On November 10, Al Jazeera posted a breathtaking headline: “ISIS-linked attackers behead 50 people in northern Mozambique.” The subhead was equally horrifying: “Witnesses say the assailants herded victims onto a football pitch in the village of Muatide where the killings were carried out.”
In the midst of a pandemic, and in the throes of a highly contested US presidential election, it isn’t surprising to encounter dis-concerting news headlines. But the gruesome description of innocent people “herded” to their death on a soccer field, where they were systematically decapitated and dismembered, seems more suitable to a horror film than a present-day news report.
Despite the declaration of an African branch of ISIS taking credit for the killings and its religious tone, there has been discussion about the cause of the violence. For example, the New York Times and Al Jazeera suggest that poverty and inequality led to the attacks. This is similar to the argument that climate change is the primary source of the genocidal Fulani attacks on Christian villages in Nigeria.
Writing about the beheadings, New York Times journalist Declan Walsh quoted Sam Ratner, a contributing editor at Zitamar News. “While the militants claim to be targeting Christians, in practice they make little distinction between their victims. ISIS propaganda says they burned a Christian village or killed Christian soldiers,” Ratner said. “But on the ground, we’re not seeing a lot of differentiation between Christians and Muslims. They do not appear to be targeting churches in particular, for instance.”
It is true that northeastern Mozambique where the attacks took place is rich an oil rich region, and there is wealth to be gained through massacres and the confiscation of property. There have been attacks on oil company convoys and other petroleum-related entities. Perhaps some of the violence is indeed the work of opportunistic criminal enterprises.
In July, CBN News interviewed Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba Diocese. He described the world’s response to the atrocities that are taking place in his country and across the world as “indifference.”

In the words of Jimmy Lai, “freedom has a price.” That’s why the Chinese media mogul and activist is leaning on his Catholic faith for support as he faces potential prison time and continues the fight for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong.
Speaking at the Acton Institute’s 30th anniversary virtual celebration, Lai, who runs the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper from the Chinese city, spoke about the opportunities Hong Kong gave him growing up as a reason he continues to fight for freedom.
“I came here with one dollar and the freedom here has given me the opportunity to build up myself. And the value that is underlying this freedom is so precious and that’s exactly what we are fighting for in Hong Kong now,” he said.
Lai was presented the Acton Institute’s 2020 Faith and Freedom Award for his work by the organization’s president Father Robert A. Sirico and chief executive officer Kris Alan Mauren. The Acton Institute is a Michigan-based think tank promoting free market policies undergirded by religious principles.
Sirico offered Lai a message of solidarity in recognizing him for the award. Meanwhile, high-lighting what it shows that he now faces a possible prison sentence.
“When you see a man like this, who is looking at a potential jail sentence in a Chinese cell it prompts in us a certain inspiration but also an awareness that socialism is resilient,” Sirico said. “The collectivism idea, the idea of dominating other people, that politics is the solution to our problems, power to corrupt. These are the challenges we’re facing this day in age.”
Lai was arrested with nine others in August for suspicion of colluding with foreign forces under a new Chinese security law. Police also raided the Apple Daily headquarters.
News reports at the time said he was held for forty hours and shown interviews he did with foreign media outlets as evidence of collusion. He was eventually released on bail.

With the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops holding a virtual fall assembly, the bishops of Spain are also holding their fall gathering.
On the agenda for the Spanish bishops are Europe’s rising populist currents, and a bill in Spain that threatens religious education.
In his opening speech, the conference president, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella of Barcelona, spoke of the “tensions” that society has today, due to stresses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The prelate quoted a recent speech by Pope Francis to the leader of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, during his visit to Rome last month: “It’s necessary for all of us to build our nation, where the delete and start over is not permitted.”
Seeing the rising unemployment and recession in Spain but also in most of Europe, Omella said this is “not the moment for divisions, it’s not the moment to allow the irresponsible and ideological populist sprouts to sneak in. This is the moment for cohesion, for cordiality, working together, of looking to the long term, freeing ourselves from the short-termism of elections or the stock market.”
“As the Pope said, ‘ideologies sectarianize, ideologies deconstruct the homeland, they do not build, it is necessary to learn from history’,” the cardinal continued. “It’s the moment of unity and good politics, that which ensures respect for the human person and works tirelessly for the common good.”
Omella’s speech was divided in 14 points, and several times he insisted on the “urgency” to build spaces and attitudes of encounter in the political class, society as a whole and also within the Church.
The remarks are peppered with references to Francis, including to his historic Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27.
“The square had never been so empty and perhaps it had never been so full of people following the message from every home,” Omella said. “People of different religions, beliefs and nationalities where more united than ever because of the unusual and hard experience that we are all suffering.”

In that brief inter-mezzo over the summer between what turned out to be the first and second great surges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis held a series of appropriately socially distanced, “vir-tual” conversations with his premier English-language explicator about what he believes needs to be done for the world to be better than it was before the crisis.
Through conversations held on the phone, through voice recordings and via email, Francis answered questions posed to him by British biographer Austen Ivereigh on a wide range of issues, including the death of George Floyd; clerical sexual abuse; the toppling of statues in an effort to reshape perceptions of history; protests against government coronavirus restrictions; persecuted minorities such as Christians, Yazidi, Rohingya and Uighurs; migrants and refugees; and, though the book notes “many will be irritated to hear a Pope return to the topic,” Francis discussed abortion at length too.
“I cannot stay silent over 30 to 40 million unborn lives cast aside every year through abortion,” the Pope said. “It is painful to behold how in many regions that see themselves as developed the practice is often urged because the children to come are disabled, or unplanned. Human life is never a burden.”
The Pope’s comments are included in an interview book he authored with Ivereigh, titled Let us Dream, which will hit bookstores and online shops on Dec. 1. Crux, along with other news outlets, received an advance copy.
On abuse, both sexual and abuses of power, Francis noted that social distancing has made some potential victims more susceptible to online grooming and other abuses which, as a community, “we should be watching out for and reporting.”
“In these past years, thank God, we have seen a particular awareness of these issues,” he said. “The culture of abuse, whether sexual or of power and conscience, began to be dismantled first by victims and their families, who in spite of their pain, were able to carry through their struggle for justice and help alert and heal society of this perversity.”
Francis added he “will not tire of saying with sorrow and shame, these abuses were also committed by some members of the Church.”
“In these past years we have taken important steps to stamp out abuse and to engender a culture of care to respond swiftly to accusations,” the Pope said. “Creating that culture will take time, but it is an unavoidable commitment which we must make every effort to insist on.”
Society too, Francis argued, has awaken against abuse, either through the #MeToo movement, or the many scandals “around powerful politicians, media moguls and businessmen.”

The recent report detailing the Vatican’s response to the scan-dal surrounding ex-Cardinal Theo-dore McCarrick shows why it’s a mistake to canonize Popes (or anyone) quickly after their deaths.
According to the Vatican report released, Pope John Paul II received warnings about McCarrick from Vatican officials and New York Cardinal John O’Connor in 1999. Two years later, McCarrick was installed as archbishop of Washington, D.C.  John Paul was beatified in 2011, six years after his death, and was made a saint three years later.
It’s not just Popes: The church needs more time to examine any person’s life. The people of Argentina, for example, wanted to canonize Eva Peron immediately after her death in 1952. At the time, thankfully, the mandatory waiting period before the canonization process could begin was 50 years. Though she is still revered by many Argentines, Peron’s reputation has been clouded in recent years by accusations that she and her husband harbored Nazis after World War II.
John Paul reduced the waiting period from 50 to five years, because he wanted to canonize individuals who were still relevant to today’s generation. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, waived even that for John Paul’s canonization in response to popular demand. -RNS

Pope Francis has made an impassioned plea to Christians to reach out to the poor and homeless. Speaking on the World Day of the Poor, he said it was not enough simply not to do harm. Not doing good was also not good.
“We must do good, go out of ourselves and look, look at those who are most in need. There is so much hunger, even in the heart of our cities, and many times we enter that logic of indifference: the poor are there, and we look the other way.
“Hold out your hand to the poor: it is Christ.”
The poor are at the centre of the Gospel, he continued. “It is Jesus who taught us to speak to the poor, it is Jesus who came for the poor. Hold out your hand to the poor. You have received so many things, and you let your brother, your sister starve?”
He was speaking in his Angelus address on the penulti-mate Sunday of the liturgical year.
He also criticised Christians who play “on the defensive,” sticking only to keeping the rules and keeping the commandments: “Those measured Christians who never step outside the rules, never, because they are afraid of risk. And these, allow me the image, these who take care of themselves so that they never risk, these begin in life a process of mummification of the soul, and end up with mummies.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has warned Poles against planning travel during the Christmas period, warning that most of the restrictions to keep the epidemic under control will be prolonged, even if you think about the reopening of the shops. “Please don’t plan any trips,” Morawiecki said at a press conference, adding that the government is looking for ways to impose restrictions on movement. Morawiecki suggested that Poles should spend Christmas only with their families and not travel between the country’s cities. Morawiecki also said that theaters, bars and restaurants will remain closed until after Christmas and that schools will continue with distance learning. “The situation is still very serious,” said the premier of Warsaw, expressing concern over the high mortality rate but stressing that the number of new cases has stabilized. The Ministry of Health recorded 574 deaths over 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 13,288. The number of new infections per day in Poland was 24,213. –ANSA-AFP

Astronaut Victor Glover was- n’t trying to get away from God as he blasted to the International Space Station in the SpaceX Crew Dragon’s capsule Resilience on November 15.
As the first African American astronaut to go on a long-term mission, Glover took on board communion cups and the word of God. He plans to utilize the strong internet connection aboard the craft to access faith-based pro-grams, too.
Glover arrived at the ISS with the three other crew members on-board the first commercially developed space vehicle certified by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to ferry astronauts up to low-Earth orbit and back again. The crew will stay at the space station until the spring.
“As we’ve grown our family, that’s really when I’ve started to develop a real, true appreciation of my own faith and not just the academic,” he said.  The couple has attended two Houston-area congregations: League City Church of Christ and the Southeast Church of Christ in Friendswood. They’ve been going virtually since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“Traveling by road into Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s northeast, has become one of the most dangerous journeys on earth.” So begins an alarming and timely Wall Street Journal article about ever-encroaching violence in Nigeria, Africa’s largest country and most powerful financial centre. Writer Joe Parkinson describes four primary highways that lead into that northern Nigerian city, once known as “Home of Peace.” Along those roads some 200 people have been murdered in the past six months. Since its happier days, today Maiduguri is better known as the birthplace of Boko Haram, the brutal Islamist terrorist group. “The attacks are conducted by militants fighting for Boko Haram and a splinter group loyal to Islamic State,” Parkinson explains. “With each passing month they become more brazen, targeting civilians, aid workers, soldiers and even the state’s most powerful politicians.”

American Churches have grown in diversity with Catholic Churches leading as the most diverse, a new study by Baylor University shows.
The number of churches where less than 80% of people belonged to one race has nearly tripled since 1998, from 6% to 16%. The study counts churches in this category as “multiracial.”
Baylor University Professor Kevin Dougherty ran the study along with professors Michael Emerson and Mark Chaves. To find the information, the group asked 1,262 churches questions about race from 2018 to 2019. The study is the fourth in a series of studies which began in 1998. It’s unclear whether church makeup is changing society or whether some other change is changing church makeup.
“There’s a long history of research that shows when you bring people together to form relation-ships across racial lines, they start to think differently about race. Racism disappears,” Dougherty told The Christian Post. “But for most people, the reason they choose a multiracial place of worship is because they already have positive attitudes about other racial groups.”
Since 1998, Catholic Churches have always been the most diverse, the study suggests. But Pentecostal, evangelical, mainline Protestant and black Protestant denominations have all been catching up.