Manila, Philippines, Aug 14, 2018 / 09:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic parishes and assistance centers are ready to help victims of storms and major floods in the Manila area, said Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila over the weekend.
“To our brothers and sisters affected by the flooding, just go to your parishes and social action centers if you are in need of help,” the cardinal told Radio Veritas Aug. 12. “Those who want to send their help in any way they can, they can contact our parishes and social action centers and they will be willing to accept them.”
The cardinal has asked for prayers for those affected by recent flooding, while also warning against the dangers of environmental destruction.
“Part of our call is for everyone not to add to what could destroy our environment,” he said.
The southeast monsoon, drawing more force from a tropical storm, brought rains and floods to the Manila area over the weekend. Floodwaters exceeded six feet in depth.
The storms have affected more than 1.1 million people. At least three people were killed and about 60,000 people were displaced from their homes and took refuge in evacuation centers, CBCP News reports.
More flooding is expected in the next few days.
Cleanup has begun in Manila, including efforts to remove the debris and garbage that the floods left on roads and streets.
The cardinal linked the piles of garbage to human action.
“Often times, we are the first ones who are affected by the damages we have caused our common home,” he said. “So this may serve as a reiteration of our call for us not to add anymore to the destruction of our planet.”
He encouraged Filipinos to “forget about our culture of just throwing around anything and everything.”
“Let us stop being disrespectful and indifferent of our common home,” he said.
Fr. Edwin Gariguez, executive secretary of Caritas Philippines, said Caritas affiliates in Manila, Antipolo and Pasig provided food relief to at least 1,500 families since Saturday.
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Melbourne, Australia, Oct 20, 2017 / 10:31 am (CNA).- A bill to legalize assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia was passed by Victoria’s Legislative Assembly on Friday after 26 hours of debate.
The bill will now advance to the upper house of the Australian state’s parliament, the Legislative Council, where it is expected to pass. If it is signed into law, Victoria would become Australia’s first state to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The bill passed in the Legislative Assembly in a 47-37 vote Oct. 20. Hundreds of amendments were proposed, but none were accepted.
Critics of the bill worry it abandons the vulnerable, among other problems.
The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill is based on similar laws in the U.S. It allows adults who are terminally ill, expected to die within 12 months, and mentally competent to ask their doctor to prescribe a drug that will end their lives, the U.K.-based news site Politics Home reports. Physicians would be allowed to administer a lethal injection only when the patient is physically incapable of doing so.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, of the Australian Labor Party, had introduced the bill.
Victoria’s coroner told the members of parliament that one terminally ill Victorian was taking their own life every week because of intolerable pain.
Critics of the bill questioned a lack of detail about what lethal drugs will be used. They said there is not a requirement for a psychological assessment to determine whether the patient suffers depression, the U.K. newspaper The Guardian reports. They also cited the risk that the elderly will be coerced into committing suicide.
Backers of the bill said it would only affect a small number of people who suffer terminal illnesses. They objected that palliative care cannot deal with all pain. They also claim the bill has among the most stringent safeguards in the world.
Paul Keating, who was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996 and a member of the Australian Labor Party, lamented the bill’s advancement, calling it a “truly sad moment for the whole country.”
“What this means is that the civic guidance provided by the state, in our second largest state, is voided when it comes to the protection of our most valuable asset,” Keating said in a statement. “To do or to cause to abrogate the core human instinct to survive and live, for the spirit to hang on against physical deprivations, is to turn one’s back on the compulsion built into the hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution.”
Keating also wrote that “Under Victorian law there will be people whose lives we honour and those we believe are better off dead.”
Bishop Peter Stasiuk of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne said support of euthanasia and assisted suicide is “motivated by a false sense of compassion.” He wrote in an Oct. 12 pastoral letter that “Endorsing suicide as a solution to pain or suffering sends the wrong message, especially to the young. Suicide is a tragedy for the person who takes their own life, but it also seriously affects their family and community. It would be morally corrupt to legally endorse any form of suicide.”
And the Roman Catholic bishops in Victoria wrote a similar pastoral letter Oct. 9, noting that Victoria has “abolished the death penalty because we learnt that in spite of our best efforts, our justice system could never guarantee that an innocent person would not be killed by mistake or by false evidence. Our health system, like our justice system, is not perfect. Mistakes happen. To introduce this law presuming everyone will be safe is naïve. We need to consider the safety of those whose ability to speak for themselves is limited by fear, disability, illness or old age.”
In July Catholics, including Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, and leaders from several Christian denominations joined together to sign a letter protesting the proposal, charging that euthanasia and assisted suicide “represent the abandonment of those who are in greatest need of our care and support.”
In April, the local Catholic bishops said the proposal was based on “misplaced compassion.”
“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are the opposite of care and represent the abandonment of the sick and the suffering, of older and dying persons,” they said in a pastoral letter. They also invoked the commandment “You Shall Not Kill” and cited the situation in countries like Holland where there are pressures on the elderly to commit suicide.
The effort to legalize assisted suicide in Victoria has been debated for more than a year. In June 2016, a parliamentary committee recommended legalizing voluntary euthanasia.
At the time, some physicians criticized the move. They charged that some lawmakers had naïve expectations and overestimated the speed and painlessness of a euthanasia death.
They warned that the legalization risked diminishing palliative care, which they said was already underused and underfunded.
A proposal similar to the Victorian bill will be debated in New South Wales in November. Last year, the national parliament defeated a euthanasia bill, as did the parliament of Tasmania in 2013.
Australia’s Northern Territory legalized assisted suicide in 1995, but the national parliament overturned the law two years later.
St. Paul’s Church, in Imphal, capital of Manipur state, after the church was set on fire in 2023. / Credit: Anto Akkara
Bangalore, India, Mar 28, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
After Indian officials’ announcement that Easter Sunday would be a “working day” this year was met with widespread protests from Christians, the governor of the state of Manipur in northeast India issued a statement reestablishing the annual holiday.
The March 28 reversal by the Manipur government, which is led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came within 24 hours after Manipur Gov. Anusuiya Uikey canceled the Easter holiday.
“In partial modification of the government order … dated 27th March, 2024, the governor of Manipur is pleased to declare that only the 30th March 2024 [Saturday] will be working day for all government offices,” the order read.
The previous day the government had announced that “the governor of Manipur is pleased to declare 30th [Saturday] and 31st [Sunday] March 2024 as working days for all government offices.”
Christians account for nearly half of Manipur’s population of 3.7 million.
Archbishop Linus Neli, who heads the 100,000-strong Catholic Church in the state, told CNA that the Church had protested the cancellations of the Easter holiday to government officials.
“We are storming the competent authority, awaiting reply,” Neli said.
A half an hour later, the archbishop shared with CNA the government’s “revised order regarding [Easter] working day.”
Tribal dancers waiting their turn at the celebration following the installation Mass of the new archbishop of Imphal Archdiocese, Linus Neli. Credit: Anto Akkara
Prior to that, several Christian groups including those in Manipur had called for the cancellation of the order that stunned the Christians across the country.
“The decision to declare these sacred days as regular working days is not only insensitive but also disrespectful towards the religious sentiments of the significant portion of the population in Manipur,” lamented the Senapati District Catholic Union of Manipur in its condemnation of the governor’s order on the morning of March 28.
Of the 3.7 million Christians in Manipur state, 26% are ethnic Naga tribals, 16% are members of Kuki tribes, and more than 10% of the nearly 2 million Meiteis have also embraced the Christian faith in Manipur.
“By compelling government offices to operate on these holy days, the order not only disregards the religious rights of the Christian community but also fails to recognize the cultural diversity and religious pluralism that should be upheld and respected in democratic society,” the Senapati district Catholic forum pointed out.
“Height of insanity of the Manipur government,” a Christian pastor from Manipur who runs a theological college outside Manipur told CNA.
“What is happening is Manipur is nothing new,” John Dayal, an outspoken Catholic columnist and activist, told CNA.
“The BJP governments both at the national level and in several states had tried to insult and tinker with Christian holy days like Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter several times in the past,” Dayal pointed out.
“In 2002, I moved the Delhi High Court successfully against the bid to make Good Friday and Easter Sunday ‘working days’ against the Atal Behari Vajpayee [who was the BJP prime minister then],” said Dayal, a former member of the National Integration Council headed by the prime minister.
“This Manipur move is keeping with [Prime Minister] Modi’s consistent scheme to whittle away rights of Christianity and Islam in new ‘Bharat.’” (Bharat is the new name the Hindu nationalist BJP has proposed for India).
Since May 2023, Manipur has seen a protracted violent clash between the majority Meiteis, most of them Hindus, and the minority Kukis (all of them Christians) that has left more than 230 dead by the official conservative death toll. Over 50,000 Kuki Christians have been chased out from the Imphal valley along with over 10,000 Meiteis who were driven out from Kuki strongholds.
Amid the violence, over 600 churches have also been destroyed. The majority of them were Kuki, but 250 Meiti Christian churches were destroyed as well in what is seen as an attempt to stop Meiteis from embracing the Christian faith.
Meanwhile, in another piece of good news for the Christian community, Carmelite Sister Mercy, who had been arrested on a charge of “abetting the suicide” of a sixth-grade girl at the Carmel School in Ambikapur in central Chattisgarh state, was released on bail on March 28 by the trial court.
The girl student committed suicide at home after the nun had questioned her and two other girls for being together in the bathroom for a long period of time. After other students complained to the nun, she asked the girls to bring the parents to school the next day.
Following the suicide of the girl, Hindu nationalist organizations promptly organized a huge crowd to march to the school. Police were brought in and arrested the nun the next morning. Although the large crowd tried to storm the school on Feb. 8, police prevented an arson attack.
Washington D.C., Sep 26, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
As Cardinal Joseph Zen begins his trial in Hong Kong, a number of Catholic leaders and human rights activists have come out with statements of support for… […]
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