Christmas vigil prohibited for children. Traffic blocks and shop closures. Ban on display of objects that recall Christmas in university dormitories. These are some of the measures deployed by the local authorities of Baoding, a northern city in the Chinese province of Hebei not far from the capital Beijing.
As a diocese with a long history, a large number of Catholics live in the Baoding area. For this reason, on Christmas Eve this year the police adopted exceptional security measures in the city centre. The authorities announced traffic control in the historic centre of Yuhua Road, where the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, seat of the diocese of Baoding, is located.
No vehicles were allowed to enter the historic centre after 4 pm and buses passing through this area were ordered to reroute. Furthermore, all shops in the area around the church were ordered to close and Christmas sales and promotions were not permitted.
A source living in Baoding confirmed the information and told AsiaNews that police officers were everywhere around the church. Police vehicles were parked near the church and there were also officers in riot gear. All the shops around the church were closed.
The source said that the police prevented parents with children from entering the church. Police told parents to leave the church because it was “unsafe for children as there were too many people inside.” The police were everywhere inside the church, with a heavy atmosphere, in open contrast to the spirit of the celebration.
The atmosphere was also tense in Donglü, whose church is a pilgrimage destination. According to our source, the police have been stationed in the village for a week before Christmas. Donglü is 20 kilometres from Baoding, and is famous for its Madonna of China.
In 1900, Catholics sought refuge in this village during the Boxer Rebellion, the wave of violence against foreigners and Christianity supported by the Qing dynasty. But in Donglü the Boxer group that tried to attack the church was defeated.
Daily Archives: December 28, 2023
Angelus: Pope urges the faithful to celebrate Christmas with ‘simplicity’, close to ‘those who suffer’ from war
On this Sunday December 24, the fourth of Advent and Christmas Eve, Pope Francis urged the faithful at the end of the Angelus to be close at this time of celebra-tion to the people in the world who suffer from war.
“Palestine, Israel, and Ukraine,” he said this morning from the window of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, are places that go towards Christmas without peace. Let us “also think of those who suffer from misery, from hunger, from slavery,” he said.
Francis expressed hope that this may be a day lived “in prayer, in the warmth of affection, and in soberness. Let me make one recommendation: let us not confuse celebration with consumerism,” he explained. Instead, for Christians, the path to follow this Christmas is that of simplicity, “without waste, and by sharing with those who lack nece-ssities or lack companionship.”
This Sunday the Holy Father asked God, who “took a human heart for Himself [to] infuse humanity into the hearts of men!”
Before his address following the recitation of the Marian pra-yer, he greeted those present, “Romans and pilgrims from Italy and from various parts of the world.”
He singled out for a special greeting a large delegation of Italians in St Peter’s Square from areas “officially recognised as highly polluted and who have long awaited their clean-up.”
The delegation was accompanied by a long banner that read: “From the S.I.N. (Sites of National Interest), we demand justice, remediation, and a change in the protection of the environment and health.” “I express solidarity with these populations and hope that their voices will be heard,” the Holy Father said.
Nigeria: Over 140 people killed in Christmas Eve attacks on remote villages
Armed groups kill scores of villagers in Nigeria’s north-cen-tral Plateau state in the long-running conflict between noma-dic herders and farmers.
At least 140 people were killed and others are missing after a series of attacks by gunmen on remote villages in north-central Nigeria’s Plateau state.
Officials and survivors con-firmed the Christmas Eve attacks and blamed the killings on the farmer-herder crisis in the West African nation.
They said the military gangs, locally called “bandits,” launched “well-coordinated” attacks in “not fewer than 20 different commu-nities” and torched houses on Saturday and Sunday. Gunfire was still heard on Monday morning. Plateau Governor, Caleb Mutf-wang, said that in Mangu local governorate alone, 15 people were buried on Monday, and authorities in Bokkos had counted not less than 100 corpses.
“I am yet to take stock of (the deaths in) Barkin Ladi,” Mutfwan said, adding, “It has been a very terrifying Christmas for us here in Plateau.”
More than 300 wounded people have reportedly been taken to hos-pitals.
Amnesty International’s Nige-ria office told The Associated Press that it has so far confirmed 140 deaths in the Christian-majority Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi areas of Plateau, based on data compiled by its workers on the ground and from local officials.
There are fears of a higher death toll as some people remain unaccounted for.
Some witnesses said it took more than 12 hours before security agencies responded to their call for help.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, though blame fell on herders from the Fulani tribe, who have been accused of carrying out such mass killings across the northwest and central regions.
The bandit militias operate from bases deep in forests and raid villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.
Pope calls Vatican bureaucrats to resist ‘rigid ideological positions’
In his annual Christmas address to members of the Roman Curia, Pope Francis urged the Church’s governing bureaucracy to be open to change and to resist “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from moving forward.
Speaking to members of the curia during a Dec. 21 audience, Pope Francis stressed the need to “remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”
“We are called, instead, to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads,” he said.
Referring to something he said was once told to him by a “zealous priest,” the pope said “it is not easy to rekindle the embers under the ashes of the Church. Today we strive to kindle passion in those who have long since lost it.”
“Sixty years after the Council, we are still debating the division between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives,’ while the real difference is between lovers and those who have lost that initial passion,” he said.
In this year’s speech, Francis told the curia to imitate God’s style of closeness, compassion, and tenderness, and to embark on a path of faith marked by an ability to listen and discern, and an openness to journey.
Convicted cardinal: ‘I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent’
In his first major media appearance since being convicted of financial crimes by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years in prison, Cardinal Angelo Becciu told an Italian TV host Monday that “I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent.”
“I’m going to do everything I can, everything to demonstrate my innocence through the legal system and in every way possible,” Becciu said, speaking on the program Cinque Minuti (“Five Minutes”), hosted by Bruno Vespa, one of the country’s most renowned television journalists.
“I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent,” Becciu said. “I absolutely did not commit any of the crimes of which I’ve been accused.”
With regard to the complex London property deal at the heart of the recent Vatican trial, Becciu appeared to suggest that primary responsibility rested with Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who headed an administrative office within the Secretariat of State that oversaw the London operation but who escaped indictment by becoming a witness for the prosecution instead.
“I wasn’t the one who made the decision. As substitute, do you know how many offices I had to follow? There are 17. I didn’t have the time to follow economic and financial matters step by step,” Becciu said.
Cardinal sentenced to five and a half years in jail in Vatican ‘trial of the century’
In the long-awaited denouement of the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” which has been seen widely as a litmus test of Pope Francis’s press for reform, a Vatican tribunal on December 16 sentenced Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu to five years and six months in prison for his role in various financial crimes.
Becciu was also fined roughly $8,700 and permanently barred from holding any public office in the Vatican City State. An attorney representing Becciu immediately indicated plans for an appeal.
Becciu, 75, was already the first cardinal ever to stand trial on criminal charges before a Vatican civil court, and he now becomes the first ever to be convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and three months of prison time for the cardinal.
From 2011 to 2018 Becciu held the all-important position of sostituto, or “substitute,” in the Secretariat of State, making him effectively the pope’s chief of staff, the only figure in the Vatican system with the right to see the pope on a routine basis without an appointment.
Presiding judge Giuseppe Pignatone, a veteran Italian jurist, read the verdicts aloud on Decemebr 16 in a hall belonging to the Vatican Museums which was converted into a makeshift courtroom in order to accommodate not only public interest, but the sheer number of attorneys and support personnel necessary to try such a complex case.
Stretching over two and a half years, the trial featured 86 separate hearings and heard almost 70 witnesses, after what amounted to almost a year of procedural squabbles before the court ever got to the substance of the charges.