Melbourne, Australia, Feb 25, 2019 / 06:21 pm (CNA).- Prosecutors have abandoned a planned second trial against Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was convicted in December 2018 on five charges of the sexual abuse of minors.
Pell is reported to be f… […]
Brisbane, Australia, Feb 25, 2019 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane is being investigated by his former archdiocese over his alleged handling of information on child sex abuse given him by a woman during a 2006 meeting.
As president of the Australian bishops’ conference, Coleridge attended the Feb. 21-24 Vatican summit on the protection of minors in the Church.
Guardian Australia reported Feb. 25 that “the complaint against Coleridge relates to a 2006 meeting with a Canberra woman who had offered information about child sexual abuse.”
The woman was relating information about abuse in the Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn. Coleridge was appointed Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn in June of that year, and was installed Aug. 17.
According to Guardian Australia, it is alleged Coleridge called the woman a gossip “and acted agressively towards her.”
Coleridge has denied the allegations.
A representative of the the Canberra-Goulburn archdioese told Guardian Australia it is conducting an independent investigation, but progress has been delayed because the woman is not participating: “Archbishop Mark Coleridge cooperated with the investigation and strongly refuted the allegations. When [the complainant] was invited to cooperate with the independent investigation, she chose not to engage with the process. She has instead chosen to take these allegations to the media, which is deeply disappointing.”
The Archdiocese of Sydney has also been made aware of the allegations.
Coleridge was born in 1948, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 1974, where he then became auxiliary bishop in 2002. He was Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn from 2006 to 2012, when he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Brisbane.
He gave a homily at a Mass in the Vatican’s Sala Regia Feb. 24 at the conclusion of the child abuse summit, during which he said that “at times we have seen victims and survivors as the enemy. We have been our own worst enemy.”
The Brisbane archbishop also lamented weak historical care of sex abuse victims, and urged “very practical ways of accompanying all those who have been abused in whatever way they need to be accompanied.”
Dhaka, Bangladesh, Feb 21, 2019 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis has offered his solidarity and prayers to victims of a massive fire in the center of the Bangladeshi capital, which has reportedly claimed 78 lives so far.
“His Holiness Pope Francis was saddened to learn of the loss of life and of the injuries caused by the conflagration in the centre of Dhaka,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, Feb. 21.
“He extends his solidarity to all affected, and prays especially for the repose of the deceased and for the healing of those injured.”
The fast-moving fire swept through a densely populated historic district of Dhaka late Wednesday night, the BBC reported. Many residents were trapped, including, reportedly, a bridal party. Many are still missing and the death toll is expected to rise.
The blaze reportedly began in a chemical warehouse on the ground floor of a residential building. A witness told the BBC he saw an electricity transformer explode which set off a chain reaction of chemical explosions.
The pope also offered his encouragement to the Bangladeshi emergency personnel as they assist victims, and upon all he invoked “the divine blessings of consolation and strength.” Emergency crews reportedly battled the blaze for five hours and were hindered by narrow streets and a lack of access to water.
Fires and building collapses are a major problem in the densely populated Bangladeshi capital of 18 million residents, as major incidents in the last several years have demonstrated.
A blaze in the Nimtali district of the city killed 124 people in June 2010.
In April 2013, an eight-story garment factory collapsed near the capital, killing at least 1,136 workers and prompting demands for better oversight from Western retailers and local manufacturers. A fire in November of the previous year killed 112, and another fire killed eight in May.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter. Several European clothing retailers, including H&M, the single largest clothing buyer in Bangladesh, have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which obliges them to conduct safety inspections and pay for repairs at factories in the nation. Walmart, the second largest buyer, has yet to sign the agreement.
Adelaide, Australia, Feb 16, 2019 / 05:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A local bishop is speaking out against a bill to remove regulations on abortion in Adelaide, Australia, saying it would be the nation’s most radical abortion law.
“The unborn deserve love and protection, not destruction,” said Bishop Gregory O’Kelly SJ, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Port Pirie.
He warned that the legislation being considered “drastically reduces safeguards for the unborn” and would allow abortions “even well into the ninth month of pregnancy.”
In a Feb. 14 letter to the people of his diocese, O’Kelly said the faithful “should all be extremely concerned about the proposed Abortion Law Reform Bill.”
The Adelaide proposal would place abortion under the regulations of the state’s health laws, rather than the state’s criminal code. This would remove current rules such a requirement that a woman have been a resident in South Australia for at least two months before procuring an abortion.
The legislation would also ban protestors from entering within 150 meters of an abortion clinic.
The bill was introduced to Parliament by Greens MP Tammy Franks and will be debated in the comings weeks, with a vote later this year.
Similar legislation was recently passed in Queensland.
“This bill treats abortion simply as a medical procedure without moral significance,” O’Kelly said in his letter. “There is no need for a medical opinion or a doctor’s involvement and no reason need be given for an abortion. It will be the most radical abortion law in the country.”
“We believe life to be a gift of God, to be cherished and revered,” the bishop continued. “Christ said that he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Abortion is the destruction of the human life, an act that defies the sacred.”
He urged people to contact their local Member of Parliament and ask them to vote against the bill.
Bishop O’Kelly also published a letter from Dr. Elvis Šeman, a gynecologist and member of the Guild of St Luke.
The doctor stressed the adverse effects that abortion can have on a woman’s physical, psychological and emotional health.
He warned that the proposed legislation “aims to radically deregulate abortion and outlaw two important things – conscientious objection to abortion and the freedom to pray and offer pregnancy support near abortion clinics.”
Under the bill, he said, abortion could “be performed by a non-medical provider, using any method and for any reason (including sex-selection for social reasons), at any gestation (up to term), leaving babies born alive to die, and using SA Health funding without the accountability of reporting.”
Furthermore, Šeman warned, “Imposing a ‘health access’ zone makes pregnancy support services unlawful within 150m, restricts freedom of speech, denies potential support to vulnerable women who are ambivalent or may have been coerced, and provides excessive powers to police.”
The doctor also emphasized the need to do more for women facing difficult pregnancies.
“As a Church community, I believe that, with few notable exceptions, we have done poorly in supporting those women and their families facing an unplanned pregnancy. They are left at the mercy of a health system which fast-tracks women to abortion and offers no alternatives.”
Bishop O’Kelly agreed that the Church must reach out to women in need.
“We believe our main focus should be on supporting women who find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy and are grappling with this terrible choice,” he said, “while also offering our unequivocal support and prayers to those women who are experiencing grief and loss.”
Seoul, South Korea, Feb 14, 2019 / 12:54 pm (ACI Prensa).- The South Korean bishops’ conference has called for an end to the death penalty, and asked the nation’s Constitutional Court to consider whether capital punishment violates South Ko… […]
Mumbai, India, Feb 7, 2019 / 11:01 pm (CNA).- An Indian businessman has expressed his intention to sue his parents for giving him life without his permission.
Six months ago, Mumbai resident Raphael Samuel brought the case up during breakfast to his parents, both of whom are lawyers, according to the BBC.
He is currently looking for a lawyer to take his case, for which he argues that people should be compensated for a life they did not request. He has not yet found a lawyer.
Samuel is a self-proclaimed anti-natalist, a position which views birth as essentially negative. Since the begetting of life precludes the consent of the begotten, Samuel has said it is unfair for parents to bring children into a world that involves suffering.
In a recent demonstration on his YouTube page, Samuel gave insight into reason behind the lawsuit. He said that if consent is not established before birth, then people do not owe their parents anything and should be financially maintained for the rest of their lives.
“Basically, I want everyone in India, and the whole world, to realize one thing – that they are born without their consent and that they do not owe their parents anything,” he said.
Samuel has promoted his anti-natalist philosophy on his Facebook page, Nihilanan. He often posts pictures of himself in a fake beard and sunglasses with messages claiming that reproduction is hypocritical and based on the self-interest of the parents.
“Isn’t forcing a child into this world and forcing it to have a career, kidnapping, and slavery?” Or, “Your parents had you instead of a toy or a dog, you owe them nothing, you are their entertainment,” he wrote in some of the Facebook posts.
The case has not caused a riff between him and his parents, as one might suspect. In a recent statement, his mother, Kavita Karnad Samuel, said she was proud of her son for his independent thinking.
He told the BBC that humanity’s absence from the world would not only be a solution to human suffering, but also an improvement for the planet.
“There’s no point to humanity. So many people are suffering. If humanity is extinct, Earth and animals would be happier. They’ll certainly be better off. Also no human will then suffer. Human existence is totally pointless,” he said.
“I know it’s going to be thrown out because no judge would hear it. But I do want to file a case because I want to make a point,” he told the BBC.
By contrast, the Church teaches clearly the value of human life.
In his 1995 encylical Evangelium vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that “man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God,” and that the gift of human life is unexpected and undeserved.
“Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can … come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree,” the pope wrote.
New Delhi, India, Jan 31, 2019 / 03:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A religious sister with the Missionaries of Charity accused of cooperating in the sale of a child from a home for unwed mothers has been denied bail by India’s Supreme Court, according t… […]
Melbourne, Australia, Jan 31, 2019 / 01:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Though Australia’s Victoria state requires doctors with conscientious objection to abortion to refer women to another provider, a study published Thursday found that some doctors are noncompliant, “with adverse effects on access to care for some women.”
“Conscientious objection to abortion, the law and its implementation in Victoria, Australia: perspectives of abortion service providers”, by Louise Keogh, was published Jan. 31 in BMC Medical Ethics.
Victoria’s Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 allowed conscientious objection to direct participation in abortion, but mandated that conscientious objectors refer their patient to a non-objecting practitioner for treatment and advice.
The referral requirement, Section 8, is opposed by some, who argue that “it compromises practitioners’ religious or moral stance on abortion by compelling those with a CO to be complicit in allowing access to abortion through the act of referral,” and there have been calls for its repeal.
Keogh wrote that despite the 2008 law abortion access “remains restricted in practice, particularly in rural areas.”
Her study aimed “to explore health professionals’ understandings of the inclusion of Section 8 in the Abortion Law Reform Act, as well as their perceptions of how Section 8 has been implemented in the Victorian health system and its impact on care.”
The study was conducted through 19 interviews with individuals who are either directly involved in abortion provision, or provide abortion access counselling, or are involved in policy or advocacy related to abortion access.
“All nineteen participants were able to relate specific stories about doctors subverting, misusing or directly contravening the law,” Keogh stated.
The Guardian reported that Keogh worked with Family Planning Victoria, the Royal Women’s Hospital, and Women’s Health Victoria in conducting the interviews.
In addition to doctors, participants reported that conscientious objection has been invoked by telephone staff in government services, pharmacists, and Catholic hospitals.
Keogh maintained that the referral requirement “is designed to allow for the moral integrity of the doctor, but only so far as this can be maintained while not causing harm to patients.”
In 2013, Dr. Mark Hobart, a Catholic, was disciplined for refusing to refer a couple who sought the sex-based abortion of their unborn daughter.
“I refused to refer the patient because there was no medical reason to do it and it offended my moral conscience,” Hobart told Nine News Australia.
“It’s very wrong, I don’t know any doctor in Victoria that would be willing to refer a woman that wanted to have an abortion just because of gender at 19 weeks.”
He said the investigation shows that the state’s abortion law “stops doctors from using their conscience whether it is appropriate or not.”
The Medical Board of Victoria began an investigation after board members complained that the incident called into question his professional conduct.
Neither the woman nor her husband filed a complaint against him, the Daily Mail reports.
Victorian law also bars any protest within 150 meters (nearly 500 feet) of a clinic or hospital where abortions are procured.
Jolo, Philippines, Jan 27, 2019 / 05:51 am (CNA).- At least 20 people were killed and 111 wounded after two bombs exploded minutes apart during Sunday Mass in a Catholic cathedral on the southern Philippine island of Jolo.
After the initial blast inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Jan. 27, which destroyed the wooden pews and glass windows, Mass-goers were rushing to get outside when a second bomb detonated near the cathedral’s entrance, the Associated Press reported.
Police and army troops stationed outside the cathedral were also caught in the second blast when trying to enter the cathedral.
According to police, at least 15 civilians and 5 soldiers were killed in the explosions. Among the wounded there were at least 90 civilians, 17 soldiers, two police officers, and two coast guards. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Philippines bishops’ conference condemned the attack as an “act of terrorism.”
“We condole with the families of the several soldiers and civilians who were killed by the explosions. We also express our sympathies with those who were wounded and extend our solidarity with the rest of the church-goers inside the Cathedral and the rest of the church community in the Apostolic Vicariate of Jolo,” they said Jan. 27.
The bishops also noted the recent creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARRM), which was created with the hope of ending a nearly five-decade long separtist rebellion in the southern Philppines.
The new autonomous region was endorsed by most Muslims in the majority Catholic nation, though it was rejected by Muslim voters in the Sulu province, where Jolo is located.
“As we begin a new phase in the peace process … we ask our Christian brethren to join hands with all peace-loving Muslim and Indigenous People communities in the advocacy against violent extremism,” the bishops said.
Jolo island has a population of more than 700,000. The island’s Catholics, estimated in 2014 to be around 31,000, mostly live in the capital of Jolo.
The country’s defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, said in a statement Sunday that he has directed troops “to heighten their alert level, secure all places of worships and public places at once, and initiate pro-active security measures to thwart hostile plans.”
There has long been a presence of Muslim Abu Sayyaf militants on Jolo island. The group is defined as a terrorist organization by the United States and the Philippines due to years of kidnappings, beheadings, and bombings.
A statement from the office of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte Jan. 27 said, “We will pursue to the ends of the earth the ruthless perpetrators behind this dastardly crime until every killer is brought to justice and put behind bars. The law will give them no mercy.”
Hobart, Australia, Jan 25, 2019 / 01:46 pm (CNA).- The wind blows in great gusts over snow-capped mountains on the other side of the world, across the island of Tasmania. Whipped up by the Southern Ocean’s infamous Roaring Forties, wave upon wave of wind buffets the Australian state on the very peripheries of the world.
“Separated from the Australian mainland by 140 miles of the treacherous pitch and toss of Bass Strait, Tasmania is a byword for remoteness…it is like outer space on earth and invoked by those at the ‘centre’ to stand for all that is far-flung, strange and unverifiable,” Nicholas Shakespeare aptly writes in his book “In Tasmania.”
If you seek out the peripheries, in other words, whether from Rome, London or Washington, it is hard to get any further away than Tasmania. And yet there, on the other side of the world, on a heart-shaped island the size of West Virginia, a new Jerusalem is emerging.
The Monks
Tasmania’s first Benedictine monastery is gradually taking shape on over 3,000 acres of green pastureland, felicitously named Jerusalem Estate and abutting an eponymous creek in the island’s idyllic Midlands. On a visit in late August 2018 – in the middle of Australia’s winter, drawing in an Antarctic chill – the monks were still living in trailers and sheds fashioned from corrugated iron on a rented paddock at Rhyndaston, several miles down the road from their future home.
Once a day they travel to the neighboring town of Colebrook, to pray and celebrate Mass in the local church. They have decorated the altar and put out fresh flowers for Our Lady. Though they live like beggars, their liturgical prayer is dignified, and their Gregorian chant nothing short of divine.
Soon, thanks to the archdiocese, an old church will be brought in by truck from the north of the island, the monks tell CNA. Then the young Benedictines – their average age is less than 30, and most of them, with the exception of one monk and the American prior, hail from mainland Australia – will at last have a first church of their own in which to sing, pray and celebrate.
Notre Dame Priory is led by Father Pius Mary Noonan, a monk from Kentucky who lived previously as a monk in a French monastery in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain.
One day an Australian couple knocked on the door, asking the abbot to help organize a retreat in their country. That was almost 10 years ago, and Father Pius – one of the few fluent English speakers at the French abbey – became a regular pilgrim to Australia.
The retreats – which are still going strong, and are now run from Notre Dame Priory – were so successful that a permanent presence was increasingly the only feasible proposition.
The Archbishop
So how did Prior Pius and his young band of monks end up in Tasmania? The answer is the Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous.
The monastery is under the direct supervision of the 69-year-old prelate who, like a skilled gardener, has devoted himself to helping Catholic life flourish in the fertile – though, many say, spiritually barren – soil of the island that is his diocese. The Benedictines are but one of several seeds Porteous is sowing and planting. Each plant serves a different purpose, and each, is designed to serve strengthen and enrich the garden.
The archbishop and his team face a challenge of Biblical proportions. Even compared to rest of Australia – where the percentage of Catholics attending Mass is in the single digits – – Tasmania trails behind. Today, only about 16 percent of Tasmania’s population is Catholic – about 80,000 of roughly 530,000 Tasmanians — the lowest proportion of any Australian state or territory. And, like everywhere in the West, the number of Australians professing to be agnostics or atheists is on the rise.
(What is more, Tasmania did not experience the influx of Catholic migrants from continental Europe that since the 1950s has contributed – in many ways – to a more diverse Australia. Catholics have constituted the largest Christian denomination in the country since 1986, when their population overtook the number of Australian Anglicans).
To tackle this situation, Porteous says, over a cup of coffee in his unpretentious office, “we have to find a way of strengthening Catholic life, Catholic identity, Catholic spirituality. And at the same time, we mustn’t withdraw from society.”
Paradoxical though it might seem, that is why the Benedictine monks play an important role, the archbishop tells CNA.
“I think it’s very important at this moment when there are strong secularizing tendencies in society that do permeate through the Church, that we have, if you like, some pockets of strong Catholic Life that firstly can be a source of encouragement to many in the Church but secondly, can become a witness to the society.”
Striking a balance
Referring to Rod Dreher’s influential 2017 book “The Benedict Option,” the archbishop tells CNA: “One of the possible implications behind the Benedict Option would be a certain withdrawal in to a safer environment, a more consistently Catholic kind of life that the people were kind of close in.”
But just like Benedictines did in Europe over centuries, Porteous says that his work is about striking a balance – and cultivating the beauty and richness of Catholicism by using the different charisms to strengthen, rather than compete with, parish life.
For that reason, the archbishop invited the South American movement Palavra Viva – the Living Word – to establish a community of consecrated lay members in the town of Launceston.
And when visiting Sunday Mass in the picturesque Huon Valley, where forestry workers, organic farmers and artists live, one can see young religious sisters in a striking blue habit usher a youth group of missionary school attendees into their seats. These are the Sisters of the Immaculata, who were formed in Sydney in the December of 2008 and moved to Tasmania in 2014.
The sisters came, as foundress Mother Mary Therese explains “with the desire for spiritual renewal in parishes, through Adoration and faith formation.”
Porteous is “very happy” with the Sisters: “They’ve got a dozen young people doing four to five month mission school at the moment. In this summer, they’ll probably have 150 young people come through the nine day program they run here in Tasmania. So they will be representative of what I believe is a new flowering of Catholic life in the Church.”
Equally, there is no lack of interest in the young Benedictines from Notre Dame Priory. “I get a fair bit of email”, Prior Pius tells CNA, huddled into an ancient armchair next to a woodfire heater struggling to warm up the rickety farmhouse they use to receive guests.
“There is a lot of interest in what we are doing.”
And what about the Tasmanians they meet in everyday life? How do they react to the troop of young men with white habits and distinct hairstyles? The prior laughs.
“People are curious. We get asked a lot of questions. They want to know: Who are you? They’re usually very happy to hear that we’re monks”, he says and adds with a laugh, “although some have been disappointed that we’re not Buddhists.”
The Catholics of this new Jerusalem have their work cut out for them.
© Catholic World Report