Eduardo Verástegui, filmmaker and aspiring presidential candidate in Mexico, published a “manifesto” against gender ideology, pledging to eliminate gender ideology indoctrination from schools if he is elected president of the nation.
Verástegui, producer of the box office hit “Sound of Freedom,” which exposes child sex trafficking, must gather almost 1 million signatures by early January to get on the 2024 ballot.
Gender ideology holds that biological sex does not determine one’s gender and that people can define their sexual orientation and identity according to their preferences and even contrary to biological reality.
“Let it be very clear. If they give me the opportunity to be president of Mexico, I will not allow the entire LGBT+ alphabet to continue contaminating our nation. I don’t want Mexican children sexualized and indoctrinated in schools with books that promote gender ideology,” the Mexican actor wrote.
Verástegui wrote on X on Dec. 3 that if he becomes president he will not allow “propaganda in public places nor adoptions that deprive children from having a dad and a mom. There is no right to adopt, there is the right of children to be adopted.”
“All Mexicans will have the same opportunities, without privileges. And there will be no men usurping a woman’s spot in sports competitions, reducing them to mere spectators as athletes with a physical advantage win,” he continued.
The pro-life activist also noted: “In Mexico we have a beautiful flag and that is the only flag that represents us, and there’s room for all of us there. We are not going to allow vocal minority groups to come and define public policies that affect the vast majority of our nation.”
“Long live the family!” he concluded.
Verástegui filed Sept. 7 as an independent candidate for president in the 2024 elections.
According to electoral regulations, after filing his intention to run for president with the National Electoral Institute, Verástegui must gather by Jan. 6, 2024, the number of signatures equivalent to 1% of registered voters in the country, distributed over at least 17 states (out of 31 plus Mexico City) with the same percentage in each of them. This is equivalent to approximately 1 million signatures.
This story was first publishedby ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Alfred Magero, Matthew Njogu, and Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi are three Catholic fathers from Africa who recently shared insights about being a present dad, protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and being a model of family values for their children with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa. / Credit: Photos courtesy of ACI Africa
ACI Africa, Jun 17, 2024 / 12:37 pm (CNA).
On the occasion of Father’s Day 2024, a day focused on the celebration of fatherhood, four Catholic men from different African countries recently shared their experiences of impacting the lives of their children.
The Catholic fathers — who hail from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria — talk about the importance of “being present,” of protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and of being a model of family values for their children, who they believe someday will become parents as well.
Tony Nnachetta, 68: Fatherhood is a full-time enterprise
Tony Nnachetta shares a moment with Pope Francis. The married father of four is a parishioner in the Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Tony Nnachetta is a married father of four who attends the Church of the Assumption Parish in Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Lagos. Nnachettahas been a parishioner there for 40 years, and he was wed there 38 years ago. A member of the Grand Knights of St. Mulumba, he originally hails from the Archdiocese of Onitsha.
I got married to my friend after we dated for four years. I was looking forward to fatherhood and I was mentally prepared for it. Here are the lessons I have learned along my fatherhood journey.
First, being a father means you watch your children grow and become independent. You watch them get to a point in their lives where they can engage in a debate with you and even disagree with you.
Fatherhood is a long process. You would be fortunate to go through the entire process and maybe see your children’s children. I have seen mine achieve excellence in school and even leave home and go across the world as they sought to become independent.
Wherever your children go, what is important for them is what they take away from home — what they take from mommy and daddy. I have always told mine to “remember the child of who you are.” This means that they are not allowed to break the Christian values in our family.
I taught them to always stand for the truth and never to flow with the tide. We have encouraged them to always say what they mean. These days, they have jokingly turned around the statement and they tell me, “Remember the dad of who you are,” and we laugh about it.
You can’t always be there to take the bullet for them, but you can support them through prayers. Our family relies a lot on the intercession of the saints. We call ourselves a family of Jesuits because the school my children went to is under the patronage of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Fatherhood is a full-time engagement. It is not like you can be a father in the morning and take a break in the evening. You worry about your children even when they are grown and have left your home. They preoccupy you everywhere. You wonder whether they are warm and if they have had their meal. But all this brings a father immense joy.
Young fathers in Africa are overburdened by poverty. Because of poverty they don’t have a way to help their families. Others are scared to enter the marriage institution. Poverty has made young men weak and helpless. Some are leaving their young families and going to faraway places outside the continent to make a living.
Poverty is eroding family values because some fathers do what they do, including stealing, for their children to survive. In doing so, they are setting a bad example for their children …
It is important for our leaders to confront this situation. They must accept that they have let us down.
Matthew Njogu, 75: Tips on being a present dad
Matthew Njogu is the moderator of the Catholic Men Association at St. Austin’s Msongari Parish of Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi. His children are now adults. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Fathers need to be present in the lives of their children. For a long time, it was assumed that it was the mother’s responsibility to take care of the young children; fathers kept off. But being absent in the lives of your children hurts your relationship with them. They end up growing up without you having any impact on their lives.
Unfortunately, some fathers assume that fatherhood ends at providing material things… They don’t pay attention to their children’s growth milestones. And when they eventually try to establish a connection, they find that the children are already all grown without knowing anything about their fathers.
Simple things like dropping your children off at school help you connect with them. While stuck in traffic on the way to school, you can talk about things that will help you understand your child and for him to know you.
Always try as much as possible to have dinner with your children and help them with schoolwork. And always try to make up for the time you don’t spend with them.
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi, 53: Raising a Christ-like family
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyia runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two, though he tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Nkamanyi runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two children ages 16 and 20. He tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many,” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Here are his insights into nurturing a Christ-like family.
It is the joy of every responsible young man to be called “daddy” or “papa.” Having a Christ-like family is the greatest gift for a father; a family like that of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
My appeal for Catholic fathers is to hold their families firmly, to provide for them, and to protect them from all dangers in the contemporary society, where values are being eroded.
I don’t believe that being a father is a challenging task. God already gave us the innate potential to be fathers. I believe that God can’t give you a role that you can’t perform.
It is unfortunate that many young men are choosing to be absentee fathers. From what I have seen, many children raised by a single parent end up adopting wayward behaviors.
Alfred Magero, 48: Being a present dad in a low-income setting
Alfred Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Catholic Parish of in the Nairobi Archdiocese. The father of three has been married for 29 years. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Parish of the Archdiocese of Nairobi. The father of three has been married for 29 years and shares his experience and that of other Catholic dads raising their children in a low-income neighborhood.
I am raising my children to become God-fearing adults. This is not an easy task in the community in which we live, where there is a lot of poverty, drunkenness, and other characteristics typical of a low-income [neighborhood].
Many fathers rarely interact with their children since their main focus is to provide for their families. They leave for work before their children wake up and come back at night when the children have already gone to bed.
The young men and boys we are raising are experiencing a different environment from ours when we were growing up. With the whole world brought to them on the palm of their hand by a simple tap on the phone, this generation is dangerously exposed. They need us, their fathers, to constantly give them direction. They need us to be their role models.
They need us to constantly remind them that they are in Africa and that they should not adopt alien cultures, especially those bound to destroy the family.
As fathers, we must remind our young ones to uphold African values that kept the family unit and the society glued together. Africans knew the importance of loving and caring for each other. Unfortunately, this value is being eroded, and in its place, now we have individualism. Older men in families would educate young men to be responsible adults. Unfortunately, we no longer have this kind of education.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome, Italy, May 26, 2022 / 10:54 am (CNA).
Cardinal Seán O’Malley urged Italian Catholic bishops on Wednesday to work for a “pastoral conversion” in their approach to survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.
The head of the Vatican’s abuse commission made the appeal in a video message played on the third day of the bishops’ plenary assembly in Rome, taking place on May 23-27.
“We have nothing to fear by telling the truth. The truth will set us free. Acknowledging people’s stories of abuse, listening to survivors, and committing to working together is not easy, but I can tell you after 40 years that it is the only way,” the archbishop of Boston said.
He went on: “Sometimes, and perhaps rightly so, it seems there are no adequate steps we can take to make things right for those who have been abused.”
“It is perhaps the most difficult part of being a pastor: knowing that our listening and our efforts at healing and justice will likely fall short of what survivors are looking for. It’s a sober reminder that ultimately only God’s grace can make whole what sin has broken.”
O’Malley’s message came as the Italian bishops discussed whether to hold a national inquiry into abuse.
Italian associations joined together in February to coordinate a movement against abuse in the Catholic Church in Italy. The network, which calls itself #ItalyChurchToo, is pushing the bishops to carry out an independent investigation into clerical sexual abuse in Italy over the last 70 years.
The consortium sent a letter to the Italian bishops’ conference on May 23 at the start of its general assembly.
“We demand truth, justice, and prevention,” it said, calling for an investigation into abuse, the opening of Church archives, compensation for victims, and a strict application of Pope Francis’ norms on the handling of abuse cases by bishops.
In his message, Cardinal O’Malley said that “the reality is that we will be judged on our response to the abuse.”
He proposed seven areas where pastoral conversion was needed: “1. An effective pastoral care of victims; 2. Clear guidance (and vigilance) on training courses for staff in the diocese; 3. Adequate and accurate screening; 4. Removal of perpetrators of abuse; 5. Cooperation with civil authorities; 6. Careful assessment of the risks existing for priests guilty of abuse (for themselves and the community) once they have been reduced to the lay state; 7. Public verification of the protocols in place so that people know the policies are working. An audit and report on the implementation of the policies is very useful.”
“The good news,” he said, “is that where effective policies are adopted and effectively implemented, the number of cases is dramatically reduced.”
“Sexual abuse has always been wrong, for sure,” O’Malley continued. “But the response of leaders in the Church and in civil society has also been wrong. We have learned a great deal over these past 40 years. We have come to see and understand how it has ruined lives, led to substance addictions, and even the tragedy of known and hidden suicides.”
“There is a sea of suffering that we are called to face up to,” he said.
The cardinal told bishops that the “work of listening, healing, and justice is being asked of us since it belongs to the fundamental ministry of a priest and pastor: to welcome people and to be instruments of God’s grace for those who have been hurt by life, even when that hurt comes from within our own ranks.”
“One of the strongest desires of the human heart is to feel safe. Our people want to feel safe in our Church and that means they want to be strengthened in their faith by their pastors,” he said.
Leave a Reply