Americas

CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2020 / 02:48 pm (CNA).- Guatemala’s Interior Ministry rescinded Wednesday an agreement it had made last month allowing Planned Parenthood to establish and operate branch office in the country.

The Nov. 4 statement repealed the agreement of Oct. 7, stating it was “not in accord with the interests of the State of Guatemala.”

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei announced the repeal Nov. 2, declaring he would not allow Planned Parenthood to operate in the country. Giammattei’s response was in reaction the initial agreement authorizing Planned Parenthood, which became official that same day.

“I recognize life from conception and therefore I will not tolerate in my administration any movement that violates what is established in our Political Constitution of the Republic, that goes against the values with which I was raised and that conflicts with my principles as doctor,” Giammattei said.

“I am a faithful defender of life and I am emphatic in stating that I will not endorse in my administration the creation, registration or start-up of any organization that goes against life,” the president underscored.

PublinewsGT confirmed Nov. 3 that the Interior Minister, Oliverio García Rodas, submitted his resignation, which was accepted.

“Oliverio García Rodas, taking responsibility, informed me in the evening that he had made the decision to resign due to the error he had committed and considering that it was strongly opposed,” the president said.

“I reiterate the government’s commitment to respect life from conception, since it is something that my faith and the Political Constitution of the Republic profess,” Giammattei told the press.

When the initial agreement authorizing Planned Parenthood was made public Nov. 2, various political and citizen groups voiced their opposition, and lawmakers from the Viva party called for the Interior Minister to resign.

The Family Matters Association of Guatemala issued a statement thanking Giammattei “for his firm statement” defending and protecting “the lives of Guatemalans from conception, as established in our Magna Carta.”

AFI Guatemala pointed out that Planned Parenthood “is responsible for more than 350,000 abortions in the United States annually. It’s public knowledge that Planned Parenthood’s major source of income is from abortion” and that company executives have acknowledged its involvement “in the sale and trafficking of organs of aborted babies,” the pro-life organization said.

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CNA Staff, Nov 3, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Demonstrators this weekend protested the Vatican-ordered closure of Mary Mother of God Seminary in San Rafael, Argentina.

Protestors gathered Saturday and Sunday outside the diocesan offices, in San Martín Plaza and in front of the city’s cathedral. The protestors prayed the rosary and held signs calling for the diocesan seminary not to be closed.

Signs held by the demonstrators included messages such as “We’re not confused, we’re outraged,” “Enough of the threats, Bishop”; “For the sake of our seminarians, explain the real reason,”  “We ask for an Apostolic Commissioner,” and “Holy Father, give us back the seminary and the seminarians.”

Car caravans with similar messages also drove through the city, ending at the diocesan offices.

San Rafael’s Bishop Eduardo Taussig announced in July that the diocesan Mary Mother of God Seminary would be closed by the end of 2020, by order of the Vatican, and that the seminarians would be relocated to other Argentine seminaries.

In August, the bishop said that the Congregation for the Clergy informed him that because the seminary had trouble maintaining a rector–having had seven in the past 15 years–it did not seem worth it to keep the seminary open.

That announcement came amid escalating tensions in the diocese between the bishop and a group of lay Catholics and priests, which began in mid-June, when Taussig announced that Holy Communion in the diocese could only be received standing and in the hand, not directly on the tongue while kneeling, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The bishop’s directive, consistent with norms announced in other dioceses in the region, may have also created tensions within the diocesan seminary itself.

A large number of the priests in San Rafael have not complied with directives regarding the distribution of communion in the hand, among them many former students of the seminary, which has been perceived by some to be behind the priests’ reluctance to require communion in the hand, the bishop said.

This refusal to comply had caused “serious scandal inside and outside the seminary and diocese,” said Taussig.

Taussig said that reception of the Eucharist in the hand or on the tongue are both equally accepted by the Church.

Speaking to TVA El Nevado on July 27, Fr. José Antonio Álvarez, spokesman for the Diocese of San Rafael, said that “due to the undisciplined reaction of a good part of the clergy of the diocese at this time, this diocese does not have the possibility of putting together a formation team in conformity with the discipline of the Church.”

On August 20, Mgr. Taussig announced that he would impose canonical sanctions on priests who persisted in disobedience by giving Communion on the tongue and not in the hand.

After meeting with Pope Francis in late October, Taussig said that the Vatican’s decision to close the seminary “was not up for discussion” and will take effect later this year.

Catholics have repeatedly spoken out against the closure of the seminary, calling for caravans, prayer and demonstrations outside the San Rafael diocesan headquarters.

In response to protests last month, Taussig published a letter October 30, asking Catholics not to “come together for these anonymous gatherings,” as “they aggravate the situation and may harm the seminarians themselves more, whom we all want to care for.”

The bishop called previous demonstrations “acts of rebellion and contention.” Messages stuck to walls and doors included a sign calling for the bishop to resign, another called him a traitor.

Taussig said that the demonstrations “first of all harm the seminary itself. The laity who put up insulting posters, who brought their children along and allowed them to pound on the windows and doors, who harm the unity of the Church and scandalize its members (and non-members looking on with surprise from the outside), are seen as ‘fruits of the seminary’. Because they reflect, at least indirectly, the formation received from those who have also graduated from the seminary. The announced caravans will also be judged in the same way.”

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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CNA Staff, Nov 1, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).-  

A Brazilian court has ruled that “Catholics for the Right to Decide” must remove the term “Catholic” from its name, as the organization’s goals are incompatible with the values of the Catholic Church. The organization is an outgrowth of the U.S.-based Catholics for Choice, which advocates for pro-abortion policies.

“In defending of the right to decide on abortion, which the Church clearly and severely condemns, there is a clear distortion and incompatibility of the name used in relation to the aims and specific actions of the association, which directly attack morality and good customs, in addition to harming the public good and interests,” said a decision from Judge Jose Carlos Ferreira In a Sao Paolo lawsuit.

The suit was filed by the Don Bosco Center for Faith and Culture Association, which argued that the use of the term “Catholic” by the pro-choice group is fradulent, since “under the pretext of defending the ‘reproductive rights of women,’” it is actually promoting the “murder of babies in the womb.”

A lower court had dismissed the complaint as unfounded and said that only an ecclesiastical authority had standing to bring such a complaint.

But the Don Bosco Center then filed an appeal with the Second Chamber Court, which ruled in the center’s favor Oct. 27.

Ferreira wrote in his decision that Catholics for the Right to Decide represents a “public, notorious, total and absolute incompatibility with the values” of the “Catholic Church in a general and universal way.”

In addition, the judge ruled that “freedom of speech will not be compromised in the least, and the association may defend its values and ideas (including abortion) as it deems appropriate, provided that it uses a consistent name, without presenting itself to society under the name of another institution that publicly and conspicuously adopts opposite values.”

Chris Tonietto, a Brazilian legislator and attorney who worked on the case, said after the ruling that “the name was considered subversive because it perverts the meaning of Catholicism itself, which is why we say that they created confusion.”

“This organization has always acted to create confusion, so much so that the name ‘Catholics for the Right to Decide’, was certainly used in an abusive and undue way,” he said.

On its Facebook page, the NGO stated that “it was not officially notified” of the court’s decision and “became aware of the decision through the press.”

The organization pledged to “take the appropriate measures after receiving the court order.”

Catholics for the Right to Decide was founded in 1993, as the U.S. organization Catholics for Choice expanded into Latin America.  In recent years, the group has invested millions of dollars to promote the legalization of abortion in Latin America.

In October 2012, a spokesperson for the U.S. bishops’ conference told journalists that Catholics for Choice “is not a Catholic organization.”

“It never has been, and it was created to oppose the Catholic position on abortion,” the spokesperson said.

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CNA Staff, Oct 28, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).-  

After remarks in a newly-released documentary from Pope Francis on civil unions, the archbishop emeritus of La Plata, Argentina, has offered his recollection of a 2010 debate on civil unions which took place within the Argentine bishops’ conference, while the country’s legislature was preparing to approve a same-sex marriage bill.

In comments sent to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Archbishop Héctor Aguer noted that “the recent statement by the Supreme Pontiff promoting civil unions between people of the same sex caused a stir, in the Church and outside of it; i.e., proposing that they be granted a legal framework.”

The archbishop referred to comments published in “Francesco,” a documentary that premiered in Rome last week, in which Pope Francis was seen to call for civil unions legislation. The pope’s previously unpublished remarks were found to have come from a 2019 interview conducted by Mexican television network Televisa.

It has since been widely reported that Pope Francis supported the idea of civil unions legislation while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as a compromise during the 2010 debate in Argentina over same-sex marriage.

Last week, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the current Archbishop of La Plata, posted on Facebook that “What the pope has said on this subject is what he also maintained when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.”

The archbishop added that before he became pope, then-Cardinal Bergoglio “always recognized that, without calling it ‘marriage,’ in fact there are very close unions between people of the same sex, which do not in themselves imply sexual relations, but a very intense and stable alliance.”

“This can be contemplated in the law and is called ‘civil union’ [unión civil] or ‘law of civil coexistence’ [ley de convivencia civil], not marriage,” Fernandez wrote.

Archbishop Aguer, who led the Archdiocese of La Plata from 2000 to 2018, recalled the 2010 debate about civil unions.

“Cardinal Bergoglio, then being the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, proposed in a plenary assembly of the Argentine bishops’ conference to support the legality of civil unions of homosexual persons by the state, as a possible alternative to what was called – and is called – ‘marriage equality.’”

“At that time, the argument against him was that it was not a merely political or sociological question, but that it involved a moral judgment; consequently, the sanction of civil laws contrary to the natural order cannot be promoted. It was also noted that this teaching has been repeatedly stated in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The plenary of the Argentine bishops rejected that proposal and voted against it,” Aguer said.

The archbishop added that “in 2003 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that ‘respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.’ It’s not unreasonable to think that such unions, to which it is proposed to grant legal recognition, are not ‘platonic’; therefore, it would be implicitly approving the coverage of homosexual activity in the law.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those who identify as LGBT “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

The Catechism elaborates that homosexual inclinations are “objectively disordered,” homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law,” and those who identify as lesbian and gay, like all people, are called to the virtue of chastity, and called to holiness.

The archbishop said that in his view, the Catechism proposes “a path of spiritual improvement oriented towards the achievement of chastity, through the practice of ‘the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom,’ prayer and sacramental grace.”

For Aguer, “the ecclesiastical approval of ‘civil unions’ would bring on the de-Christianization and dehumanization of society.”

The archbishop affirmed his respect for the pope, but said that in his view, the pope’s remarks in a documentary “do not have a magisterial character.”

“I compare it with the conversations that the popes have during their trips with journalists in the plane’s passageway; They may be interesting, but they lack the specifications that are proper to a magisterial genre; although issued by a relevant personality, they are no more than private opinions.”

In addition, Aguer said, “in the case of a matter on which there is certain Catholic teaching, if the Holy Father had the intention of introducing a change, the reasonable thing is to maintain that he would expressly state it with authority and good arguments.”

The archbishop warned against a tendency he called “Pope-olatry,” among some Catholics, saying it “is not healthy behavior.” He noted that “the initial repercussions” to the pope’s words “already caused contrasting reactions, which raises fears of a widening of divisions among the faithful, a deepening of the ecclesial ‘rift’ which undeniably exists.”

“I hope that theologians, cardinals and bishops with greater wisdom and authority than I, will bring some light to these dark moments,” he said.

For Aguer, “it’s very painful to think of the spiritual damage the faithful who suffer due to their disorderly inclination will suffer if the Church should back the recognition of civil unions, sanctioned by the state as a right to have a family; this would place an obstacle to the possible healing process described in the Catechism.”

“Because the mercy of the truth is owed to these persons,” he said.

The archbishop urged Catholics to prayer, and urged them to “hope, which lights up suns in our night.”

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Rome Newsroom, Oct 27, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations has said that faith-based organizations need to help the international community to see its “lack of consistency” in imple… […]

CNA Staff, Oct 24, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).-  

The Pontifical Foundation Scholas Occurentes, which is charged with promoting education in underserved and poor communities, has received millions in donations and agreements with organizations in recent years, without having built any schools in underserved neighborhoods.

The Scholas Occurentes foundation was formally established in 2015, with backing from Pope Francis, who has encouraged throughout his pontificate a “poor Church for the poor.” In 2015 two arms of the foundation were registered, one in Argentina and one in Spain, and were recognized by Pope Francis with the title “Foundation of Pontifical Law.”

Among the foundation’s purposes are “to promote, improve education and achieve the integration of communities, with a focus on those with fewer resources”, as well as “promote awareness campaigns on human values.”

The organization, focused on education, has not erected or established any schools. It has instead established numerous headquarters offices and reached agreements giving it a presence in schools and universities.

The “University of Sense,” one of Schola Occurentes’ most recent projects, has among its exhibitors well-known supporters of the legalization of abortion and promoters of gender ideology in the world.

The University of Sense project is designed, according to its website, “ to educate in the ultimate responsibility of every human being: to listen to what surrounds us – to listen to the other, to the earth, to life – to give to each moment an original response – that of a new story, that of a new culture. To educate on the possibility of jumping into the open, to fulfill the call of life: the unfolding of its mystery that offers us meaning. Sense that each one names unique and, therefore, that each one embodies beauty.”

Among presenters in the project are the writer Luisa Valanzuela and the philosopher Darío Sztajnszrajber, who have publicly spoken in favor of abortion, and a priest, Fr. Hugo Mujica, who has lamented that Pope Francis has not lived up to expectations of liberalizing sacramental discipline in the Church.

At the end of September, the Catholic University of Valencia in Spain agreed to be the official headquarters of the University of Sense.

The University of Sense is one part of a very broad Scholas Occurentes network.

According to its website, Scholas Occurrentes has offices in Argentina, Chile, Vatican City, Colombia, Spain, the United States, Haiti, Japan, Italy, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Paraguay, Portugal and Romania. Its presence extends to a “network in 190 countries, integrating more than 400,000 educational centers and reaching more than one million children and young people around the world,” the website says.

The Scholas Occurrentes board of trustees consists of José María del Corral as president, the Argentine member of the Vatican curia Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo as vice president, Enrique Adolfo Palmeyro as secretary, and Marta Simoncelli as vice secretary.

The support of Pope Francis has allowed Scholas Occurrentes , despite its short existence, to enter into agreements and receive donations from large companies and high-level public institutions.

In each of its public financial statements for 2016, 2017, and 2018 there is an agreement with Football Club Barcelona, ​​Lionel Messi’s team, valued each year at 30,000 euros. In the 2019 economic report, the 30,000 euros from FC Barcelona were recorded as a donation. Another Spanish sports team, Club Atlético de Madrid, donated 460,000 euros in 2017.

In the organization’s 2015 financial statement, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is recorded to have made a donation of about 324,000 euros.

In 2019 the organization  also registered an agreement with the Ministry of Education of Haiti, for 323,951 euros. In the same year, it also received a donation from the Air Europa airline for about 735,000 euros,

Scholas also has an agreement of almost one million euros with Origen Worldwide, a marketing and communication company based in Madrid, Spain.

Other public and private organizations with which Scholas has entered into agreements or received donations include Paul David Hewson, the singer and vocalist of the rock band U2 known as Bono; the Santander Bank; the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world’s leading consulting firms; Disney Worldwide; the Mexican Agency for international cooperation for development; the Office of the First Lady of the Dominican Republic; the Inter-American Development Bank; Mercedes Benz Argentina; Microsoft and the San Pablo CEU University Foundation.

According to reports not included in the officially published financial statements, Scholas Occurrentes has used millions to pay unspecified fees, and hundreds of thousands to support its offices and the travel of its workers.

According to the document entitled “Fundación Scholas Ocurrentes – Scholas Consolidado (USD): Scholas Argentina. Statement of income and expenses from Jan 2016 to Dec 2016,” the organization spent in that year, only in the Argentine headquarters, almost $5.2 million dollars in “professional fees ” and another million in “temporary fees.”

The document also indicates that more than $448,000 were used for “salaries and social charges.”

In “office rentals”, Scholas Occurrentes spent more than $324,000 that year. Another $300,000 went to mobile telephone expenses.

As total income, “gross profit”, the pontifical foundation registered that year in its Argentine headquarters more than $12 million.

In its “Abbreviated Report as of December 31, 2017”, which is not published on the group’s website, Scholas Occurrentes indicates that it allocated 903 thousand euros to “travel expenses” in 2016 and more than 912 thousand euros in 2017.

According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 30.8% of the population of Latin America lives in poverty, below the threshold of $1.90 per day.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 14 million children and adolescents between 7 and 18 years of age are out of the educational system in Latin America.

It is not clear how the projects offered by Scholas Occurents intend to address those populations.

Among the events that can be found in the 2019 Scholas yearbook are concerts, camps, a project “Programming for Peace” that does not explain how students from low-income schools could access technology, as well as an “Online Marathon on Bullying and Cyberbullying.”

The organization’s projects, including the University of Sense, offer online programs, but do not address how those in the world’s poorest groups, which disproportionately lack internet access, should participate.

A UNICEF report from August this year revealed that ” at least a third of school-age children around the world did not have access to distance education during the closure of schools due to COVID-19.”

One of the main causes for the lack of access to distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, one of the countries where Scholas Occurrentes has installed a headquarters, was “ the lack of a computer or internet ”, according to a study carried out by the Universidad Iberoamericana .

According to UNICEF, the “minimum percentage of school-age children without access to distance education” is above 40% in Africa, while in South Asia it is 38%. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia it is at 34%, while in Latin America and the Caribbean at 9%.

In total, the United Nations organization indicated, there are 463 million minors who cannot access distance education around the world.

ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, contacted Scholas Occurrentes on September 15 , through Virginia Priano, director of communications for the pontifical foundation.

After two weeks, with several exchanges of emails, WhatsApp messages and phone calls, the organization’s executives did not respond to questions from ACI Prensa about pro-abortion and gender ideology speakers convened for the University of Sense.

On September 29, after the publication of an article on the organization’s classes, ACI Prensa sent new questions to Virginia Priano, this time about the financial management and considerable expenses of Scholas Occurrentes in fees, travel, offices and telephony.

Priano sent a brief greeting message to ACI Prensa on September 30 via WhatsApp, but was not in contact with ACI Prensa again. Days later, the Argentine telephone number through which the communication had been made became inactive. Calls and messages to the Italian telephone of the director of communications of Scholas Occurrentes have not been answered, as well as the various emails sent this month.

ACI Prensa asked Scholas Occurentes how it would explain to poor families with limited access to education that an organization encouraged by the pope to undertake education initiatives has spend millions on fees, and hundreds of thousands on offices and telephones.

ACI Prensa also asked whether the group will develop a specific program for the construction of schools and access to education for poor minors or a scholarship program. It also asked the cost of the University of Sense, and how much Scholas Occurrentes paid to the consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers design of the Ágora Project.

Among other internal documents of Scholas Occurrentes to which ACI Prensa had access is the “Ágora Project. Creation of a World Social Network based on Education: Scholas,” which dates back to 2015 and is marked “strictly private and confidential.”

The Ágora Project proposes a growth and financing model for Scholas Occurentes that sheds light on its current operation.

In 2015, PriceWaterhouseCoopers pointed out that the Scholas fundraising model had been generated “spontaneously and opportunistically”, which is why it proposed new mechanisms to achieve “continue with Scholas’ activity, consolidate the countries in which they are present and invest in the generation of other sources of financing. ”

In one of its first pages, the project acknowledges that “the pope is a key asset for Scholas and therefore a development model is necessary that allows Scholas Global to have broad control over the use of his image in all its chapters / venues.”

For this reason, the document indicates, it is important “to maintain control over the image and reputation of the Foundation and the Pope.”

“Avoiding reputational risk is, for Scholas (…) a priority task,” the confidential document reads.

A version of this report was first published as a series by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct 23, 2020 / 04:25 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of Argentina have blasted a plan to introduce an abortion legalization bill in the country, saying it is “untenable and inappropriate” to prioritize abortion during an ongoing pandemic.

An advisor to President Alberto Fernández announced that an abortion legalization bill would be introduced in the legislature at the end of October, El Día newspaper reported.

Fernández, who took office last year, has pledged to legalize abortion in Argentina. The country currently allows abortion in cases when the mother’s life or health is in danger, or in cases of rape.

A legislative debate on the legalization of abortion was originally planned in March, but was postponed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Just as the dignity of life and the promotion of human rights are central concepts in an authentically democratic agenda,” the Catholic bishops’ conference said in an Oct. 22 statement, “the general public health situation…makes any attempt to introduce and discuss a law like this untenable and inappropriate.”

The coronavirus pandemic has underscored the state’s duty to care for the life and health of its people, the bishops said, and “not taking care of all lives, all Life, would be a very serious fault by a State that wants to protect its inhabitants.”

The bishops called for “political prudence” aimed at fostering unity in a wounded society.

“When the spirit of Argentines overcomes extreme situations with patience, ingenuity and hope –even in the face of families losing their loved ones; when we suffer from the humiliating increase in the number of ever poorer households; in a school year that left a large number of students on the sidelines and exposed the inequality of resources and means; when heroic healthcare workers, exhausted by superhuman effort, cry out to us to care for life; common sense – which abounds in ordinary people – reveals to us that there is no place to think about legislation that contradicts the discourse that says that taking care of all Argentines is a priority,” they said.

Other pro-life groups also criticized the plan to move forward with a legislative debate regarding abortion.

“Seriously, is abortion a priority in the middle of a crisis?” the group Prolife Unity said on social media. “Argentines need a State that takes care of them, that lifts them out of poverty and doesn’t abandon them. Abortion was not and is not a priority.”

Pro-life organizations have planned a pro-life caravan to drive by the Quinta de Olivos presidential residence on October 24 to protest the upcoming debate and possible legalization of abortion.

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CNA Staff, Oct 22, 2020 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- Following recent attacks on three churches in Chile, the bishops of Paraguay, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Argentina expressed their closeness to and support of the Church in Chile.

The Church of the Assumption… […]