Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nov 26, 2018 / 03:20 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Kinshasa has urged politicians to preserve national unity and practice leadership as service ahead of upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. … […]
Yaoundé, Cameroon, Nov 21, 2018 / 03:08 pm (CNA).- A priest serving in Cameroon has been killed by military gunfire, amid a military and political conflict that has rocked the country for in recent years.
Fr. Cosmas Ombato Ondari was reportedly killed… […]
Nairobi, Kenya, Nov 19, 2018 / 04:07 pm (CNA).- Kenyan authorities have banned the international abortion group Marie Stopes from offering any form of abortions in the country. This comes after a government agency investigated complaints that the group was promoting abortion through its advertisements.
Marie Stopes is a UK-based organization that claims to be the “world’s largest provider of contraception and safe abortion services” and operates in 37 countries, according to its website.
Abortion is not permitted under the Constitution of Kenya, unless “there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger,” or if otherwise permitted by law. The exceptions were added to the Constitution in 2010.
The Medical Practitioners Board of Kenya sent a letter to Marie Stopes last week, saying the board was acting on complaints from, among others, the campaign manager at a campaign group called CitizenGo Africa. The pro-life organization had been campaigning for an investigation of Marie Stopes’ advertising practices since last year.
“Marie Stopes Kenya is hereby directed to immediately cease and desist offering any form of abortion services in all its facilities within the republic,” a Nov. 14 letter from the Kenyan Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board read.
The letter also ordered Maries Stopes Kenya to submit weekly reports for the next 60 days of “all services rendered within all its facilities.”
Ezekiel Mutua, head of the Kenyan government agency in charge of approving advertisements, welcomed the ban, saying in a statement that the Kenya Film Classification Board had banned abortion advertisements by Marie Stopes Kenya in September, but “the organization defied our ban and continued to run unrated and illegal adverts.”
He said the board had also ordered Marie Stopes to “pull down all misleading information on their abortion services from all media platforms.”
Marie Stopes had been operating in Kenya since 1985, BBC reports. The Kenyan Ministry of Health reported in May that the country had spent 533 million Kenyan shillings ($5.29 million) treating complications from back-alley abortions.
Rumbek, South Sudan, Nov 19, 2018 / 02:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. Victor-Luke Odhiambo, a Jesuit from Kenya, was shot and killed in South Sudan by unknown gunmen while at home Thursday morning.
Fr. Odhiambo, who was the principal of Mazzolari Teacher… […]
Alindao, Central African Republic, Nov 16, 2018 / 04:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At least 42 people have died in an attack Thursday on the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Alindao, in the Central African Republic, according to local reports.
At least one priest was among those killed in the Nov. 15 attack. Some unofficial estimates have said the death toll could reach as high as 100. Many of the people killed were refugees sheltering at the Church.
The CAR has suffered violence since December 2012, when several bands of mainly Muslim rebel groups formed an alliance, taking the name Seleka, and seized power.
In reaction to the Seleka’s attacks, some Central Africans formed self-defense groups called anti-balaka. Some of these groups, mainly composed of Christians, began attacking Muslims out of revenge, and the conflict took on a sectarian character.
According to reports from Aid to the Church in Need, ex-Seleka forces attacked the cathedral, reportedly in retaliation for a Muslim who was killed the day prior by anti-balaka.
The priest killed in the attack was vicar general of the diocese, Abbe Blaise Mada. Aid to the Church in Need added that some reports have said second priest, Father Celestine Ngoumbango, was also killed, but this has not been confirmed.
Houses in the neighborhood were also looted and burned.
Many Catholic churches in the country provide refuge to Muslims and Christians alike fleeing violence, included churches in the Diocese of Bangassou, some 140 miles to the east of Alindao, where several Catholic institutions have taken in displaced Muslims who face violence at the hand of anti-balaka.
Anti-balaka killed more than 100 Muslims in Bangassou in May 2017 before United Nations peacekeepers intervened, and since then the city’s Petit Seminaire Saint Louis has been home to about 1,600 displaced Muslims. Another 2,000 Muslims have taken refuge at St. Peter Claver Cathedral in Bangassou.
The CAR held a general election in 2015-16 which installed a new government, but militant groups continue to terrorize local populations. Thousands of people have been killed in the violence, and at least a million have been displaced. At least half of Central Africans depend on humanitarian aid, the U.N. reports.
Pope Francis visited the CAR during his trip to Africa in 2015, and urged the country’s leaders to work for peace and reconciliation.
Three priests were killed in CAR this year prior to yesterday’s Cathedral attack.
Yaoundé, Cameroon, Nov 16, 2018 / 04:03 pm (ACI Prensa).- Three Franciscan sisters and 13 novices travelling from Bamenda to Shisong in Northwest Cameroon have been released, after they were captured by separatist fighters in the small village of Bames… […]
Algiers, Algeria, Nov 16, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”
The Algerian martyrs will be beatified Dec. 8 at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Cross in Oran.
“The beatification of our brothers and sisters is a grace for our Church,” Archbishop Desfarges wrote in a November pastoral letter.
He urged the local Church “to love as they did in the freedom that the Holy Spirit gives” because the martyrs “go before us on the path of witness that our Church is called to give in this land of Algeria, which from the first century has been watered with the blood of the martyrs.”
Archbishop Desfarges said that the 19 martyrs “still continue their mission” and noted that “their lives were given to God and to the people to whom love had united them.” He encouraged the faithful to pray to them “asking for the grace of fidelity for our Church in its mission.”
The archbishop said that the witness of the future blesseds “takes us down the path of ordinary holiness.”
“Life is given to us in order to live it giving ourselves in the everyday…holiness is not a perfection in virtue or morals” but “is a matter of giving your own life, loving and serving in the ordinary things of every day life,” he stressed.
Archbishop Desfarges recalled that the Gospel of following Christ “invites us, encouraged by our blesseds, to live welcoming others to the point of completely divesting ourselves. To welcome the other person is to be totally present to his presence.”
He recalled that “there is no greater love than to lay down your own life for your own friends,” and emphasized the invitation to “endure humiliations” because “to welcome Jesus means to be welcoming to the enemy,” for “the Cross is lifted up when at the moment you are loving the most, you are rejected.”
Finally, the Archbishop of Algiers invited the faithful to live this “time of witnessing” through inter-religious dialogue.
“The witness of the Catholic Church is not a witness against another’s religion, but a witness that the love of Christ poured out in our hearts calls us to live a love for everyone, without distinction, even enemies,” he concluded.
In January Pope Francis had authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to recognize the martyrdoms.
The future blesseds are Bishop Claverie, who was a French Algerian and the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his Aug. 1, 1996 martyrdom. He and his companions were killed during the Algerian Civil War by Islamists.
In addition to Claverie, those being beatified are: Brother Henri Vergès, Sister Paul-Hélène Saint-Raymond, Sister Esther Paniagua Alonso, Sister Caridad Álvarez Martín, Fr. Jean Chevillard, Fr. Alain Dieulangard, Fr. Charles Deckers, Fr. Christian Chessel, Sister Angèle-Marie Littlejohn, Sister Bibiane Leclercq, Sister Odette Prévost, Brother Luc Dochier, Brother Christian de Chergé, Brother Christophe Lebreton, Brother Michel Fleury, Brother Bruno Lemarchand, Brother Célestin Ringeard, and Brother Paul Favre-Miville.
The best known of Claverie’s companions are the seven monks of Tibhirine, who were kidnapped from their Trappist priory in March 1996. They were kept as a bartering chip to procure the release of several imprisoned members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, and were killed in May. Their story was dramatized in the 2010 French film Of Gods and Men, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
After the death of the monks of Tibhirine, Bishop Claverie knew his life was in serious danger. A bomb exploded at the entrance of his chancery Aug. 1, 1996, killing him and an aide, Mohamed Bouchikhi.
Al-Fashir, Sudan, Nov 15, 2018 / 09:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of 13 Christian converts in Darfur, Sudan was arrested and tortured last month for their faith, World Watch Monitor and several Christian aid groups have reported.
The Christians were… […]
Islamabad, Pakistan, Nov 14, 2018 / 03:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While the world awaits the fate of Asia Bibi, who remains in hiding in Pakistan following the acquittal of her death sentence for blasphemy, religious freedom advocates are calling for an end to blasphemy laws across the globe.
“Blasphemy laws are a way for governments to deny their citizens – and particularly those of minority religions – the basic human rights to freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression,” Dr. Tenzin Dorjee, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in the statement in October.
However, Dorjee’s statement was not directed at Pakistan — but Ireland.
Irish citizens voted to remove a provision criminalizing blasphemy from their Constitution on Oct. 26, although the law had not been enforced in recent years.
The Irish Bishops’ Conference said that the blasphemy reference, although “largely obsolete,” could raise concern because of how it could be used “to justify violence and oppression against minorities in other parts of the world.”
More than one-third of the world’s countries maintain laws that criminalize blasphemy — defined as “the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God.” Punishments for blasphemy across the 68 countries range widely from fines to imprisonment and death.
In Sudan and Saudi Arabia, corporal punishment, such as whipping, has been used in blasphemy cases. Recently, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 public lashes, given in installments of 50 lashes every week, in addition to 10 years in prison separated from his wife and children, and a 10-year travel ban after his prison sentence.
Compulsory and correctional labor are the prescribed punishments in the blasphemy laws in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Iran has the world’s most severe blasphemy laws, followed closely by Pakistan, according to the U.S. Commission of International Religious Freedom. Both countries’ laws enforce the death penalty for an insult to the prophet Muhammad. In 2015 alone, Iran executed 20 people for “enmity against God.”
In addition to Iran and Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Qatar, and Egypt have among the world’s worst blasphemy laws, the USCIRF study found in 2017.
Although many of the world’s blasphemy laws are enforced in largely Muslim countries, they exist in every region of the world.
Some Western nations, such as Malta and Denmark, have repealed their national blasphemy laws in recent years, while other countries still enforce them.
In Spain, an actor was prosecuted in September for explicit comments insulting God and the Virgin Mary in Facebook posts that supported the procession of a giant model of female genitalia through the streets of Seville, mocking the Catholic tradition.
Spain’s penal code requires monetary fines for “publicly disparaging dogmas, beliefs, rites or ceremonies” of a religion, and include similar penalties for those who publicly disparage people without a religious faith.
Greek law maintains that “anyone who publicly and maliciously and by any means blasphemes the Greek Orthodox Church or any religion tolerable in Greece shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than two years.”
The Italian criminal code also includes provisions for “insulting the state religion,” however the government does not generally enforce the law against blasphemy.
In Thailand, the constitution calls for the state to “implement measures to prevent any forms of harm or threat against Buddhism” with potential punishment from two to seven years imprisonment.
In Pakistan, Catholic mother-of-five Asia Bibi was recently acquitted after spending eight years on death row. However, her life is still in danger, as the ruling is under government review as part of a deal to appease groups that were leading riots in the streets. And the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reports that at least 40 other people in Pakistan are either on death row or currently serving life sentences for blasphemy.
Nearly half of those facing the death penalty under Pakistan’s blasphemy law have been Christians in a country that is 97 percent Muslim.
“Bibi’s case illustrates how blasphemy laws are used to persecute the weakest of the weak among Pakistan’s religious minorities,” Religious Freedom Institute fellow Farahnaz Ispahani wrote earlier this year.
“As a poor Christian from a low caste, Bibi was among the most vulnerable and susceptible to discrimination. And the legal system — which, in theory, should be designed to protect the innocent — failed her in every way.”
Benin City, Nigeria, Nov 12, 2018 / 02:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Four priests who were abducted in Nigeria’s Edo state last week were released Friday night.
The priests were rescued by police operatives Nov. 9. According to The Punch, the captors fled as a rescue team of police from Edo and Delta states approached.
The Nov. 6 kidnapping was originally reported as occurring in neighboring Delta state, and only one of the victims was identified as a priest.
The priests who were taken hostage are Fr. Emmanuel Obadjere of the Diocese of Warri, Fr. Victor Adigboluja of the Diocese of Ijebu-Ode, Fr Anthony Otegbola of the Diocese of Abeokuta, and Fr. Joseph Ediae of the Archdiocese of Benin City.
Fr. Mike Oyanoafoh, chancellor of the Benin City archdiocese, said the priests had been taken to a hospital in Benin City for treatment.
They had been travelling from Orerokpe to Akahia, for an alumni reunion at All Saints major seminary. They were taken from their car somewhere between Abraka and Urhonigbe.
The Warri diocese said it was suspected that the gunmen who abucted the priests were Fulani herders.
It is unclear whether a ransom was paid for the priests’ release.
Violence against Christians has significantly increased in Nigeria in recent years, with the radical Islamist group Boko Haram threatening safety in the north, and smaller violent gangs threatening security in the south.
In recent months, several priests and religious have been kidnapped in southern Nigeria.
One priest was abducted in Edo in April, six women religious in January, and another priest in October 2017.
© Catholic World Report