News Briefs

Montevideo, Uruguay, Mar 28, 2019 / 12:38 am (CNA).- Nearly 70,000 people in Uruguay have presented signatures seeking to initiate the process of repealing a controversial transgender law passed last year.

The signatures – which totaled 69,360 – surpassed the 2 percent of registered voters necessary to initiate a referendum. They were presented to the nation’s Electoral Court on Monday.

Once the Electoral Court validates the signatures, it must call a pre-referendum, which must have the support of 25 percent of registered voters, or about 650,000 people. If that threshold is reached, the Electoral Court must call a mandatory referendum which will determine whether the law is repealed.

The signatures were collected by primary election candidate Carlos Iafigliola and congressman Álvaro Dastugue, both of the National Party.

Iafigliola said the law violates constitutional guarantees of equality by granting preferential treatment to transgender people.

In an interview with the local “This Voice is Mine” program, the candidate said that “the most serious issue is that this law is riddled with gender ideology, denies biology, denies that we are born male and female and says that sex is assigned to us at birth by convention.”

“I’m worried that the State will intrude into your home and tell the parents ‘you step aside and I’ll take charge of your child.’ For me this is very serious, it’s clearly violating parental authority,” he said.

“We don’t have anything against transgender people, against anybody, we respect everyone’s human dignity from their mother’s womb,” he said, but added that he believes the law “is a bad law – unjust, dangerous and unconstitutional.”

The Comprehensive Law on Transgender Persons was passed last October. It allows adults to change their name and sex in the State Civil Registry by applying through the Commission on Identity and Gender Change. If they later change their mind, they can reverse the decision five years later.

The law also provides access to state-funded surgical interventions and hormonal treatments “to adapt one’s body, including the genitalia, in accordance with one’s self-perceived gender identity, without the necessity of requiring judicial or administrative authorization.”

Children under 18 years of age will be able to change their name and sex in the official registry, and access surgical interventions and hormonal treatments with the consent of their parents or legal representative.

Minors who do not have the consent of their guardians can request representation by the State to obtain a judicial bypass, which can be granted if a court deems the hormonal treatments or other procedures to be in the best interest of the child.

In addition, the law provides for lifelong financial compensation for those persons who claim to have been victims of institutional violence related to their gender identity during the country’s military dictatorship from 1973 to 1985.

It also guarantees the transgender population with a 1 percent quota of the job vacancies in public administration and training programs given by the National Institute for Employment and Vocational Training, as well as priority in accessing housing.

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Edmonton, Canada, Mar 27, 2019 / 01:11 pm (CNA).- Police are investigating an incident in Edmonton, Canada, after a posse of elderly women beat back a priest attacker with their walking canes.

It was after evening Mass at Our Lady Queen of Poland parish on March 13, and Father Marcin Mironiuk was outside saying goodbye to parishioners when a young man, roughly 25 years old, approached the priest.

Fr. Mironiuk, who did not recognize the man, reportedly asked him if he spoke Polish. The man said no and reportedly rushed the priest, according to authorities.

Lorraine Turchansky, a spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, told Global News Canada that the man threw the priest to the ground and started choking him with his hands when the elderly women who were also leaving Mass came to his defense.

“They were quite perturbed by this and shocked, really,” Turchansky said.

“They were older women so they’re not the kind of people who would whip out a cellphone and take a video or call 911. They did what they could and they had canes. They started striking the guy with their canes.”

When the women tried to pull the stranger off the priest, he fled the scene, Turchansky told Global News.

Turchansky said that Fr. Mironiuk was “certainly traumatized” by the incident and spent that night with friends, rather than alone in his rectory. He was otherwise “totally recovered.”

CBC News reported that police are investigating the incident, and that the suspect has been described by authorities as a 25 year-old white man with short, dark hair, who smelled of alcohol at the time of the incident.

The attack is one of a series of priest attacks or incidents in Canada. On March 22, several days after the incident in Edmonton, 77 year-old Fr. Claude Grou of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal was stabbed by an attacker who rushed him during morning Mass.

Grou has since been released from the hospital, is making a good recovery and is “eager” to return to work.

CBC News reported that just two days later, Vermillion priest Father Roger Rouleau experienced a “scare,” when a man rushed the altar at a morning Mass.

“He pushed him up on the altar, and in that case, Father Rouleau couldn’t help but think about what happened in that horrific attack in Montreal at St. Joseph’s Oratory,” Turchansky told CBC News.

But it turned out the man “just wanted a hug,” Tuchansky said.

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