possible outcome of the Dobbs case — abortion law would be left up to each individual state.
“Today the court did a great job articulating its constitutional role: not to pick winners and losers on divisive issues like abortion, but to remain ‘scrupulously neutral,’ as Justice Kavanaugh said,” Severino tweeted just hours after the arguments. “The way it works out will look different in different states, but the Court should let the people decide.”
Although the arguments were held in December, the Supreme Court generally releases decisions in high-profile cases, such as this one, at the end of its term in June.
“I am very encouraged by oral argument and the prospect of a favorable decision this summer, but we should keep up our prayers for the justices,” legal scholar Erika Bachiochi told CNA.
Bachiochi serves as a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she founded and directs the Wollstonecraft Project.
She identified one part of the oral arguments that she found surprising.
“Although I suppose shouldn’t have been, I was surprised by Justice Sotomayer’s naked pro-abortion rhetoric, especially with regard to her question concerning the ‘religious’ source of a 15-week abortion ban,” she said. “Does she really not know the science of fetal development?”
During the oral argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned Scott G. Stewart, the solicitor general of Mississippi.
“How is your interest anything but a religious view?” she asked. “The issue of when life begins has been hotly debated by philosophers since the beginning of time. It’s still debated in religions.”
She added, “So, when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that’s a religious view, isn’t it — because it assumes that a fetus’ life at — when? You’re not drawing — you’re — when do you suggest we begin that life? Putting it aside from religion.”
In anticipation of the oral argument, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, documented information about 15-week-old unborn babies, who can, among other things, already exhibit whether they prefer sucking their right or left thumb.
Earlier this year, Bachiochi, together with law professors Teresa Collett and Helen Alvaré, filed an amicus brief representing 240 women scholars and professionals and various pro-life organizations in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In a piece published by the National Catholic Register, Alvaré, a professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, found the oral argument “promising for the pro-life cause.”
But, she added, “it would be impossible to cram into the few minutes of an oral argument all the reason, facts, principles, analyses — and hopes — of 50 years of pro-life argumentation,” she wrote. “There was no time to call out abortion advocates’ lies, more lies, and made-up statistics. No time to show that women have not depended upon abortion for their dignity and freedom, but that the opposite is true. No time to detail the miraculous, the beautiful humanity of the unborn.”
“Based strictly upon the oral arguments, it is clear that Justices Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan will vote to uphold abortion rights,” she said. “It is more difficult to pronounce where the remaining Justices might fall, but their comments were largely promising.”
CNA Staff, Apr 30, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The bishops of England and Wales have urged parishes to help domestic abuse victims after a surge in requests for aid during the coronavirus crisis.
Since the lockdown began in the U.K. March 23 there h… […]
Albano Laziale, Italy, Nov 1, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will visit on Thursday an Italian cemetery for American personnel killed in World War II, where he will say Mass for All Souls’ Day.
Cemetery Superintendent Melanie Resto said that for Francis to choose to commemorate the fallen soldiers at the cemetery is “the biggest honor I can imagine.”
“We didn’t expect the Pope, but it is a great honor,” she added.
Pope Francis “will be here to pray for the service members, not only the service members here, but all those who have died in wars.”
According to Resto, the cemetery is visited every week by family members of the soldiers whose bodies are buried there.
It is open every day, except Christmas and New Years Day. Staff are available to answer questions and to escort relatives to grave sites.
Rasto said many of the cemetery staff have been employeed at the memorial for more than 25 years; there are already three employees whose fathers worked on the grounds before them. They feel that “it’s an honor to work here,” she said, “and we’re proud to have them.”
The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, dedicated in 1956, covers 77 acres, and 7,860 servicemen are buried there. In a chapel on the grounds are the names of 3,095 who were missing in action.
Most of those who are buried in the Nettuno cemetery died in the liberation of Sicily, the landings at Salerno and Anzio, and in air and naval support of these operations in 1943 and 1944.
In recent tradition, the Popes have said an All Souls’ Day Mass at Rome’s Campo Verano cemetery, founded in the 19th century.
Pope Francis did this the first three years of his pontificate, and in 2016 said an All Souls’ Day Mass at Rome’s Prima Porta Cemetery.
Material from EWTN News Nightly was used in this report.
Oh, yes, levitated into a niche near the Tabernacle in St. Peter’s Basilica! But not to worry, she later was baptized by immersion in the Tiber. All is well, even as the pagan cosmos absorbs more and more of the post-Christian world.
Where’s Pachamama when we need her?
Oh, yes, levitated into a niche near the Tabernacle in St. Peter’s Basilica! But not to worry, she later was baptized by immersion in the Tiber. All is well, even as the pagan cosmos absorbs more and more of the post-Christian world.
A synodal kumbaya to y’all!
Waiting for the answers to the priest’s questions.
Pandering to globalists is the reason for this pontificate; it would seem that proclaiming Jesus Christ crucified for our sins is inadmissible.