Bishop Carlos Herrera is president of the Bishops’ Conference of Nicaragua. / Credit: Bishops Conference of Nicaragua
Lima Newsroom, Dec 4, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
The bishops of Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are inviting the faithful to participate in a day of prayer for the Catholic Church in Nicaragua on Sunday, Dec. 8, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
“On the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Nicaraguan Catholics lift their voices in a great festival of praise known as ‘la gritería,’” the bishops of Central America said in a Nov. 29 statement. On this occasion, they pointed out, “in Nicaragua and throughout Central America, the traditional Marian devotion is expressed that is so deeply rooted in the piety of our people.”
The “gritería” (clamor) is celebrated on Dec. 7 in Nicaragua on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, when the faithful walk the streets and visit altars erected in honor of the Virgin Mary praying, singing, and lighting fireworks while shouting “Who causes so much joy?” and responding with “The conception of Mary!”
In their statement, the bishops expressed their “profound solidarity and communion with the people of God in Nicaragua, who often face a challenging reality.”
In their text, the prelates encouraged Catholics in each jurisdiction or parish to “join in prayer this cry of faith and hope, peace and freedom, which the faithful people direct to their mother and patroness. Our thoughts are with you, Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. We fraternally join your outcry, which respectfully hopes to find an answer.”
The bishops’ announcement came just prior to the Dec. 2 letter Pope Francis wrote to the Catholics of Nicaragua in which he encouraged them to be certain that faith and hope “work miracles.”
Relentless persecution
The persecution of the Catholic Church by the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, seems to have no end.
A few days ago, the regime approved a reform of the country’s constitution that further restricts religious freedom and freedom of expression in the country, which are already quite limited. Among the most controversial measures is a provision that requires that “religious organizations must remain free of all foreign control.”
In mid-November, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship expelled from the country the bishop of Jinotega and president of the country’s bishops’ conference, Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, who had criticized a mayor, an Ortega supporter, who interfered with Mass by blasting loud music in front of the diocesan cathedral.
Herrera Gutiérrez and other bishops, priests, and religious have been subject to constant monitoring, persecution, and abduction as well as imprisonment in deplorable conditions.
Numerous members of the clergy have been deported from the country, stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and made stateless, as is the case of the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, who was exiled to Rome in January along with Isidoro Mora, the bishop of Siuna; 15 priests; and two seminarians.
Under the socialist regime, Catholics have been silenced and public expressions of faith, such as prayers for the persecuted and other pastoral and spiritual activities, have been prohibited.
Between 2018 and 2024, 870 attacks against the Catholic Church were recorded in Nicaragua, as documented in the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?” by exiled lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
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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Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct 10, 2018 / 01:17 pm (ACI Prensa).- Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ charitable outreach, is providing first aid and sending material aid to the areas affected by the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti Saturday.
The earthquake occurred at 8:12 pm Oct. 6 about 12 miles from the department of Porte-de-Paix. It lasted 53 seconds and was felt in eight out of ten of the country’s departments. A tsunami alert was not sent out after the earthquake.
Haiti’s Civil Defense department reported Oct. 8 that 15 people died, 333 were injured, and 7,000 homes were destroyed.
Beatriz Afanador, the CRS communications officer for Hispanoamerica and Latin America, told ACI Prensa via e-mail that a CRS team had already made an assessment of the emergency and that “a truck was due to arrive Oct. 9 with supplies including tarps for temporary shelters, hygiene kits with buckets, chlorine, shovels and other items.”
“The truck will be arriving sometimein the afternoon. Since the area is remote and extremely poor, a long term effort will have to be made to help them get the aid they need to rebuild or repair their homes and find the means to sustain themselves.”
CRS indicated in a communiqué that the most significant damage occurred in the departments of Nord Ouest and Artibonite.
“Most of the injuries in the Nord Ouestdepartment were due to panic and resulting accidents. Due to the remote location and the available emergency medical services, the main hospitals in the affected areas report that they do not have the capacity to respond to the needs,” the statements says.
It was also reported that “the facade of the church in Plaissance was cracked, but there are no reports of damage to the main infrastructure. All the roads and bridges appear to be open at this time.”
Finally, CRS said that immediately after the earthquake there were reports of panic in many of the country’s cities.
“The injuries in Nord Ouestwere mainly due to this reaction, including motorcycle accidents, cardiac arrest and premature birth. The population remains tense as rumors are circulating of a bigger earthquake,” the communiqué concludes.
CRS is currently working hand in hand with the Civil Defense, the Haitian Red Cross, and other NGOs that are aiding the affected areas.
Cuernavaca, Mexico, Apr 2, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Bishop of Cuernavaca, Mexico has encouraged Catholics to intensify their prayers for peace, after the publication of a report that 15 Mexican cities figure among the most violent in the world.
Mexico’s Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice prepares each year a list of the 50 most violent cities in the world, on the basis of the number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The March 12 report said that during 2018 the most dangerous global cities were Tijuana and Acapulco.
Victoria, Juárez and Irapuato hold fourth, fifth and sixth place. Further down the list are Cancún, Culiacán, Uruapan, Obregón, Coatzacoalcos, Celaya, Ensenada, Tepic, Reynosa and Chihuahua.
Caracas, Venezuela, holds third place. Only eight cities are not in Latin America, among them are St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and New Orleans, ranking 15th, 23rd, 46th and 50th respectively.
In a video message, Bishop Ramón Castro Castro said the fact that Mexican cities head the list “makes evident the situation of violence and lack of safety that Mexico is going through.”
“What do we do, brothers? I invite you, once more, to continue the prayer vigils for peace, for justice.”
The Mexican prelate said that praying for peace “Is worth the effort. In itself prayer does us so much good. During this Lent we invite you to increase it.”
“And if we offer that prayer we also feel that we’re not idle but that we’ve done something to change the sad reality we are experiencing.”
“Be courageous! It’s worth it,” he concluded.
This story was originally published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency. It was translated and adapted by CNA.
Members of the Sts’ailes First Nation at Holy Rosary Cathedral last year for the first Mass to integrate a First Nation language. A Cardus report presents the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking about their faith and distinguishing it from the traditional spirituality they’re often associated with. / Photo courtesy Nicholas Elbers, 2022
Vancouver, Canada, May 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
A groundbreaking report published by the Ottawa-based Cardus Institute has given voice to Indigenous Canadians who are frustrated by secular society’s unawareness of — or unwillingness to accept — the fact that almost half of them are Christian.
“I find that insulting to Indigenous people’s intelligence and freedom,” Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette said of the prejudice he regularly encounters.
Bouvette, who has mixed Cree-Métis and Italian heritage and now serves as vicar for vocations and Young Adults in the Diocese of Calgary, was one of 12 individuals interviewed by Cardus for the report “Indigenous Voices of Faith.”
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, left, leads a post-production discussion by Indigenous Voices of Faith participants. Photo courtesy of Cardus
Prejudice against Indigenous Christians has become so strong, even inside some Indigenous communities, “that Indigenous Christians in this country right now are living in the time of new martyrdom,” Bouvette said.
Although that martyrdom may not cost them their lives, “they are ostracized and humiliated sometimes within their own communities if they openly express their Christian or Catholic faith.”
Statistics Canada reported last year that the 2021 census found that 850,000, or 47%, of Canada’s 1.8-million Indigenous people identify as Christian and that more than a quarter of the total report they are Catholic. Only 73,000, or 4%, of Indigenous people said they adhere to traditional Indigenous spiritual beliefs.
In a new report, Cardus wants to “amplify the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking for themselves about their religious commitments, which sometimes clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Photo courtesy of Cardus
Ukrainian Catholic Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Faith Communities, conducted the interviews for the think tank last fall. He published his report in March at a time when Canadian mainstream media and many political leaders continued to stir division and prejudice through misleading commentary about abandoned cemeteries at Indian Residential Schools.
The purpose of the report, he writes, “is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of Indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”
Too often, however, “the public narrative implies, or boldly declares, that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous Canadians and Christianity or other faiths,” Bennett said. “[M]any Indigenous Canadians strongly disagree with those narratives.”
Father Bouvette is clearly one of those.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of [my Indigenous grandmother’s] time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to,” Bouvette said. “No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down.”
Bouvette said his “grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for 99 years and 11 months of her life. She was a Christian from the day of her birth, and she remained a Christian until the day of her death. And so that was not by the consequence of some imposition.”
Nevertheless, Canadians continue to labor under a prejudice holding the opposite view. “I do believe that probably the majority of Canadians at this time, out of some mistaken notion of guilt for whatever their cultural or ethnic background is, think they are somehow responsible for Indigenous people having had something thrust upon them that they didn’t want,” Bouvette said.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us,” Father Cristino Bouvette says in a Cardus report on Indigenous faith. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“But I would say, give us a little more credit than that and assume that if there is an Indigenous person who continues to persevere in the Christian faith it is because they want to, because they understand why they have chosen to in the first place, and they remain committed to it. We should be respectful of that.”
The executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, Christian Elia, agrees and says society should grant Indigenous Catholics the respect and personal agency that is due all Canadians.
“Firstly, I am not an Indigenous person, so I cannot speak for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but neither can non-Indigenous secularists who choose to ignore that Indigenous people in Canada continue to self-identify as Christian, the majority of these Catholic,” Elia said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
He said his organization has heard from many Indigenous Catholics who are “growing weary of the ongoing assumption that somehow they have been coerced into the faith, that it is inconceivable that they wish to be Catholic. This condescending attitude must stop.”
Deacon Rennie Nahanee, who serves at St. Paul’s Indian Church in North Vancouver, was another of the 12 whom Bennett interviewed. A cradle Catholic and member of the Squamish First Nation, Deacon Nahanee said there is nothing incompatible with being both an authentic Indigenous person and a Catholic.
“I’m pretty sure we had a belief in the Creator even before the missionaries came to British Columbia,” he said. “And our feelings, our thoughts about creation, the way that we lived and carried out our everyday lives, and the way that we helped to preserve the land and the animals that we used for food, our spirituality and our culture, were similar to the spirituality of the Catholic Church.”
“I believe that’s why our people accepted it. I don’t think anybody can separate themselves from God, even though they say so.”
Interviewed later by The B.C. Catholic, Nahanee said he is not bothered by the sort of prejudice outlined by Bouvette. “People are going to say or do what they want,” he said.
Voices of Indigenous Christianity
Bennett, program director of Cardus Faith Communities, interviewed 12 Indigenous Canadians, most of them Christian, about their religious commitments, “which often clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Here is a selection of some of their comments:
Tal James of the Penelakut First Nation in Nanaimo spoke about the relationship between Indigenous culture and his Christian faith:
Tal James and wife Christina. Photo courtesy of Project 620 – James Ministry
“I think … that our [Indigenous] cultures were complete, and in Jesus they’re more complete. I think that’s a big thing and a big step for a lot of us. You’re going to have a lot of non-Indigenous people look at you and question your actions based on your Aboriginal heritage. Don’t take that to heart. They’re the ignorant ones who don’t want you to flourish. Those of you who are Christians, First Nations Christians, you come to the table with the same gifting that non-Aboriginal people have. For them to say, ‘We want to make room for you at the table,’ correct them. You are already at the table, and encourage them to step back and allow your gifts to flourish. Because it’s one in the same spirit.”
Rose-Alma McDonald, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, which borders New York, Ontario, and Quebec, talked about re-embracing her Catholic faith:
Rose-Alma McDonald. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“I surprised everybody, including myself, in terms of embracing Catholicism after 20 years away. So I’ve had a few epiphanies in the sense that this is why my mother made me do so much in the church growing up. When I’m working, volunteering, and doing stuff in the church, I remember that. I keep remembering I’m Catholic and I’m still Catholic. I will stay Catholic because of the way I was raised.”
Jeff Decontie, a Mohawk from the Algonquin First Nations who lives in Ottawa, talked about being a person of faith in a secular world:
Jeff Decontie. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“Secular worldviews can sort of eat up everything around them and accept a whole wide range of beliefs at the same time. For example, you have the prevailing scientific thinking alongside New Age believers, and people in society just accept this, saying, ‘Oh, whatever it is you believe in, all religions lead to the same thing.’ No one questions it. How can these contradictions coexist? … Then we ask an [Indigenous] elder to lead prayer? Any other religion would be a no-no, but you can ask for an elder who’s going to pray a generic prayer to some generic Creator, and it’s not going to ruffle any feathers. I think that’s the danger of secular thought creeping into Canada: It goes unnoticed, it’s perceived as neutral, but at the same time it’s welcoming a whole wide range of beliefs. And it doesn’t just influence Indigenous thought. It’s influencing Christianity.”
Rosella Kinoshameg, a member of the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, spoke about being Indigenous and Catholic:
Rosella Kinoshameg. Photo courtesy of the Catholic Register
“Well, I can’t change being Indigenous. That’s something that is me. I can’t change that. But to believe in the things that I was taught, the traditional things, the way of life and the meanings of these things, and then in a church, well, those things help one another and they make me feel stronger.”
This article was originally published May 10, 2023, in The B.C. Catholic, a weekly publication serving the Catholic community in British Columbia, Canada, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
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