Europe

Paris, France, Mar 2, 2020 / 01:29 pm (CNA).- A priest has been hospitalized in Paris after testing positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus Feb. 28.

Fr. Alexandre Comte, 43, had recently returned from Italy, where there are currently over 1,800 register… […]

Vatican City, Mar 2, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome on Monday cleared a Scottish bishop of plagiarism in his 2003 doctoral dissertation.

The announcement Monday concluded an investigation begun by the university in… […]

Rome, Italy, Mar 1, 2020 / 07:03 pm (CNA).- Several Catholic colleges and universities with study abroad programs in Italy have ended the semester early and are sending students back to the United States amid the coronavirus outbreak.

One of these schools is The University of Notre Dame, which announced Friday it had canceled the remainder of its Rome Global Gateway program and was flying the 106 students back to the U.S. as soon as possible.

The university also asked students to self-quarantine at home for 14 days, and to receive a doctor’s clearance, following their re-entry to the U.S.

Christendom College, based in Front Royal, Va., decided Feb. 29 to suspend its Rome-based study abroad program beginning March 6.

Amanda Graf, director of the school’s program in Rome, wrote that the “decision was not made lightly, and it breaks our hearts that the students will not be able to experience the entire Rome semester.”

“Ultimately it is our care and concern for the students that motivates us to make this decision.”

She said while the students were likely not at a high risk for infection or physical harm, “the safety and quality of life concerns are too great to risk the variables that would come should the city in fact experience a viral outbreak.”

Indiana-based St. Mary’s College has also suspended its Rome program.

Benedictine College, which has a study abroad program in Florence, last week gave students the choice between staying or returning to the U.S. early. Reportedly 14 of the 52 students decided to leave Italy and continue their courses online, according to KQ2.com.

The University of Dallas, whose Italy campus is about 13 miles southeast of Rome, has not yet made the decision to cancel the semester.

The school has around eight students taking extra precautionary measures after they traveled to Milan, one of the cities in the area most affected by the virus.

According to the university’s news website, the students are required to wear masks on campus, eat meals separately, and to sleep in an area apart from the other students.

The university’s president, Thomas S. Hibbs, said the university is monitoring the coronavirus situation.

Late last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised the travel warning for Italy to a level three, advising people to avoid non-essential travel to the country due to the spread of Covid-19.

According to Italian health authorities Italy had counted 1,577 cases of the novel coronavirus, mostly in the northern regions of Veneto and Liguria. There have been 13 cases registered in Tuscany, where Florence is located, and six in Rome’s region of Lazio.

Nearly 800 of the people with novel coronavirus are being treated at home, while 140 are in intensive care. Thirty-four people have died from the virus in Italy.

Covid-19 is a new strain of coronavirus, which can cause fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. In some cases, it can lead to pneumonia, kidney failure, and severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Novel coronavirus, or Covid-19, originated in the Hubei province of China.

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Rome, Italy, Feb 29, 2020 / 03:44 pm (CNA).- Following the conclusion of the Legionaries of Christ’s general chapter, the religious order’s new leader has vowed to instill ideals for protection and transparency in the face of the sexual abu… […]

Wloclawek, Poland, Feb 27, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- A retired archbishop who accused Pope Francis of heresy has been ordered to cease celebrating Mass in public.

Archbishop Jan Paweł Lenga, the 69-year-old former Archbishop of Karaganda in Kazakhstan, has also been forbidden to preach at Masses or speak to the media.

The sanctions were imposed by the Diocese of Włocławek in central Poland, where the archbishop retired after serving in Kazakhstan.

Archbishop Lenga immediately defied the ruling by giving an interview to WRealu24.tv, in which he insisted that he would continue to speak out.

Fr Artur Niemira, chancellor of Włocławek diocese, told the Polish Catholic news agency KAI  that local Bishop Wiesław Mering had decided to impose the disciplinary measures in order to prevent the spread of scandal among the faithful.

KAI said the archbishop had refused to mention Pope Francis’s name when celebrating Masses. It added that the measures would remain in effect until the Holy See issues a judgment on the case.

The archbishop has repeatedly criticised Pope Francis. Last year the Polish journal Więź reported that he had called Francis a “usurper and heretic.”

Więź said the archbishop had given a book-length interview to the author Stanisław Krajski. The journal quoted the archbishop as saying: “Bergoglio preaches untruth, preaches sin, and does not preach a tradition that lasted so many years, 2,000 years… He proclaims the truth of this world and this is the truth of the devil.”

In January, the archbishop appeared on the Polish television show Warto rozmawiać, prompting criticism from the Polish bishops’ conference. The bishops’ spokesman Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik noted that the archbishop is not a member of the Polish bishops’ conference.

“Therefore the statements of Archbishop Lenga cannot be identified in any way with the Polish episcopal conference,” he said. “They cannot be treated as positions of Polish bishops.”

In June 2019, Archbishop Lenga was among of the signatories of the 40-point “Declaration of Truths.”

The declaration claimed to address “the most common errors in the life of the Church of our time,” reaffirming Church teaching on topics such as the Eucharist, marriage and clerical celibacy.

Jan Paweł Lenga was born in present-day Ukraine in 1950. He was ordained secretly in 1980 due to Soviet persecution of the Catholic Church. A member of the Marian Fathers, he was appointed apostolic administrator of Kazakhstan in 1991, the year that Kazakhstan became the last Soviet republic to declare independence.

He was appointed to Karaganda in 1998, where he remained until 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation under canon 401 § 2 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that diocesan bishops may resign “because of ill health or some other grave cause”.

Archbishop Lenga retired to a community of Marian Fathers in Licheń Stary, a village that is home to Poland’s largest church, in the Diocese of Włocławek.

Fr Niemira, chancellor of Włocławek diocese, said the bishop had imposed the measures on Archbishop Lenga in accordance with canons 392 and 763 of the Code of Canon Law.

Canon 392 states that, in order to protect Church unity, “a bishop is bound to promote the common discipline of the whole Church and therefore to urge the observance of all ecclesiastical laws”. Canon 763 says that bishops have the right to preach everywhere unless forbidden to do so by a local bishop.
 

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Belfast, Northern Ireland, Feb 27, 2020 / 04:59 pm (CNA).- While Northern Ireland has long faced religious disputes, an ecumenical celebration of Ash Wednesday was held at a Catholic church in Belfast this year, in which Presbyterian, Anglican, and Methodist ministers participated.

Ken Newell, a former Presbyterian Moderator; Elizabeth Hanna, a retired Church of Ireland minister; and Robin Waugh, a Methodist minister, all received ashes at the Feb. 26 service at St. Mary’s Church.

Fr. Tim Bartlett led the service. Afterwards, he said it was a “deeply moving” experience.

Fr. Martin Magill, pastor of St. John’s parish, helped to organize the event.

Ahead of time, he said that “In this inclusive service, people from all backgrounds will be offered the ashes, but no one will be pressured to take them.”

“In other parts of the world Christians come together every year to mark Ash Wednesday in this way, so in many other places what we are marking together tomorrow would be a common practice.”

Hanna commented, “I thoroughly enjoyed being here, and history has been made. It was great being a part of it.”

Newell noted his joy in participating “in this special service” and emphasized the value of Lent.

He stressed the symbolic value of this event in bringing people together. He said it is also an opportunity to make “space for God,” according to the Belfast Telegraph.

“This will be a symbolic service of healing and reconciliation, of togetherness and not of division,” he said. “It is another opportunity for the churches to walk side by side, and to move on towards a better future for everyone.”

Religious disputes have long been part of the history of Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom and has been predominantly Protestant, while the majority-Catholic Republic of Ireland declared its independence in 1916.

The region has had ongoing religiously and politically based conflicts, most notably “the Troubles”, which included violent clashes that lasted from the late 1960s until 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was struck.

Since 1998, there has been only sporadic sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, though there have been several incidents in recent years.

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Bonn, Germany, Feb 26, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The secretary of the German bishops’ conference has announced that he will step down from his position ahead of the group’s next general assembly in early March. Fr. Hans Langendörfer,&nbs… […]

London, England, Feb 25, 2020 / 02:20 pm (CNA).- A 24-year-old British woman with Down syndrome has launched a lawsuit against the UK government, seeking to change British laws that allow for babies with Down syndrome to be aborted up until birth.

“At the moment in the UK, babies can be aborted right up to birth if they are considered to be “seriously handicapped.” They include me in that definition of being seriously handicapped – just because I have an extra chromosome,” Heidi Crowter told journalists this week.

“What it says to me is that my life just isn’t as valuable as others, and I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s downright discrimination.”

Crowter, along with Cheryl Bilsborrow, the mother of a two-year-old with Down syndrome, have sent a letter to the British secretary of state and are hoping to raise the £20,000 necessary to litigate the case.

Bilsborrow said she was strongly encouraged to have an abortion after doctors performed the screening test on her unborn child.

“The nurse reminded me I could have a termination right up to 40 weeks if the baby had Down’s,” Bilsborrow told the Catholic Herald.

“I just said to her: ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ but it did make me feel very anxious.”

Abortions are legal in the UK for any reason up until 24 weeks, and most of the country’s 200,000 or so annual abortions take place before 13 weeks.

Abortions after 24 weeks are legal only if a woman’s life is in danger, there is a fetal abnormality classified as “severe”, or the woman is at risk of grave physical and mental injury, the BBC reports.

If the baby has a disability, including Down’s syndrome, cleft lip and club foot, abortion is legal up to birth. About nine in ten women have abortions after being given a diagnosis of Down syndrome, the Daily Mail reports.

The “Don’t Screen Us Out” campaign in the United Kingdom has, for the past four years, been drawing awareness to and seeking to change the UK’s abortion laws, seeking to amend Abortion Act of 1967 so that abortions for non-fatal disabilities are outlawed in the third trimester, which starts around 28 weeks of pregnancy.

Lynn Murray, a spokesperson for the group, told CNA in an interview that the campaign began in response to the government’s proposal of a new screening test for Down syndrome that, according to the government, would find an additional 102 cases of Down syndrome a year.

Given the high rate of termination for babies in the UK found to have Down syndrome, the campaign formed in order to try to get the government to assess the impact that the non-invasive prenatal testing technique, called ‘cell-free DNA’ or cfDNA, would have on the Down syndrome community. The campaign attracted attention among Britons with similar concerns, she said.

The group is backing Crowter and Bilsborrow in their lawsuit against the government.

“Launching this case gets people talking about it,” she said, adding that most people don’t even realize abortion is available up until birth in the UK.

“We are keen for people with Down syndrome to advocate for themselves. And this is what Heidi has decided to do…she feels that abortion after 24 weeks suggests that the lives of people like her don’t have the same value as everyone else.”

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has consistently criticised countries which provide for abortion on the basis of disability, the group says. In some countries, such as Denmark and Iceland, the abortion rate for babies found to have Down syndrom is close to 100%.

In the United States, there have been numerous attempts at the state level to ban abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Missouri lawmakers passed a law during 2019 that, in addition to banning all abortions after eight weeks, prohibits “selective” abortions following a medical diagnosis or disability such as Down syndrome, or on the basis of the race or sex of the baby. The law is currently blocked in the courts amid a legal challenge.

Ohio lawmakers attempted in 2017 to pass a ban on Down syndrome abortions, but a federal judge in 2019 blocked the legislation from taking effect.

Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Utah have all considered or passed similar bans.

At the federal level, the Down Syndrome Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act has been introduced in Congress, but has not yet been debated. The proposed law would ban doctors from “knowingly perform[ing] an abortion being sought because the baby has or may have Down syndrome.”
 

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Brussels, Belgium, Feb 24, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- The Belgian Prime Minister, Sophie Wilmes, has condemned a traditional parade in the country which featured apparently anti-Semitic floats.

For the second consecutive year, organizers of the Aals… […]

Milan, Italy, Feb 24, 2020 / 06:54 am (CNA).- Several Catholic dioceses in northern Italy have suspended Mass and other activities this week to help contain the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus.

The northern regions of… […]