Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. / Олег Чупа via Wikimedia (GFDL).
Rome Newsroom, Mar 18, 2022 / 11:25 am (CNA).
Despite continued attacks by Russian forces, Ukraine is fighting, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said on Friday.
“Again this night bombs and rockets fell on the heads of peaceful inhabitants,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said in a March 18 video message.
“But Ukraine cannot be scared off,” he said. “Ukraine is fighting. Ukraine is fighting for its right to freedom and independence. Ukraine is standing.”
He said that Ukrainians continued to pray for their soldiers, who are standing up to the larger Russian army and have stopped it from entering further into Ukraine. The full-scale Russian invasion, which began on Feb. 24, entered its fourth week on March 17.
The major archbishop also drew attention to the sacrifices of Ukrainian medical workers.
“Today we would like to thank the Lord God for our medics, because we turn to them for help, as if to the first witnesses of human pain,” he said, asking for prayers particularly for medical workers, doctors, nurses, and paramedics.
He stressed that “medical workers are today perhaps the main targets of various attacks and strikes of the enemy against the peaceful population.”
Shevchuk cited information from Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, which reported that 117 hospitals and medical buildings have been directly attacked in Ukraine in the last three weeks.
Of these, seven have been completely destroyed, he said, adding that 43 emergency service vehicles have been shot at and a number of doctors and medical workers killed.
“Today we would like to thank the Lord God for their heroic service to their people,” he said.
“Our medics, our doctors continue to save human life in Ukraine. Today we would like to particularly give thanks in prayer for them, for the medics who deliver babies in cold hospitals without electricity, in Chernihiv, in Mariupol, in Kharkiv, and in other besieged cities in Ukraine.”
The major archbishop also appealed to the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and other international health organizations to speak out in defense of life in Ukraine.
“I thank you for the support you are giving to our medics. But speak your word to the whole world, so that the murder of people in Ukraine ceases immediately,” he urged.
“Today we ask our Lord, the Healer of our souls and bodies: Bless our medics and doctors, rescue the injured, children, soldiers, elderly. Heal the wounds of Your people. O God, rescue Ukraine.”
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ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 5, 2023 / 18:40 pm (CNA).
More than 170 civil society organizations, led by the National Front for the Family and the Citizens’ Initiative for Life and Family, are calling on the political p… […]
This photo taken on Jan. 15, 2024, shows a Chinese flag fluttering below a cross on a Christian church in Pingtan, in China’s southeast Fujian province. / Credit: GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images
CNA Staff, Mar 26, 2024 / 12:45 pm (CNA).
Government restrictions on religion reached their highest levels ever in a key global survey this month, one that has been monitoring those trends for nearly two decades.
Pew Research said this month that its religious restriction and hostilities survey showed that in 2021, government restrictions on religion reached “a new peak globally,” registering “the highest global median score” in the nearly 20 years that they have been analyzing the global data.
Overall China, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Algeria topped the report’s list of countries with “very high” government restrictions. Nigeria and India were the worst-ranked countries for social hostilities.
Pew in its report noted several changes to both lists. Between 2020 and 2021, Pakistan and Turkmenistan moved from the list of countries with “high” government restrictions to those with “very high” restrictions. The Eastern African country of Eritrea and the Southeast Asian country of Brunei both moved from the “very high” category to “high.”
Roughly equal numbers of countries between 2020 and 2021 had increases and decreases in their government restriction scores, Pew said, while 55 countries had no changes at all.
No countries moved up into the “very high” category of social hostilities, meanwhile, though several — including Iraq and Libya — moved from “very high” to “high.”
The survey showed religious groups facing government harassment in 183 countries, which Pew said was the highest on record; the governments of just over 160 countries, meanwhile — a near-record number — interfered with religious worship.
“Harassment” in Pew’s survey includes the “use of physical force targeting religious groups” and “derogatory comments by government officials” as well as “laws and policies that single out groups or make religious practice more difficult.”
“Interference” in religious worship, meanwhile, was defined as “laws, policies, and actions that disrupt religious activities, the withholding of permits for such activities, or denying access to places of worship” as well as rules that interfere with burial rights and other components of religious belief.
The total number of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of government restrictions declined slightly from the prior year, though the “median index score for all countries” still rose overall.
Just over one-fifth of countries had high levels of “social hostilities” involving “violence and harassment by private individuals, organizations, or groups,” a decline from its peak of about one-third of countries in 2012.
The survey also cited incidents such as what the U.S. State Department called a campaign for the “de-Islamization of the Netherlands,” led by politician Geert Wilders, as well as reports of antisemitism in Finland coupled with an insufficient police response to those incidents.
Christians were targeted in 160 of the surveyed countries, while Muslims were harassed and restricted in just over 140 and Jews in 91.
The survey argued that the frequency of harassment “should not be interpreted” to indicate that those groups are the “most persecuted” in the world. Jews, for instance, were the third-most harassed religious group in the survey, though they make up just 0.2% of the world’s population.
Globally, across regions, countries in Eastern Europe and Asia posted the highest rates of government restrictions on religion, while countries in Western Europe and much of Africa reported high to moderate levels of those restrictions. Restrictions in the United States were listed as “moderate.”
Overall, the survey’s global government restriction index was the highest on record, reaching 3.0 on a 10-point scale and up from 1.8 in 2007.
The 10-point social hostilities index, meanwhile, stood at 1.6, up from 1.0 in 2007.
The trailer of the upcoming Russell Crowe movie “The Pope’s Exorcist” indicates that the film might not do justice to the Italian exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth or the rite of exorcism as practiced in the Catholic Church, according to an exorcist organization Amorth himself helped to found.
The International Association of Exorcists on March 7 voiced concern that the film seems to fall under the category of “splatter cinema,” which it calls a “sub-genre of horror.”
The Vatican, the statement said, is filmed with a high-contrast “chiaroscuro” effect seen in film noir.
This gives the film a “‘Da Vinci Code’ effect to instill in the public the usual doubt: Who is the real enemy? The devil or ecclesiastical ‘power’?” the exorcists’ association said.
While special effects are “inevitable” in every film about demonic possession, “everything is exaggerated, with striking physical and verbal manifestations, typical of horror films,” the group said.
“This way of narrating Don Amorth’s experience as an exorcist, in addition to being contrary to historical reality, distorts and falsifies what is truly lived and experienced during the exorcism of truly possessed people,” said the association, which claims more than 800 exorcist members and more than 120 auxiliary members worldwide.
“In addition, it is offensive with regard to the state of suffering in which those who are victims of an extraordinary action of the devil find themselves,” the group’s statement added. The statement responded to the release of the movie trailer and promised a more in-depth response to the film’s April 14 theatrical release.
Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of Rome, speaks to CNA on May 22, 2013. Steven Driscoll/CNA
Amorth, who died at age 91 in 2016, said he performed an estimated 100,000 exorcisms during his life. He was perhaps the world’s best-known exorcist and the author of many books, including “An Exorcist Tells His Story,” reportedly an inspiration for the upcoming movie.
Several of Amorth’s books are carried by the U.S. publisher Sophia Institute Press. The publisher’s newly released book “The Pope’s Exorcist: 101 Questions About Fr. Gabriele Amorth” is an interview in which the priest addresses many topics ranging from prayer to pop music.
Michael Lichens, editor and spokesperson at Sophia Institute Press, voiced some agreement with the exorcist group.
“The International Association of Exorcists is right to be concerned and I’m thankful for their words,” Lichens told CNA. “My hope is that audiences will remember that Father Amorth is a real person with a great legacy and perhaps a few moviegoers will look up an interview or pick up his books.”
“This was a man who included St. Padre Pio and Blessed Giacomo Alberione as mentors, as well as Servant of God Candido Amantini, who was his teacher for the ministry of exorcism,” he said. “Father Amorth fought as a partisan as a young man and grew to fight greater evil as an exorcist. His life is an inspiration and I know that his work and words will still reach many.”
Amorth was born in Modena, Italy, on May 1, 1925. In wartime Italy, he was a soldier with the underground anti-fascist partisans. He was ordained a priest in 1951. He did not become an exorcist until 1986, when Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, named him the diocesan exorcist.
The priest was frequently in the news for his comments on the subject of demonic forces. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in 2000, he said: “I speak with the devil every day. I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in, day out, for 14 years.”
The movie “The Pope’s Exorcist” claims to be “inspired by the actual files of the Vatican’s chief exorcist.” The Sony Pictures movie stars the New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe as Amorth. Crowe’s character wears a gray beard and speaks English with a noticeable accent.
“The majority of cases do not require an exorcism,” the Amorth character says in the movie’s first trailer. A cardinal explains that Crowe’s character recommends 98% of people who seek an exorcism to doctors and psychiatrists instead.
“The other 2%… I call it… evil,” Crowe adds.
The plot appears to concern Amorth’s encounter with a particular demon. Crowe’s character suggests the Church “has fought this demon before” but covered it up.
“We need to find out why,” he says.
The trailer shows short dramatic scenes of exorcism, including a confrontation between Amorth and a girl apparently suffering demonic possession.
The International Association of Exorcists said such a representation makes exorcism become “a spectacle aimed at inspiring strong and unhealthy emotions, thanks to a gloomy scenography, with sound effects such as to inspire only anxiety, restlessness, and fear in the viewer.”
“The end result is to instill the conviction that exorcism is an abnormal, monstrous, and frightening phenomenon, whose only protagonist is the devil, whose violent reactions can be faced with great difficulty,” said the exorcist group. “This is the exact opposite of what occurs in the context of exorcism celebrated in the Catholic Church in obedience to the directives imparted by it.”
CNA sought comment from Sony Pictures and “The Pope’s Exorcist” executive producer Father Edward Siebert, SJ, but did not receive a response by publication.
Amorth co-founded the International Association of Exorcists with Father René Laurentin in 1994. In 2014 the Catholic Church recognized the group as a Private Association of the Faithful.
The association trains exorcists and promotes their incorporation into local communities and normal pastoral care. It also aims to promote “correct knowledge” about exorcism ministry and collaboration with medical and psychiatric experts who have competence in spirituality.
Exorcism is considered a sacramental, not a sacrament, of the Church. It is a liturgical rite that only a priest can perform.
Hollywood made the topic a focus most famously in the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,” based on the novel by William Peter Blatty.
“Most movies about Catholicism and spiritual warfare sensationalize,” Lichens of Sophia Institute Press told CNA. “Sensationalism and terror sell tickets. As a fan of horror movies, I can understand and even appreciate that. As a Catholic who has studied Father Amorth, though, I think such sensationalism distorts the important work of exorcism.”
“On the other hand, ‘The Exorcist’ made the wider public more curious about this overlooked ministry. That is a good thing that came out, despite other reservations and concerns,” he continued. “Still, I would love it if a screenwriter and director spoke to exorcists and tried to show the often-quotidian parts of the ministry.”
An unhealthy curiosity can be a problem, Lichens said.
“When I work as a spokesperson for Amorth’s books, I am always concerned about inspiring curiosity about the demonic,” he told CNA. “As Christians, we know we have nothing to fear from the demonic but curiosity might lead some to want to seek out the supernatural or the demonic. Father Amorth has dozens of stories of people who found themselves afflicted after party game seances.”
Lichens encouraged those who are curious to read more of Amorth’s writings, some of which are excerpted on the Catholic Exchange website. Sophia Institute Press has published “Diary of an American Exorcist” by Monsignor Stephen Rosetti and “The Exorcism Files” by the American lay Catholic Adam Blai.
“First and foremost, Father Amorth was involved in a healing ministry,” Lichens said. “Like other exorcists, his work often involved doctors in physical and mental health because the goal is to bring healing and hope to the potentially afflicted.”
“Those of us who read Amorth might have been excited to read firsthand accounts of spiritual warfare, but readers quickly see a man whose heart was always full of love for those who sought his help,” he added.
The International Association of Exorcists, for its part, praised the 2016 documentary “Deliver Us,” saying this shows “what exorcism really is in the Catholic Church and “the authentic traits of a Catholic exorcist.” It shows exorcism as “a most joyful event,” in their view, because through experiencing “the presence and action of Christ the Lord and of the Communion of the Saints,” those who are “tormented by the extraordinary action of the devil gradually find liberation and peace.”
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