Europe

Derry, Northern Ireland, Aug 1, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic church in Northern Ireland was vandalized Tuesday morning with sectarian graffiti, upsetting parishioners and local leaders.

“We never had a problem like this before. There was something very minor about five or six years ago but this is completely new to us,” Msgr. Bryan McCanny, pastor of St. Mary’s in Limavady, fewer than 20 miles east of Derry, told BBC News NI.

“Parishioners are very upset about it. It’s depressing that things like this should happen when we are enjoying peace.”

“The two police officers who arrived this morning helped to clean the paint off the door,” he added.

Paramilitary slogans from an anti-Catholic group marked a door and some of the walls of St Mary’s July 31. A large crucifix outside of the church was also painted on.

The graffiti read UDA and UFF. The Ulster Defence Association is an Ulster loyalist vigilante group founded in 1971 whose paramilitary front organization is the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

The UDA is considered a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, and between the late 1960s and 2007 it carried out more than 250 killings, with most of the victims Catholic civilians.

Msgr. McCanny said recent weeks have seen an increase in graffiti, and that “it needs nipped in the bud. Limavady has always been a respectful town. We don’t want the peace disturbed.”

The Northern Irish police are treating the incident as a sectarian hate crime.

Caoimhe Archibald, Member of the Legislative Assembly for East Londonderry, called the incident a “disgraceful attack.”

Archibald, a member of the Irish republican party Sinn Féin, said the attack “ comes after an increase in the number of paramilitary flags being flown and a surge in kerb painting in the town.”

“I would urge all elected and community leaders within unionism to show leadership in order to bring an end to the tensions in the area caused by marking territory in this way.”

Aaron Callan, a concillor of the Democratic Unionist Party, said the incident was “disgusting and vile and should be rightly condemned by everyone. There is no place for this kind of behaviour in our society, be it an attack on a chapel, church or an orange hall.”

And Ulster Unionist Party councillor Darryl Wilson told BBC News NI that “I’m saddened and angered to see another attack on a community building within my borough.”

Religious disputes have long been part of the history of Northern Ireland, which is predominantly Protestant and is part of the United Kingdom, while the majority-Catholic Republic of Ireland gained 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 ‘60s until 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was struck.

Since 1998, there has been only sporadic sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

In October 2017, the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force made threats which forced four Catholic families to flee their homes at a social housing project in Belfast.

Recent demographic figures have suggested that Catholics will likely outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland by 2021. According to the last census, in 2011, Protestants outnumbered Catholics in Northern Ireland by just three percent.

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Rome, Italy, Jul 31, 2018 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis made a surprise trip Saturday to visit an elderly woman in a central district of Rome, drawing attention from local residents as they spotted his blue car.

The pope made the July 28 v… […]

London, England, Jul 30, 2018 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Brain-damaged patients will be endangered by a U.K. Supreme Court decision making it easier to end their assisted nutrition and hydration, critics have said.

“This is concerning and disa… […]

Lviv, Ukraine, Jul 29, 2018 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “I can honestly say that the labor camp was the best place to understand what ‘love your enemy’ really means,” said Myroslav Marynovych, a Ukrainian Catholic who spent seven years in a Soviet gulag in the Perm region of Russia.

After receiving the 2018 Charles J. Chaput Award at the Napa Institute conference this month, Marynoych explained to CNA how the gospel came to life for him in the gulag, and how a stint in solitary confinement led him to write a letter to St. John Paul II.

Marynovych is currently vice-rector for university mission at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

Marynovych was sent to the labor camp in 1977, one year before Karol Wojtyła was elected Bishop of Rome. He was arrested for leading the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, the first non-underground group in Ukraine tasked with documenting human rights abuses and monitoring the implementation of the Helsinki Accords.

He spent 1977-1984 in forced labor camps in Perm, and then three years of exile in Kazakhstan.

Marynovych learned early on in his gulag experience that he needed to guard against an unchristian contempt for the KGB officers and guards.

After an outburst while interacting with a guard when he was in solitary confinement, Marynovych reflected on his actions in his cell.

“This incarnation of anger – is it me? What about my Christianity? I didn’t want to transform myself into a ‘man of hatred.’”

“I started to pray. I started to walk in the cell back and forth, and…I decided, ‘No, I don’t want hatred to overcome my heart.’”

After that realization, “I behaved in a way that is acceptable as a Christian. I don’t need to hate people to say something that they have to hear,” said Marynovych.

The Catholics in his labor camp celebrated Easter twice in a sign of solidarity with their Orthodox brethren, who follow a different liturgical calendar. “That was a sort of prison ecumenism,” Marynovych explained. It also made it more difficult for the KGB officers to pit the two groups against each other.

Any sort of religious practice was strictly forbidden in the Soviet camps. In 1982, the camp administration issued a warning on Holy Saturday that anyone gathering to celebrate Easter would be punished.

“And, for us Christians, to be punished for celebrating the Easter is okay. So of course we ignored these warnings,” said Marynovych.

“We gathered and we prayed. There were people of different confessions. We started to eat some simple food that we had at that moment, and the guards arrived and took all of us to the penal isolation cell for 15 days,” he continued.

“That was the time when in Europe Christian peace marches were very popular, and the Soviet Union supported these Christian peace marches because they stood for disarmament etc. It was useful for the Soviet propaganda.”

“The Soviet Union supported Christian movements in Europe, on one hand, and punished Christians for just celebrating Easter on the other hand. We had to inform the world about that.”

The prisoners decided to write a letter to the pope.

When the news that Wojtyła had been elected reached the gulag, there was “total enthusiasm in the labor camp,” explained Marynovych.

“We all understood that as a Polish citizen, he knew the nature of communism from within, not as some Italian bishops-cardinal from outside. They knew communism as a grassroots activity of Italian communists, but he knew communist crimes from within.”

Marynovych was the man selected by the prisoners to pen the letter.

“We described the situation and asked John Paul II to make this moment known for Christians in the world – that we were punished simply for celebrating the Easter. We shared the text of this letter later when we were released from this punishment cell, and the text was agreed upon by the other prisoners.”

“We smuggled this letter secretly to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Rome.”

“After several months, we received a secret information from our relatives that John Paul II had received this letter and prayed a Mass for the signatories of this letter, including me.”

“There was a storm of positive emotion, and gratitude to John Paul II for that because this support was very important for us.”

“It was suggested that the election of the John Paul II as pope was the end of communism. And actually it happened during his papacy. The Soviet Union fell down.”

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Marynovych had a chance to meet the pope and thank him personally, more than ten years later after he had written the letter.

“Of course, I was deprived of many joys of life – just imagine, I was arrested when I was 28 and released at 38. And yet, I am an illustration of the very important truth: God never takes anything away from a human being without compensating him or her even more abundantly. That’s why I have never considered my imprisonment as a curse,” Marynovych said in this remarks that the Napa Institute conference July 14.

“Yes, the Soviet regime did want to make my life hell. However, it was God who transformed the camp experience into a blessing.”

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Dublin, Ireland, Jul 27, 2018 / 06:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- To maintain state funding, a Catholic marriage counseling group in the Republic of Ireland, Accord, will reportedly begin to counsel same-sex couples.

Earlier this year, the Irish government threatened to remove state funding from counseling services which did not accept same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Ireland in 2015.

Accord has now signed a new service agreement with the Irish government.

“Accord Catholic Marriage Care Service CLG has assured Tusla they will provide counselling services regardless of sexual orientation and comply with the agreement,” said a spokeswomen for Ireland’s child and family agency, Tusla, according to the Times.

“Tusla will monitor service providers including Accord Dublin Catholic Marriage Care Service to ensure they comply with the terms of their service level agreement,” she said, noting that if the agreement is not followed through, funding may be withdrawn.

Accord receives the largest amount of public funding among counselling services in the Republic of Ireland.

Tusla is allocating more than 1.59 million euros ($1.86 million) for Accord’s services. The agency has 55 counseling centers in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Accord also teaches relationship and sex education classes in schools, where it does not teach about contraception or same-sex relationships.

Founded in 1962 by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Acccord had offered its services only to opposite-sex couples.

The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference failed to provide CNA with comment on the decision.

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Glasgow, Scotland, Jul 27, 2018 / 10:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Police Scotland have announced that a 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection with the alleged assault of a priest in Glasgow earlier this month while an “Orange walk” passed by his parish church.

“He is due before Glasgow Sheriff Court on Thursday, 26 July, and a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal,” the police force added.

Canon Tom White, 43, was greeting parishioners after Mass July 7 when an Orange march approached. Orange marches are organized by the Protestant fraternal group the Orange Order, largely in Northern Ireland and Scotland, to commemorate the defeat of James II by William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

According to the Archdiocese of Glasgow, Canon White was spat at, verbally abused, and lunged at.

John McBride, a Police Scotland Superintendent, said, “This was a despicable and shocking incident and I would like to take this opportunity to thank members of the public for their support during our investigation.”

“Police Scotland takes any form of hate crime extremely seriously and I hope this sends a clear message that this type of deplorable behaviour will not be tolerated.”

The Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland has denied any involvement in the assault on the priest.

Subsequent Glaswegian Orange walks were cancelled after the outcry over the attack on Canon White.

The Glasgow archdiocese had asked Police Scotland and Glasgow City Council ““What kind of society is it that allows ministers of religion and church goers to be intimidated and attacked by a group which has a long history of fomenting fear and anxiety on city streets?”, and “Why is the Orange Order still allowed to schedule its intimidating parades on streets containing Catholic Churches at times when people are trying to get in and out for Mass?”

A petition at change.org posted after the attack calling on Glasgow City Council to end the Orange walks has gained more than 82,000 signatures.

Scotland has experienced significant sectarian division since the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century, which led to the formation of the Church of Scotland, an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition which is the country’s largest religious community.

Sectarianism and and crimes motivated by anti-Catholicism have been on the rise in Scotland in recent years.

An April poll of Catholics in Scotland found that 20 percent reported personally experiencing abuse of prejudice toward their faith; and a government report on religiously-motivated crime in 2016 and 2017 found a concentration of incidents in Glasgow.

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Brussels, Belgium, Jul 25, 2018 / 12:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent government report revealed that in 2016 and 2017, three minors were euthanized in Belgium, amid a profound rise in the number of individuals legally procuring their own deaths.

“In all three cases, the patients were suffering from insufferable and incurable conditions which were already in a terminal phase,” Alan Hope reported July 18 in the Brussels Times.

The euthanization of children was legalized in Belgium in 2014. The practice had first been introduced in 2003 for adults.

Belgium’s federal control and evaluation committee recently issued a report on the use of euthanasia.

There were 2,028 euthanasia deaths in 2016, and 2,309 in 2017, a 13 percent rise year-on-year. The report found that cancer is the primary reason individuals seek euthanasia.

Most were people between 60 and 89 who exhibited multiple illnesses or ailments. 710 of those euthanized in 2016 and 2017 sought their death because of conditions like sight loss or incontinence. 19 young people, between the ages of 18 and 29, were euthanized in 2016 and 2017. 77 people sought euthanasia because of psychiatric suffering.

 Men and women are equally represented, but three times as many Dutch speakers as French speakers requested the procedure. Dutch speakers represent roughly 60 percent of Belgians, and French speakers 40 percent.

The number of persons procuring euthanasia in their homes has also increased.

Belgium’s law allows minors of any age who are terminally ill to request euthanasia. Parental consent, as well as the agreement of doctors and psychiatrists, is required.

When euthanasia for minors was legalized, a governing member of the Pontifical Academy for Life told CNA the development was “dreadful.”

“They are appealing to ‘rights of children’ to make these determinations, but children aren’t capable of making those types of self-determinations,” Haas said.

“So what is really going to happen is that, under the rules of children making these decisions for themselves, parents and physicians are going to be making those decisions, for children, to eliminate them because they’ve become excessive burdens on them and on the rest of society.”

“It’s a terrible situation. Unbelievable, if I may say so.”

The euthanization of minors is also permitted in the Netherlands, though they must be at least 12 years of age.

Teaching in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

“Even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy … Moreover, the act of euthanasia appears all the more perverse if it is carried out by those, like relatives, who are supposed to treat a family member with patience and love, or by those, such as doctors, who by virtue of their specific profession are supposed to care for the sick person even in the most painful terminal stages.”

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London, England, Jul 24, 2018 / 07:20 pm (CNA).- A British charity that provides women with alternatives to abortion was ejected from the Lambeth Country Show after a local government official said the group had misrepresented itself in its application… […]

Rome, Italy, Jul 24, 2018 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill has been introduced in the Italian parliament which would require the visible display of crucifixes in public buildings, Italian news magazine L’Espresso reported Monday.

The bill, “Dispositions concerning the display of the crucifix in schools and in offices of public administration,” proposes crucifixes be visibly hung in places such as schools, universities, prisons, public offices, consulates, embassies, and ports.

The proposal would also order a fine of up to 1,000 euros ($1,169) for non-compliance. The bill now waits to be scheduled for discussion in the Chamber and Senate.

It was introduced by the country’s Lega Nord party, headed by Matteo Salvini, the newly-made interior minister and deputy prime minister alongside the leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi di Maio.

Italy’s general election, held in May, resulted in a coalition government led by Lega Nord and the Five Star Movement, both of which are center-right populist parties.

A similar decision was made by the government of Bavaria, a German state.

Bavarian premier Markus Söder announced April 24 that the entrances to state building would be required to display a cross by June 1. Söder’s office said the decision was meant to “express the historical and cultural character of Bavaria” and to present “a visible commitment to the core values of the legal and social order in Bavaria and Germany.”

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Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jul 23, 2018 / 10:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s apostolic visitor to Medjugorje, appointed by the pope to oversee the pastoral needs at the site of alleged Marian apparitions, began his mandate Sunday.

Arc… […]