Washington D.C., Nov 7, 2017 / 04:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In response to mass shootings in Las Vegas, Nevada and the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Spring, Texas, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has encouraged public debate on gun … […]
Vatican City, Nov 7, 2017 / 06:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday Pope Francis voiced his sorrow after 26 people were killed at a Baptist Church in Texas over the weekend, offering his support and praying that such acts of meaningless violence would come to an end.
In a Nov. 7 telegram signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis said he was “deeply grieved by news of the loss of life and grave injuries” caused in Sunday’s shooting at a Baptist church in Texas.
Francis condemned the “senseless violence” and offered his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims and wounded, members of the congregation and the local community.
He closed the letter, addressed to Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, Archbishop of San Antonio, by praying that the Lord would “console all who mourn and to grant them the spiritual strength that triumphs over violence and hatred by the power of forgiveness, hope and reconciling love.”
The Pope’s telegram comes just two days after at least 26 people were killed when a gunman opened fire at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Sutherland Springs is a small town located about 35 miles southeast of San Antonio.
At least 20 others were taken to the hospital after the shooting, which police believe was motivated by a domestic dispute.
After the shooting, the gunman fled the scene, and was later found dead in his car by police. The shooting marked the latest in a series of similar incidents throughout the United States in recent months, and is the deadliest on record in the State of Texas.
In a message after the event, Archbishop Garcia-Siller offered his condolences and support, saying “We need prayers! The families affected in the shooting this morning at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs need prayers.”
“The evil perpetrated on these who were gathered to worship God on the Lord’s Day – especially children and the elderly – makes no sense and will never be fully understood,” he said, adding that there are no adequate words for the “disbelief and shock” produced by the deadly affair.
“There can be no explanation or motive for such a scene of horror at a small country church for families gathered to praise Jesus Christ,” he said, adding that “these Baptist brethren are our family, friends and neighbors who live among us in the archdiocese … We are committed to work in unity with all our brothers and sisters to build peace in our communities; to connect in a more direct and substantial way. The Catholic Church in Texas and across the United States is with you.”
Washington D.C., Nov 7, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After years of research, the U.S. bishops are rolling out a new training program that takes some of the best risk-management practices from other industries and applies them to child protection in the Church.
The new program, entitled “Creating a Culture of Protection and Healing,” is being piloted in several dioceses and will eventually be available to any diocese by request.
The principles of the program, which will add to the existing trainings and protections already in place, borrows tools and techniques of HROs (highly reliable organizations) from industries in the secular world that also frequently deal with high-risk situations, such as hospitals or airlines.
These HROs are in industries in which, when accidents do occur “it’s rather volatile, it costs lives,” Deacon Bernie Nojadera, executive director of the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told CNA.
“For example in the airline industry when a plane crashes or something like that,” it can be very costly in terms of loss of life, he said.
“So the industry is looking at ways to make sure that even the lowest person on the chain of command – if they see something that’s untoward, they speak up, they say something, they report it. They know how and what to do when they come across a situation that could cause a problem in the future.”
That’s the same attitude and level of awareness that the bishops are hoping to create in dioceses who implement this new program, he said.
“We’re trying to create this mindfulness, a change in culture, so safe environments can be not only established but indeed maintained, because that’s the key. We have to constantly be on our toes, on our guard, with no room for complacency.”
This kind of training has been in the works for several years, said Nojadera, who has a military background and therefore prior experiences with HRO practices.
Since most of the information about HRO practices are tailored to specific industries, the bishops decided to partner with Ascension Health, the largest group of Catholic hospitals in the U.S., which uses HRO principles with a theological perspective.
“So we’re taking something that the hospitals have been using for 20 some years or so and making it applicable to us,” Nojadera said.
For example, if an incident or a near-miss occurs, the Church can ask the same questions that hospitals ask, albeit in a different context: “What went right? What went wrong? What do we do to improve and make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
The new program isn’t meant to replace the current practices, but to add an extra layer of awareness and thoroughness, Nojadera said.
Since the clergy sex scandal of the early 2000s, the Church has put into place numerous policies and practices to protect children from sexual abuse, including the USCCB’s Charter for Child and Youth Protection.
The charter, implemented in 2002, obligates all compliant dioceses and eparchies to provide resources both for victims of abuse and resources for abuse prevention. Each year, the USCCB releases an extensive annual report on the dioceses and eparchies, including an audit of all abuse cases and allegations, and recommended policy guidelines for dioceses.
Kelly Venegas is the bishop’s delegate for sexual misconduct in the Diocese of Gary, which is one of the pilot dioceses for the new HRO training program.
She said that the new training was divided into two sections, with the first focused on anticipating and diagnosing near-misses.
“We’re making sure that near-misses don’t indicate a symptom of a worse problem,” Venegas told CNA.
“So rather than just looking and saying, wow, that really could have been a big issue, good thing it didn’t cause any harm – instead we say wait a minute, this was a near-miss, could there be worse problems? Let’s dive into this deeper.”
The second section of the training focused on containment of harm in the case that an incident does occur, Venegas said.
“That means we’re making sure that we learn from our mistakes, that we focus on how we can make things stronger, and making sure that we have decisions with input from multiple people involved in the process,” she said.
While some of the concrete details of the application of the new program are still being worked out, Venegas said she was excited that the Church was learning from the best practices of other successful industries.
“I think that in the business world there’s been quality assurance programs (in existence) for years, and this is really a way of taking some of the expertise that’s been learned in the secular world and applying it to something that’s very important and close to our hearts,” she said.
Caracas, Venezuela, Nov 7, 2017 / 12:01 am (ACI Prensa).- The president of the Venezuelan bishops’ justice and peace commission has criticized a hate crimes law passed on Thursday, charging that its aim is to silence those opposed to the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro.
The Law Against Hatred and Fascism, the Nov. 2 legislation passed by the Constituent Assembly, will be used by Maduro’s government against the opposition “so we can’t even speak or protest,” Emeritus Archbishop of Coro Roberto Lückert Leon told ACI Prensa.
The Constituent Assembly’s president, Delcy Rodriguez, has said the law targets media that “promote hatred and racism.”
Lückert stated that news media critical of the government have been undercut by Maduro’s government.
“Right now they’ve hamstrung the news media. They’re using the supply of newsprint to undermine us. The oldest newspaper in Coro is called La Mañana. The can’t print it because they’re not giving them any newsprint; on the other hand, they gave to the paper that they founded a building, machinery, and newsprint, and it comes out every day. That’s freedom of the speech? No.”
According to the Maduro government “it’s the opposition that’s violent. But when you go to a peaceful march to hand over documents to the prosecutor’s office, you’re met with the Bolivarian National Guard, the militias and pro-government thugs on motorcycles, so you can’t fulfill a civic duty with a state agency. They’re the violent ones,” he charged.
Archbishop Lückert stated that “as a Venezuelan, the only solution for the country that I have is elections; but elections that are transparent and fair.”
However, he said that at this time the Venezuelan people are profoundly upset by the National Electoral Council, which “is completely sold out to the government” and which manipulated recent elections so Maduro’s party would win.
“I’m really afraid that if people abstained from voting in the Oct. 15 election of governors, it’s going to be worse for the election of mayors this coming Dec. 10,” Lückert said.
The prelate also said the Constituent Assembly “is an invention Maduro brought in from Cuba,” where there are no political parties or independent news media.
The Constituent Assembly is the product of contested elections, which took place in July. The body has superseded the authority of the National Assembly, Venezuela’s opposition-controlled legislature.
The vice president of the National Assembly, Freddy Guevara, has been accused of encouraging violence during protests. Guevara has taken refuge at the Chilean ambassador’s residence in Caracas.
Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savnio of Caracas called the Constituent Assembly “fraudulent and illegitimate” in a recent interview with El Nacional.
“It’s made up of political activists at the service of the government and it’s not going to resolve the problems with the economy. What’s needed here is to change the Marxist, totalitarian, and statist ideology that has brought the country to ruin,” he charged.
Cardinal Urosa told El Nacional that Maduro wants to “decapitate the opposition so there’s just one political party.”
He lamented that “the situation in the country is worse than a month ago: disregard for human rights continues, there are still political prisoners and opposition leaders that won in the elections are being persecuted; childhood malnutrition has increased and diseases eradicated in the 1950s are coming back, such as malaria, tuberculosis and diphtheria. But we’ve got to keep up the fight as did Bolivar, despite the defeats.”
Frustration in Venezuela has been building for years due to poor economic policies, including strict price controls coupled with high inflation rates, which have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers, and medicines.
Venezuela’s socialist government is widely blamed for the crisis. Since 2003, price controls on some 160 products, including cooking oil, soap and flour, have meant that while they are affordable, they fly off store shelves only to be resold on the black market at much higher rates.
The International Monetary Fund has forecasted an inflation rate of 2,300 percent in Venezuela in 2018.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Manila, Philippines, Nov 6, 2017 / 08:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has called for a prayer campaign to address violence in an escalating conflict between police and drug traffickers.
Since President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on drug trafficking began last year, nearly 4,000 Filipinos are reported to have been killed by the police. While police say the killings have been acts of self-defense against armed gangs, critics allege that police forces are conducting unauthorized, extrajudicial executions. Vigilante groups are also said to have conducted murder in the midst of the drug war.
The bishops’ prayer campaign challenges Filipinos to pursue healing and repentance, instead of escalating the violence.
“Repent so healing can begin. Stopping the killing is only one big step. The journey of healing for the values of our nation turned upside down will be a long journey still,” said Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Filipino bishops conference.
“God’s people, let’s go back to the Lord … we choose darkness over light … We choose violence rather than peace,” he added.
On November 5, an estimated 3,000 Filipinos gathered for Mass and a procession along the Abenida Epidanio de los Santos, a historic Manila highway where a non-violent protest helped end the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
The prayer campaign involves praying the rosary for 33 days, until the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on December 8th.
In August, the deaths of three teenagers prompted a 40 day prayer campaign, in which churches rang their bells nightly, and parishioners gathered to honor the dead with candles.
In his homily on Sunday, Archbishop Villegas urged Filipinos to work for justice while resisting the temptation to violence.
“Peace to you the murdered brethren and victims of extrajudicial killings. May the Lord give you peace in His kingdom, that peace that the world failed to give you!”
“May your blood speak to us, disturb us and move us to act to resist violence,” he said, noting that curses will be cast on a nation which spills the blood of its own citizens.
Healing begins with asking for repentance, the archbishop said, and he challenged clergy and government officials to be the first to turn away from sin and commit to the service of their roles.
May leaders ask forgiveness, he said, “for falling for the lure of comfort and the attraction of convenience, for giving in to the temptation to be powerful and popular rather than be humble and faithful, for our tendency to judge rather than seek unity, for keeping quiet when we should speak and blabbering when what is needed is silence, God forgive us leaders of your Church.”
He called for greater respect of the country’s democratic institutions and laws, noting that civil servants are servants to the people and not in power because of weapons. He encouraged the government to pursue justice not revenge, and to rule by respect rather than fear.
The war on drugs was a major part of Duterte’s 2016 presidential campaign. Reportedly, over 7,000 people have died from police officers and vigilantes from July 2016 to January 2017.
In recent months, groups like the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism have accused the government of providing unclear statistics.
Harry Rogue, a presidential spokesperson, denied any extrajudicial killings, and said the government was looking into more than 2,000 suspicious deaths. He also encouraged the bishops to work more closely with drug rehabilitation and anti-drug forces.
New York City, N.Y., Nov 6, 2017 / 04:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One wealthy activist is continuing to fund coordinated efforts to limit religious freedom and to foster dissent on abortion and LGBT issues within American Christianity and other religious groups.
The New York-based Arcus Foundation was founded by billionaire heir Jon Stryker in 2000. Arcus is a partner of the U.S. State Department’s Global Equality Fund, which engages in LGBT advocacy around the world. One of its board members is Darren Walker, the president of the deeply influential Ford Foundation, which gives out about $500 million in grants each year.
Since CNA’s February 2015 report on a multi-million dollar campaign against religious freedom protections, the Arcus Foundation has given an additional $2.8 million in grants earmarked for projects aimed at restricting legal protections for religious freedom, especially religious and conscience exemptions in state and federal law.
Among its recent donations is an ACLU grant designed to “beat back” laws protecting freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
In fact, a CNA examination of grant listings and other documents has shown that the Arcus Foundation has funded a variety of coordinated projects, focused on limiting religious freedom, redefining religious liberty, and perhaps even shaping religious doctrine itself.
Redefining Religious Liberty
On June 30, 2016, the Arcus Foundation said that “countering religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law in the United States is the aim of grants to the American Civil Liberties Union, Catholics for Choice, and the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia University, all of which are working to reframe religious liberty in inclusive terms, whether through the courts, religious bodies, or policy-making bodies.”
Since 2016, $450,000 in Arcus grants went to the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s last presidential campaign manager.
The grants funded projects like promoting religious liberty “as a core progressive American value that includes LGBT equality and women’s reproductive health and rights.” The Center for American Progress sponsors a self-described “Religious Exemptions Public Literacy Project” that will oppose “religious exemptions policies that have a negative impact on women, LGBT, and POC (person of color) communities.”
Funding Dissent
Since June 2016, the Arcus Foundation appears to be focusing on controversies at Catholic institutions and schools where staff who publicly support or contract a “gay marriage” have been fired for contradicting Catholic doctrine. Some Catholic institutions have faced lawsuits over such employment decisions and invoke religious freedom protections as a defense.
In an apparent complement to its work on religious freedom limits, the foundation has also been funding some self-described Catholic groups that reject Church teaching on marriage and sexual morality, among them Dignity USA, the Equally Blessed Coalition, New Ways Ministry, and Catholics for Choice.
The Arcus Foundation outlines its strategy in a section on its website. It aims to mobilize “moderate and progressive faith leaders” and to leverage “strategic opportunities in historically resistant faith communities,” including Roman Catholic churches. It said that some resistant communities “still afford opportunities for making limited but significant progress.”
“In keeping with the focus on religious exemptions, Dignity USA and the Equally Blessed Coalition are working to combat the firing of LGBT staff and allies, who support marriage equality, at Catholic Institutions,” the foundation’s June 2016 announcement continues.
The Arcus Foundation gave a $250,000, two-year grant to Dignity USA to fund the Equally Blessed Coalition, in order to “ support and give voice to the growing majority of Roman Catholics who support full acceptance and equality for LGBT people.”
A 2017 grant gave $35,000 to New Ways Ministry to help develop the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and its work “to connect the work of pro-LGBT Catholic organizations in every region of the world.” The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics had engaged in advocacy related to the Church’s Synod on the Family.
In February 2010 Cardinal Francis George, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement on New Ways Ministry, which is also part of the Equally Blessed Coalition. Cardinal George rejected the claim that the group presents an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and Catholic practice. “Their claim to be Catholic only confuses the faithful regarding the authentic teaching and ministry of the Church with respect to persons with a homosexual inclination,” he said.
In October 2016 New Ways Ministries gave its Bridge Building Award to Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of the Society of Jesus’ America Magazine. The priest’s lecture at the award ceremony was the basis for his book “Building a Bridge,” on Catholic-LGBT relations
In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave a one-year grant of $125,000 to Catholics for Choice, to fund a coalition of religious leaders to oppose “discriminatory religious exemptions,” as well as a different coalition to oppose “religious intolerance” in southern and eastern Africa.
The U.S. bishops have frequently criticized Catholics for Choice, saying it is not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, speaking as the bishops’ pro-life chairman in September 2016, charged that it is “funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control.”
Beyond Catholics
Arcus Foundation grantees have been linked to doctrinal changes within mainline Protestantism as well, including groups that helped split the Anglican Communion. In 2011 and 2012, the Arcus Foundation provided financial support to raise the national profile of Center for American Progress’ expert V. Gene Robinson, whose controversial election as the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 helped split the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion.
Non-Christian religions are also a focus.
A June 2015 grant of $100,000 to Muslims for Progressive Values suggests religious exemptions sought by some Muslims are also unacceptable to the foundation. The grant listing voiced hope that the group’s advocacy at the United Nations would assist “in asserting that ‘religious exemptions,’ such as reservations on the basis of Sharia law, are unacceptable on matters of human rights.”
CNA took a screenshot of the Arcus Foundation’s grant listing to Muslims for Progressive Values in mid-2016. Since that time, the grant listing on the foundation website appears to have been changed to read simply “general operating support,” rather than directly listing advocacy against religious exemptions. The grant is one of several six-figure Arcus grants to the group, including one given to cultivate LGBT activists among imams and other Muslims
Kevin Jennings, a co-chair of Muslims for Progressive Values, is a former Arcus executive director and Obama Administration official. Reza Aslan, the controversial Iranian-American author of the book “Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” is a consultant for the group, according to its website.
Fighting Religious Exemptions
In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave the ACLU a $150,000 grant to implement “a national coordinated media and public-education campaign to beat back religious exemptions at federal and state levels.”
This year, the foundation gave a $300,000 grant to the Proteus Fund’s Rights, Faith and Democracy Collaborative. The collaborative brings together wealthy activists who aim to restrict legal protections for religious freedom, in order to advance its vision of reproductive health and LGBT causes. According to CNA’s examination of grant listings and tax forms, the collaborative’s donors and others have spent at least $8.5 million in projects to advance a similar, narrow vision of religious liberty.
The Proteus Fund’s Civil Marriage Collaborative, which worked to recognize same-sex unions as marriages, closed in 2015 after spending more than $153 million over 11 years on various U.S. projects.
The Arcus Fund has given grants totaling $300,000 to Faith in Public Life: one to rally faith leaders to advocate “fair and balanced” religious exemptions, especially in the states Georgia, Florida and North Carolina; and the other for “pro-LGBT public education campaigns” and to organize “moderate clergy to inform state and national policymakers about the negative impact of using religion to deny the civil rights of LGBT people.”
A $125,000 grant from the Arcus Foundation to Columbia University’s gender and sexuality law center backs the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project “to promote progressive and nondiscriminatory views on religious exemptions.” This builds on Arcus’ previous support for the project, whose co-sponsors have included the deeply influential Ford Foundation.
Another $200,000 has gone to the ACLU, including support for its “religious refusals” communications hub and for ongoing research to gauge what it considers to be “the harm of anti-LGBT religious refusals.”
Arcus has also given $200,000 in grants to the D.C.-based Civitas Public Affairs group’s Religious Liberty and Equality Project aim “to advance equality protections and respect for personal autonomy, while dissolving public support for religious carve-outs that go beyond what is already protected in the First Amendment”; and to “reframe the current debates over religious exemptions by bringing together some of the most experienced thinkers and advocates within the reproductive justice and LGBT movements.” Another $100,000 2016 grant to NEO Philanthropy appears linked to this project, “to counter religious exemptions.”
The Arcus Foundation backs several news media projects, including National Public Radio, The Atlantic LGBT summit in 2015, and a series on LGBT issues for the public radio show Faith Matters. Many of those grants did not list religious freedom specifically, but the foundation did give $200,000 for the University of Southern California-based news site Religious Dispatches’ reporting on religious liberty and LGBTQ issues.
About $450,000 spread across four grants went to the Public Religion Research Institute to create “comprehensive state maps” of public attitudes on religious exemptions and non-discrimination policies. Other funding aims to track public opinion on “religious refusal legislation,” among other topics; and to help develop strategies “to stop the expansion of religious exemptions.”
The Interfaith Alliance was also funded in the amount of $75,000 to explore mapping state laws related to religious exemptions, for policy development, and for training of “skilled messengers to educate state and federal policy makers.”
The Pride Foundation received $150,000 in 2016 to strengthen coordination “among groups opposed to discriminatory interpretations of religious freedom,” and for “emergency-response grants to key public-education initiatives.”
Soulforce, which became prominent for busing LGBT activists to demonstrate at various colleges, received $100,000 to organize students of color in the U.S. South to challenge both “anti-trans policies at conservative Christian schools” and religious exemption statutes.
Vatican City, Nov 6, 2017 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Vatican workshop this past weekend drew attention to the vast challenges faced by victims of human trafficking when reintegrating into society, suggesting concrete steps for helping victims.
One of the first challenges faced by trafficking victims upon being freed is recourse to legal aid and restitution, attorney Jami Solli told CNA Nov. 6.
Founder of the Global Alliance for Legal Aid, an association of jurists who provide legal aid in developing countries, Solli participated in the Vatican workshop.
She said that when it comes to legal aid, the challenges are complex.
“If they’re coming from overseas, they don’t speak the language, they don’t know the law,” she said. In addition to this, many countries do not offer any financial compensation to trafficking victims, and it can be hard to find quality lawyers who are willing to help them.
Unfortunately, Solli said, prosecution rates for human trafficking crimes are very low.
According to U.S. reports, there are about 10,000 prosecutions of trafficking perpetrators globally each year, while the number of trafficked people is estimated to be around 40 million.
What does prosecution of perpetrators actually achieve for victims? It can bring significant peace of mind, Solli said, allowing victims to know that the person who trafficked them is in jail.
However, victims are still left with a “slew of problems,” including mental suffering, a lack of skills, education and a job.
“How is this person going to restart their life?” Solli reflected, noting that restitution money is one way to recognize the immense harm that victims have suffered, and while it will not solve all of their problems, it can help them get a fresh start.
The Nov. 4-6 workshop, “Assisting Victims in Human Trafficking – Best Practices in Resettlement, Legal Aid and Compensation,” addressed these challenges and others.
The workshop’s focus was on how to better provide legal aid and restitution for trafficking victims, not only to try to achieve justice for the crimes committed against them, but to support their reintegration into society and help with necessities such as food, housing and education.
Critical to this reintegration is the broad cooperation of different entities, including the Church’s vast network of parishes, said Dr. Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in a press conference Monday.
“If we can turn passive parishes into active parishes for this cause, we’ll have made a giant step forward,” she said.
Dr. John F. McEldowney, a law professor at the University of Warwick and a newly appointed member of the Academy of Social Sciences, agreed with Archer. He told journalists that he thinks the next step is “very much a collaborative effort throughout the world.”
The hope is to bring together not just government entities and NGOs, but also the “smallest communities, in the smallest parts of the world,” such as parishes and small villages.
One of the big projects to come out of the weekend, still a work in progress, is a document to define the rights of victims and the resources available to them.
McEldowney told CNA that this “victims’ charter” would work as a sort of map to help people get from point A to point B to point C.
The document would connect information and resources from all the different areas in which victims likely need assistance – including legal aid, housing assistance, education, and mental and spiritual guidance. Together, these resources would help trafficking victims answer the question, “Where do I go from here?”
It is also hoped that the act of compiling the charter will draw attention to those areas which are lacking adequate, or perhaps any, resources. For example, it can be difficult for trafficking victims to know how to apply to a university if they are not a citizen of the country or don’t have the correct documentation.
“It’s an ambitious project,” McEldowney noted in his comments to journalists. “It requires patience and dedication. And education, knowledge, information is at the heart of this, so that people know that slavery has not been abolished.”
New York City, N.Y., Nov 6, 2017 / 03:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Persecuted religious minorities in Syria and Iraq deserve a better future after suffering at the hands of the Islamic State group.
That was the message of Archbishop Bernadito Auza, the apo… […]
Washington D.C., Nov 3, 2017 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- This Halloween marks the seventh anniversary of when my parents’ church in Baghdad was held hostage by the Islamic State in Iraq, a little known group at the time.
After a few tense hours, the Iraqi army moved in to try and save the hostages held up in the Syriac Catholic Our Lady of Deliverance Cathedral located in the heart of Baghdad. The standoff led to the death of 58 worshipers, including three priests, children, and a baby who was beheaded on the altar. 78 worshipers were severely wounded or maimed, losing legs, arms and requiring months of operations to remove shrapnel or heal other injuries. For many Iraqi Christians, this massacre answered the question that many had asked themselves throughout the almost 10 years of bloody sectarian civil war that engulfed Iraq: “Are we still welcome in this country anymore?” Sadly, many could no longer look at their children and promise them a good future while they remained in Iraq. In the ensuing few months, a mass exodus of Christians from Baghdad started which brought down the population of Christians from 20 percent to only several thousand.
My parents, having witnessed on TV the horror that befell Iraq with the onset of the civil war, lost hope for any future for Christians in Iraq, because while the Shia had Iran and the Sunnis had the Gulf and Turkey, nobody was willing to stick up for the Christians. They watched as their ancestral city of Mosul saw a growth in Salafi activity and mourned as Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks and Mandeans were ethnically cleansed from the city. With the onset of the war in Syria, more reports of Christians being killed, tortured and taken as slaves on account of their faith came to the forefront and painted a dark picture for the future of Christianity in the region.
Exploding out of the Syrian crisis, ISIS burst onto the stage in Iraq and put one-third of the country under its control. During their blitzkrieg in the northern part of the country, ISIS attempted to wipe out all followers of the ancient Yezidi faith historically concentrated in the Sinjar region of the Nineveh Province. However, they did not stop there, and moved to destroy the ancient Christian heartland of Iraq found in the Nineveh Plains region northeast of the city of Mosul. Over 100,000 Christians fled overnight as ISIS swarmed in and killed dozens of people and took many others as sex slaves. The dead included my mother’s elderly nanny, Naeema, who had raised her and her brothers since they were children. Naeema taught my mom how to pray, tucked her in to bed every night and greeted her with coffee and freshly ironed cloths every day. Her death made them feel powerless and numb with pain as she was thrown into an unmarked grave and forgotten.
My parents’ Muslim neighbors mourned the destruction brought upon their Christian brothers and sisters, but despite their goodwill, they were powerless to do anything. The ISIS invasion of Mosul brought more pain to my family, as my grandfather’s grave was likely destroyed along with hundreds of others as ISIS tried to destroy as much of Mosul’s Christian history as they could. The monastery of Saint Behnam and his sister Sarah that my grandfather was named after was blown up and recorded in a spectacular video. My family mourned the destruction of so much of what was near and dear to them and became distressed as depressing updates continued to come out of Iraq. Hundreds of Christian properties in Mosul were ruined or given to ISIS fighters. These homes had belonged to these families for generations, and losing them was tantamount to losing their entire history and several lifetimes of work.
In my current capacity as a Special Assistant for the non-profit In Defense of Christians, I was lucky to be given the opportunity to help an organization prepare for their annual summit. IDC’s summit focuses on a cause I care about deeply: the plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East. This year, IDC decided to focus on a five-point policy agenda which works to stabilize Lebanon and Syria, deliver desperately needed aid to victims of genocide in Iraq and Syria, correct a historic injustice by recognizing the Armenian genocide, hold American allies who persecute Christians and other minorities accountable and identify individuals or groups who supported ISIS’ campaign of terror and genocide against Christians. As the fate of the Christian communities in the Middle East hangs in the balance, this sort of work is imperative to preserve the existence of an ancient community from going extinct.
One of the most exciting aspects of the summit was having the Vice President of the United States Mike Pence come and deliver the keynote address at our annual Solidarity Dinner. In the lead up to the dinner, the air was crackling with excitement as we were all waiting for the Vice President to take to stage and deliver remarks. When he arrived, the dinner attendees clapped then quickly turned quiet as they waited to hear what he would say. It was almost inconceivable that somebody of this stature would be addressing a crowd of people passionate about the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.
During his keynote address, the Vice President noted that “In Iraq, the followers of Christ have fallen by 80 percent in the past decade and a half…but tonight, I came to tell you: Help is on the way.” I had to wipe away the tears that last phrase brought to my eyes. It seemed too good to be true that after all of these years of hardship Iraqi Christians have suffered that the Vice President of the United States would stand there and announce that help was coming for a people the international community had done nothing for in the past 14 years. The Vice President held no punches in his speech and cut through over careful dancing around of words to state that “Christianity is under unprecedented assault in those ancient lands where it first grew.”
In a moving moment for many in the room, Vice President Pence noted that “In the mountains of Syria, the valleys of Lebanon, on the plains of Nineveh, the plateaus of Armenia, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the delta of the Nile, the fathers and mothers of our faith planted seeds of belief. They’ve blossomed and borne fruit ever since.” Acknowledging the ancient roots of Christianity in the region and invoking the names of the areas where they still exist today moved not just me, as almost all Middle Eastern attendees I spoke with afterwards mentioned the use of this imagery.
As somebody who has been tracking and writing about the reconstruction efforts of Christian villages on the Nineveh Plains, my anxiety over the massive reconstruction challenges were eased over almost instantaneously by the Vice President’s announcement that the US would work with faith-based groups and private organizations through USAID to help genocide victims. This one action has the ability to remove the most pressing issue facing Christians who want to return to their homes and not immigrate to Europe: rebuilding their homes targeted for destruction by ISIS.
Returning home much later that night, I called my mother and woke her up to tell her the news. She could not believe me when I told her that Mike Pence had spoken about our community’s issues and worked to ensure they would be able to rebuild their homes. When I told her that he remarked that “In Iraq, we see monasteries demolished, priests and monks beheaded, the two-millennia-old Christian tradition in Mosul clinging for survival,” neither could she nor my father restrain their tears of joy. The fact that he mentioned the plight of oft-forgotten Mosulawi Christians and alluded to the destruction of the Mar Behnam monastery brought out a happiness in them that they had long contained. That happiness came from regaining a sense of hope again. For the first time, it seemed like somebody had finally responded to our pleas of help at the 11th hour and acknowledged our pain.
For the first time in seven years, my family and I slept peacefully on Halloween.
Yousif Kalian is an analyst who focuses on Iraq, Syria, Kurdish issues and religious minorities. He currently works for In Defense of Christians, and was previously a Research Assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has been published in the American Interest, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and elsewhere.
Paris, France, Oct 10, 2017 / 06:07 am (ACI Prensa).- Patrick Canac was baptized, but like so many others, drifted away from the Church over time.
In recent months, however, the successful French businessman has had a change of heart, returning to the Catholic Church and even making a large donation for the construction of a new seminary in Avignon, France.
What caused the drastic change? The witness of Fr. Jacques Hamel, the priest killed in August 2016 by ISIS jihadists as he was celebrating Mass in the small French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen.
“I was brought up in the Christian faith. I was baptized and received all the sacraments of initiation, but then I drifted away from the practice of my faith for a long time,” Canac told CNA during a visit to Rome.
“Last year, the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in a church near Rouen really hit me,” he said. “For terror to make its way into that church reminded me of the darkest times of our civilization.”
“I had an immediate, reflexive reaction as if they had killed my brother. That someone can go into a church today and kill the celebrant is just terrible, it’s horrific, it’s the devil going into a church.”
The French businessman had an instant reversion to the faith, realizing, “we all have Judeo-Christian roots” which “must be defended and saved.”
“It’s the same problem they have the Middle East, where Christians are being killed,” he reflected. “And I had an inner reaction, telling myself, ‘I’m a Christian and I’ve got to do something, put my talents to use’.”
Canac promptly made a large donation to build the new Redemptoris Mater seminary in Avignon. The project is gradually becoming a reality, and Pope Francis blessed the building’s cornerstone at his Sept. 4 general audience in Saint Peter’s Square.
“I think it’s important for our Western countries – (including) France, of course – to be evangelized, that people be encouraged to return to the Church again. Because the Church is the cradle of our civilization,” Canac said.
“I think of the first Christians, those who were pioneers, those missionaries and martyrs that spread the Gospel throughout the world. And that’s why I have put my business success to work by helping with the building project for the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Avignon.”
He explained that seminary will help to re-evangelize Europe by forming the priests who will become modern-day missionaries, “priests that will evangelize people like me so they can return to the Church.”
He continued: “After the murder of Fr. Hamel, I felt that our Judeo-Christian civilization is being threatened. Anything that will form people who will spread the Gospel, a Christian message of peace and love, must be helped.”
Last October, Pope Francis allowed the opening of Fr. Hamel’s beatification cause, waiving the normal five-year waiting period after his death.
“I am in complete agreement with Pope Francis proposing him for beatification,” Canac said. “Fr. Jacques in a martyr. What I have learned about his past life before he was killed is that he was a true Christian, worthy to be a martyr. He tried to convince his murderers that they were doing evil. His attitude was extraordinary and exemplary for everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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