Harare, Zimbabwe, Jul 2, 2019 / 12:22 am (CNA).- A recent conference in Zimbabwe encouraged government officials, church leaders and academics to work together to fight human trafficking.
The conference was held in Harare at Arrupe Jesuit University. … […]
Asmara, Eritrea, Jun 26, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The head of the Eritrean Catholic Church has called for the Church’s faithful to observe the current fasting season in response to the government’s seizure and closing of 22 Church-run health clinics earlier this month.
Archbishop Menghesteab Tesfamariam of the Eritrean Archeparchy of Asmara wrote in a June 22 letter that “only the Lord can console us and resolve our problems.”
The Eritrean Catholic Church observes the Apostles’ Fast – a fasting season between Pentecost and the feast of Saints Peter and Paul – this year from June 25 through July 11. The Church uses the Alexandrian rite and the Coptic calendar, on which the feast of Saints Peter and Paul is not celebrated until the Gregorian calendar’s July 12.
The Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa has also condemned the clinics’ seizure.
Bishop Charles Kasonde of Solwezi, chair of AMECEA, wrote to the Eritrean bishops saying, “I hereby extend my heart-felt message of solidarity to you and the entire Catholic family in Eritrea over the confiscation of the health institutions owned by the Catholic Church.”
“May the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ nurture you with the hope and give you the necessary courage and stamina to stand strong in defence of the rights of the Church and God’s people in Eritrea,” he added.
In June, military forces arrived at the Church’s 22 clinics, telling patients to return to their homes, and subsequently guarding the buildings.
A letter from the Church to the health ministry after the seizure said that “the government can say it doesn’t want the services of the Church, but asking for the property is not right.” It added that the Church’s social services cannot be characterized as opposition to the government.
Eritrea is a one-party state whose human rights record has frequently been deplored.
According to the BBC, analysts believe the seizures were retaliatory, after the Church in April called for reforms to reduce emigration. The bishops had also called for national reconciliation.
Government seizure of Church property is not new, however.
A 1995 decree restricting social and welfare projects to the state has been used intermittently since then to seize or close ecclesial services.
In July 2018, an Eritrean Catholic priest helping immigrants and refugees in Italy told EWTN that authorities had recently shut down eight free Catholic-run medical clinics. He said authorities claimed the clinics were unnecessary because of the presence of state clinics.
Christian and Muslim schools have also been closed under the 1995 decree, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2019 annual report.
Eritrea has been designated a Country of Particular Concern since 2004 for its religious freedom abuses by the US Department of State.
Many Eritreans, especially youth, emigrate, due to a military conscription, and a lack of opportunities, freedom, education, and health care.
A July 2018 peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which ended a conflict over their mutual border, led to an open border which has allowed for easier emigration.
Jos, Nigeria, Jun 21, 2019 / 12:14 am (CNA).- At a funeral earlier this month, Nigerian religious and political leaders paid tribute to Bishop Kevin Aje of Sokoto, well-known as a role model who worked for peace in the country.
The funeral for Bishop … […]
Kampala, Uganda, Jun 20, 2019 / 11:50 am (CNA).- Catholic Relief Services is monitoring the health situation in Uganda, following two confirmed deaths from the Ebola virus.
“We consider even one case a very serious development,” said Niek … […]
Asmara, Eritrea, Jun 18, 2019 / 02:26 pm (CNA).- The Eritrean Catholic Church has criticized the government of the one-party state for seizing and closing its 22 health clinics throughout the country last week.
“The government can say it doesn’t want the services of the Church, but asking for the property is not right,” read a letter from the Church to the Eritrean health ministry, the BBC reported June 17.
The Church added that its social services cannot be characterized as opposition to the government.
In seizing the clinics, patients were told to return to their homes, and military are guarding the buildings.
Of the 22 Catholic clinics in Eritrea, eight are in the Eritrean Eparchy of Keren alone, where they serve an estimated 40,000 patients annually.
According to the BBC, analysts believe the seizures were retaliatory, after the Church in April called for reforms to reduce emigration. The bishops had also called for national reconciliation.
Government seizure of Church property is not new, however.
A 1995 decree restricting social and welfare projects to the state has been used intermittently since then to seize or close ecclesial services.
In July 2018, an Eritrean Catholic priest helping immigrants and refugees in Italy told EWTN that authorities had recently shut down eight free Catholic-run medical clinics. He said authorities claimed the clinics were unnecessary because of the presence of state clinics.
Christian and Muslim schools have also been closed under the 1995 decree, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2019 annual report.
Eritrea’s human rights record has frequently been deplored, and the nation has been designated a Country of Particular Concern for its religious freedom abuses by the US Department of State since 2004.
Many Eritreans, especially youth, emigrate, due to a military conscription, and a lack of opportunities, freedom, education, and health care.
A July 2018 peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which ended a conflict over their mutual border, led to an open border which has allowed for easier emigration.
Nairobi, Kenya, Jun 15, 2019 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Kenya’s High Court ruled Wednesday that rape victims whose pregnancy threatens their life or health have a right to procure abortion.
The June 12 ruling regarded a case brought on b ehalf of a young woman who died in June 2018 from complications related to a back-alley abortion she procured in 2014.
“Pregnancy resulting from rape or defilement, if in the opinion of a trained medical profession poses a danger to life or the health – that is physical, mental and social well-being of the mother – maybe terminated under … sections of the constitution,” said Justice Aggrey Muchelule, the Thompson Reuters Foundation reported.
The Standard, a Nairobi daily, reported that the judges ruled: “The apparent blanket prohibition of abortion in the penal code cannot stand while the Constitution gives the right to a woman to abort when their life and health are in danger.”
The 2010 Kenyan constitution made abortion legal in certain circumstances – in the cases of emergencies and when the woman’s health is in jeopardy.
The girl at the center of the case, known by her initials JMM, was raped in 2014 at the age of 15. In December of that year, her guardian was told by a relative that JMM was vomiting and bleeding heavily at a clinic where she had gone for treatment.
JMM had told clinic staff she had procured an unsafe abortion and that she had been sent to a variety of hospitals for post-abortive care.
In 2015, JMM’s mother, along with the Federation of Women Lawyers and the Centre for Reproductive Rights, filed a suit against the Ministry of Health claiming JMM was not provided with proper post-abortion care and calling on the government to provide access to safe abortions.
JMM developed kidney failure, and died June 10, 2018.
The suit filed on JMM’s behalf maintains that the poor care she received following her abortion was a result of the lack of safe abortion services.
In its ruling, the court awarded JMM’s mother damage of 3 million Kenyan shillings ($29,500).
The court also ordered the health ministry to reinstate guidelines on conducting ‘safe’ abortions. In 2013 the ministry had withdrawn the guidelines, and banned health workers from training in the procedure, after it emerged they were being used to unintended purposes.
The court had heard three days of testimony in the case in July 2018. It had been expected to deliver a verdict before January 2019.
Among the testimonies heard by the court was that of Dr. Wahome Ngari, who said that figures on the number of back-alley abortions procured, which are used to argue for the expansion of abortion rights, are wildly inflated, and that similar inflation was used to push the Malawian government to repeal its abortion law.
Ngari said the focus on health care for pregnant women in Kenya should begin with blood loss.
“The reason pregnant mothers die in the country is haemorrhage, followed by infections, hyperactive disorders, prolonged or obstructed labour and lastly abortion. Anyone who wants to offer a solution should follow that order.”
Monrovia, Liberia, Jun 14, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Liberian Church leaders have visited the Vatican after a priest claimed to have been mentally and psychologically abused by two bishops, reportedly in retaliation against him for refusing sexual relati… […]
Kigali, Rwanda, Jun 4, 2019 / 11:36 am (CNA).- Some 200 Rwandans were blocked by national troops from crossing the border with Uganda to attend a pilgrimage in the neighboring country on Monday.
The pilgrims were turned back amid ongoing tensions between leaders of the two countries.
Janinah Busingye, an official in one of Rwanda’s border towns, told AFP, “More than 200 Rwandans who were coming to attend Martyrs Day were stopped by the military from crossing to Uganda and sent back.”
One Rwandan pilgrim told AFP that her group was prohibited from crossing the border by officials who cited security reasons.
Rwanda has blocked people from crossing the border with Uganda for three months, according to the BBC. The closures have affected Rwandans living in border towns, who cross into Uganda to work and buy food.
While Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Rwandan President Paul Kagame supported each other during their country’s respective revolutions, they have had a tense relationship in recent months, each accusing the other nation of interference and mistreatment of its citizens.
The Feast of the Ugandan Martyrs is held annually on June 3. It is celebrated at a shrine built on the site where most of the martyrs were killed, about 10 miles northeast of downtown Kampala in Uganda.
Each year, the commemoration draws millions from around the globe, including Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Africa News.
The feast honors 24 Catholic martyrs from the country, 22 of whom were killed between 1885 and 1887 under King Mwanga of Buganda (now a part of Uganda), and two others who were killed in 1918 in Northern Uganda. Twenty-three Anglican Ugandans were also killed for their Christian faith within the same time period.
The martyrs were primarily pages in the court of King Mwanga, who grew increasingly intolerant of Christianity, likely for two reasons: he saw it as a threat to his power, and he resented the young Christian pages who rejected his sexual advances.
The Christian converts were tortured and executed by the king. Popular devotion to the martyrs remained strong in the country, and they were beatified June 6, 1920. Bl. Paul VI canonized the group Oct. 18, 1964.
Archbishop Antoine Kambanda of Rwanda celebrated Mass at St. Charles Lwanga Parish in Kigali for pilgrims who were unable to attend the Ugandan commemoration, AFP reported.
Juba, South Sudan, May 31, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Ave Maria, the parish church outside Mupoi, South Sudan, fell into disrepair decades ago. It was abandoned at the beginning of Sudan’s civil war, and then ransacked. It is dilapidated and practically unusable.
But two strong-willed Spanish missionaries in South Sudan are working to change that. They have a vision for the church, which they hope to turn in a continental Marian Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.
The church, near Mupoi, in the South Sudanese diocese of Tombura-Yambio, is massive. It was built almost a century ago by Combonian missionaries from Italy.
The missionaries are followers of St. Daniel Comboni, the first Bishop of Sudan, who founded their order in the late 19th century. The Combonians became the leading evangelizing force of Sudan, and were especially successful in converting to Catholicism the tribes in the territory that today comprises the new nation of South Sudan.
Sudan became an independent nation in 1956. Its first prime minister, Ismail al-Azhari, in order to appease the Islamists of the country’s north, expelled all Catholic missionaries from the country. The majority of those missionaries were Italian Combonians.
Their churches, rectories and missions were either abandoned or transferred to young native clergy and religious. Ave Maria was one such Church. But after the missionaries were expelled, and the civil war began, most of the region’s Catholic population fled. The Church building was left to crumble.
But Catholics are returning to the area. And two Catalonian priests, themselves missionaries to the region, are determined to turn the massive Catholic church into the continental Marian Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.
“Now that the people has returned to this area, our goal is to rebuild physically, but most importantly spiritually, with a comprehensive vision” says Fr. Avelino Bassols, pastor of the mission parish.
Bassols and his vicar, Fr. Albert Salvans, belong to the Missionary Community of St. Paul de the Apostle (MCSPA) made up of men and women, priests and lay people, who have decided to leave everything behind in order to follow Christ as missionaries in the most demanding areas of the globe.
The MCSPA was founded by the Spanish missionary priest Francisco Andreo García, who died of cancer in 2013 at Nariokotome Mission, in Turkana, Kenya.
Garcia moved to Kenya in 1988. After that, each time he visited Spain, he strengthened his relationships with the young people from the parishes where he had served during his years in Spain. This group later became the seed of the MCSPA, which now includes members not only from Spain but also from Kenya, Ethiopia, Germany, Malaysia, Italy, Mexico and Colombia.
Ave Maria Parish is now the epicenter of the peace and rebuilding effort in the northern part of war-ravaged South Sudan’s Diocese of Tombura-Yambio.
“Our mission here is to bring the Gospel in full, and that means not only spreading the Gospel, but also bringing education, peace and reconciliation to the region,” the Bishop of Tombura-Yambio, Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala, told CNA.
While the priests work in the slow rebuilding of the shrine, a building for a secondary school has been started with financial help from the U.S. based Sudan Relief Fund. The Catholic school will cater to all the students from the nearby towns of Yubu, Ngpotoneyo, Nboko and Sabamile.
“Many African Catholics come in pilgrimage to the shrine of the Holy Cross in nearby Mupoi,” explains Fr. Bassols, “Bishop Eduardo has proposed to connect both shrines, thus, people can come to pray to Our Lord in Mupoi and to Our Lady here.”
Fr. Bassols does not hide his enthusiasm when he explains: “We are located at the very heart of Africa. If you draw a cross from North to South and from East to West in an African map., Ave Maria is almost at the exact center.”
“In the state of Tombura, 84% of the population is Catholic, and I mean, truly Catholic. We need schools, drinking water, a healthcare facility, issues we are addressing with the help of the Sudan Relief Fund. But what we have in abundance here is a deep faith. Our people have survived persecutions, the expulsion of the missionaries, many decades without priests… but their deep faith remains,” Fr. Bassols told CNA.
“Is wonderful to devote one’s life to the people that need, the most and to preach them the Gospel. Catholics, especially the young, should remember that our baptismal call to be missionaries is not only fulfilled by being evangelizers to our neighbors, but also to respond to Jesus’ call to ‘go to all the nations’ and therefore, become missionaries Ad Gentes… we invite young people to seriously consider becoming missionaries here,” Fr. Salvans added.
Bassols and Salvans are hopeful that in 2023, the centenary of the foundation of Ave Maria, the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary will be completely restored, and will attract Catholics from all over the world.
Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso, May 29, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Four people were killed Sunday during an attack on a Catholic church in Burkina Faso. There have been several such attacks in the west African country in recent weeks.
“The small Christia… […]
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