“Don’t mess with my children,” reads a sign carried by a participant in one of some 30 marches on Oct. 19, 2024, in Colombia to protest the country’s health department memorandom that sanctions sex changes for minors. / Credit: Eduardo Berdejo/ACI Prensa
ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 21, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).
Thousands of Colombians took to the streets in some 30 of the country’s cities over the weekend to demand the repeal of External Memorandum 115 of the national government’s Superintendency of Health (Supersalud) that sanctions sex changes for minors.
Sponsored by several organizations that defend life and the family, including Unidos por la Vida (United for Life) and Unión Familia (Family Union), the marches saw wide participation by the country’s citizens, including families, religious leaders, and health professionals.
In addition to Bogotá, there were demonstrations in Cali, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and Santa Marta, among other cities.
The demonstration in Bogotá, the country’s capital, started from National Park and headed to Bolívar Plaza.
Family Union stated on Instagram that “more than 30 cities have raised their voices to say ‘not with children’” in reference to the memorandum Supersalud published on Sept. 21 that provides “general instructions for inspection, oversight, and control to guarantee the right to health of trans people in Colombia.”
Section H is dedicated to “trans children and adolescents who are in the process of development” and states that the objective is for minors to have “healthy development and support in the affirmation of identity and/or gender expression in these stages of the life cycle.”
In support of its action, the Supersalud document cited in footnote 26 rulings by the Constitutional Court backing sex changes for minors.
Thousands of Colombians participated in “Not with Children” marches across the country to demand the repeal of the government policy that backs sex changes for children. Credit: Eduardo Berdejo/ACI Prensa
Although at the beginning a small group of trans activists in Bogotá tried to stop the demonstration in the country’s capital city, marchers continued their course toward the city’s historic downtown with signs demanding respect for the integral well-being of minors, including the march’s slogan, “Don’t mess with children.”
The slogan was directed especially at Superintendent of Health Luis Carlos Leal, who was appointed to that position by President Gustavo Petro.
In declarations made prior to the demonstration, the president of United for Life, Jesús Magaña, charged that Leal “has issued this memorandum to promote hormone therapy and sex changes, according to his ideology.”
He also said that it’s “a very clear project of President Petro, through his superintendent of health.”
“They don’t care about destroying the family, destroying children; they don’t care about respecting the rights of parents because they want to do it to minors,” the pro-family leader told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
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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Adrián Martínez Cádiz, a news correspondent for EWTN, posted a summons he received from Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior on his Facebook account Oct. 19, 2022. / EWTN News
Havana, Cuba, Oct 21, 2022 / 04:40 am (CNA).
An EWTN correspondent in Havana, Cuba, says he has been summoned by the country’s Ministry of the Interior for interrogation.
Adrián Martínez Cádiz, who only started working with the network on Oct. 12, posted the summons on his Facebook account Wednesday night. EWTN is the parent organization of CNA.
“About 5:55 p.m. a young boy knocked on the door of my house and gave my mother a summons from the Ministry of the Interior for an interrogation … at the Police Station of the Plaza de la Revolución,” Martínez Cádiz wrote.
According to the summons, Martínez Cádiz must appear at 10 a.m. EST on Friday, Oct. 21 before an officer named “Karla” and that, if “does not appear without justified reasons, he will be fined or can be accused of a crime of contempt.”
Queridos hermanos.
Sobre las 5:55 de esta tarde, un muchacho joven tocó la puerta de mi casa y entregó a mi madre una…
Martínez Cádiz asked his followers on social media to “accompany him at that time, from wherever they are, praying Psalm 91.”
That psalm says the following: “You who live under the protection of the Most High God and dwells in the shadow of the omnipotent God, say to the Lord: ‘You are my strength and my refuge, you are my God, in whom I trust.'”
In April 2021, Martínez Cádiz announced that he received death threats from a follower of the Castro regime, who accused him of being too critical of the dictatorship. The subject, who passed by him on a motorcycle, warned him that he would be stabbed, Martínez Cádiz said.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.” / Credit: EWTN Noticias/Screenshot
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 5, 2024 / 18:50 pm (CNA).
Various pro-life, pro-family, and lay leaders of the Catholic Church in Mexico have reacted with concern to the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as president of the country.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.”
For the pro-family leader, Sheinbaum represents continuity with the same progressive agenda of the outgoing administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Citing the growing legalization of abortion and use of gender ideology throughout the country, Cortés explained that “the López Obrador regime culminated in a culture of death, of ideology, not only of gender confusion but also of socialist populist indoctrination.”
However, in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” EWTN’s Spanish-language news program, Cortés emphasized that just as people didn’t vote for López Obrador because of his position on abortion, gender ideology, or for freedoms to be canceled, people didn’t vote for Sheinbaum for those same reasons. What happens, he indicated, is that “when they come to power, they implement [that agenda].”
For Juan Dabdoub, president of the Mexican Family Council (ConFamilia), there are “two important factors” that would explain Sheinbaum’s victory in the presidential elections.
The first, he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, is that in Mexico there is “a poor political culture, which makes a large majority of the people manipulable.”
A second factor, Dabdoub noted, is that “Mexican Catholicism has failed in something extremely important that Pope St. John Paul II already pointed out: ‘A faith that does not create culture is a useless faith.’”
In a Jan. 16, 1982, speech, John Paul II said: “A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”
For the president of ConFamilia, “Mexico has stopped being a country of practicing Catholics and has become one of simply baptized people; and when a Catholic doesn’t live his faith in the outside world, that is, outside his home and his parish, those who dominate the world take control.”
Dabdoub considered Sheinbaum’s victory to be “a brutal threat” to the defense of life, family, and freedoms, since she has “a radical progressive agenda.”
‘Formation and serious work are needed’
For Father Hugo Valdemar, who for 15 years headed the communications office of the Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico when Cardinal Norberto Rivera led the archdiocese, “Catholics must learn that social media are not enough to really influence; serious formation and work are needed, otherwise everything remains up in the air.”
“The big problem is that we haven’t been seriously forming the laity, and nothing is being done to do so,” he told ACI Prensa. However, he noted that with a Sheinbaum administration, “the Church is not in danger. I don’t see an adverse climate, much less persecutory, and Christian values have been violated for a long time.”
What’s next in the battle for life and family?
Pilar Rebollo, director of the Steps for Life platform, pointed out that Sheinbaum’s election “means much more work” for pro-lifers: “It requires us to be united, it requires us to be coordinated,” anticipating possible “frontal attacks on what we know as our values that are foundational.”
Rebollo also emphasized the importance of serving underserved and vulnerable populations, which, she considered, were key to Sheinbaum’s victory. This, she said, must be done “not out of a desire for numbers but zeal for souls, a desire to [heal] wounds, zeal for humanity, to see Christ in others.”
It should be noted that all three candidates for president — Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez — backed the legalization of abortion and the LGBTQ policy agenda, so Mexican voters had no real alternative to vote for a pro-life and pro-family candidate.
Sheinbaum is the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected to Mexico’s presidency. In February of this year, she visited Pope Francis at the Vatican, where she asked him to bless a rose wrought in silver by a Mexican artisan. She later presented it to the rector of the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance anticipates that Claudia Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party. Credit: EWTN News Nightly/Screenshot
During her campaign, Sheinbaum was seen wearing a skirt bearing the image of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe. According to Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance, Sheinbaum also wore a rosary around her neck at a public event. He and others suggested that this was an act of demagoguery intended to appeal to Catholics, who comprise approximately 78% of the country’s population.
Sheinbaum, 61, holds a doctorate in physics specializing in energy and taught at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. Her political militancy began during her student years, joining a group that became the founding youth movement of the socialist Party of Democratic Revolution. She later joined the ruling Morena party. She has been described as a climate activist, having been part of a Nobel Prize-winning commission advising the United Nations on climate change.
Sheinbaum’s tenure as Mexico City mayor was marked by progressive initiatives. For example, the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, noted that as mayor she ended public school policy requiring gender-appropriate uniforms for children. Sheinbaum said: “The era when girls had to wear a skirt and boys had to wear trousers has been left behind; I think that’s passed into history,” and added: “Boys can wear skirts if they want and girls can wear pants if they want.”
While she did not raise the issue during her campaign, Sheinbaum’s Morena party is a firm supporter of abortion. The newly-elected congress will be seated in September, one month before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, thus allowing incumbent president López Obrador an opportunity to push through his legislative initiatives.
Poblete told “EWTN News Nightly” that the 2024 election may have led to a Morena majority in Mexico’s Congress, which has vowed to amend the constitution in order for Mexican Supreme Court justices to be elected by popular ballot, thereby confirming partisan control of the heretofore independent judiciary, which would rule on issues such as abortion and matters of gender ideology. He fears that Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party.
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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