Prominent Russian Catholics have urged church members to continue condemning human rights violations after the funeral of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, despite warnings people who attended could face police reprisals.
“Although I wasn’t a great fan of Navalny, he was capable of mobilizing large groups wishing to classify themselves as liberal opposition – and he also had courage to highlight theft and corruption among the power elite,” said Daria Drozdova, an associate professor of philosophy.
“Navalny was convicted and declared an extremist, so people inside Russia cannot speak in his defense unless they’re ready to be imprisoned themselves. But Christians abroad must show how his premature death lies on the conscience of those who made his life unbearable,” she said.
The Moscow-based lay Catholic spoke after joining mourners at the March 1 funeral of Navalny. His death Feb. 16 at age 47 — at a strict-regime arctic penal colony, where he was serving a 19-year sentence — was attributed by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service to “sudden death syndrome.”

As the world marks International Women’s Day, Catholic women from around the world have hailed recent steps made, but called for more to be done to create space for them in positions that matter in the Church.
They also called for a reexamination of the Church’s “complementarity theology” – the view that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership.
The concept of complementarity has long been used as a defense of the Catholic Church’s longstanding ban on women priests, with Pope John Paul II frequently invoking complementarity as why the ordained priesthood is better suited to male gifts and talents.
During a March 6 panel ahead of International Women’s Day, Catholic women theologians and leaders urged a reexamination of complementarity, saying that while valid, some interpretations have created a split between what is considered masculine and feminine.
The panel was titled “Women Leaders: Towards a brighter future,” and was organized jointly by Caritas International and the British and Australian Embassies to the Holy See.
Speaking on the panel, Christiane Murray, deputy director of the Holy See Press Office, said women bring a “fresh and innovative” perspective to the Vatican, but lamented that when a woman is appointed to a leadership role in the curia, she is defined as a power-player, while the same is not said of men who receive the same appointments.
“It’s as if there is an aura of power,” she said, insisting the job is not about power, but service.
She also hit back against what she said are gender stereotypes, saying, “Traditionally, qualities such as graciousness, delicacy, care, empathy, these qualities are always associated with femininity.”

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, says abortion “is murder aggravated by the bond” between mother and child and condemned the so-called “voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” a euphemism for killing the child in the womb.
The statement was part of a March 6 speech at the beginning of classes at the secondary level at Cardenal Copello School in Buenos Aires, where Milei was a student.
In Argentine penal law, “homicide aggravated by the bond” is a degree of murder in which the killer and the victim are related by blood or intimate relationship.
The president, who during his election campaign had pledged that he was going to repeal the country’s permissive abortion law, also took aim at the “murderers with green neckerchiefs,” referring to the neckerchiefs imprinted with the message “legal, safe, and free abortion” that were worn or displayed by activists during their campaign to get abortion legalized in 2020 at the start of President Alberto Fernández’s term in office.
“For me, abortion is a murder aggravated by the bond and I can demonstrate that from a mathematical and philosophical perspective, from liberalism and also from a biological perspective,” the president said before an auditorium full of students and teachers at the school.

The Irish prime minister, known as the Taoiseach, has conceded that his government was defeated “comprehensively” when voters rejected amendments to the constitution that the country’s bishops warned would have weakened support for marriage and undermined motherhood.
Despite opinion polls showing a clear majority in favour of the government’s plan to widen the definition of the family to include other “durable relationships” as well as marriage, when votes were counted on March 9, 67.7 percent of citizens rejected the amendment, while 32.3 percent supported it.
A second amendment proposed removing a provision from the 1937 document that said women should not be forced by economic necessity to take a job “to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
Again, polls showed it was likely to pass, but this proposal was rejected by an even wider margin, 73.9 percent to 26.1 percent. It is the highest-ever “no” vote in Irish referendum history.
The amendments had been supported by all political parties except the small Aontú party, which only has one member in the national parliament, known as the Oireachtas.
Speaking at the national count center in Dublin Castle on March 9, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he was disappointed by the results. However, he stated, “The people were asked questions, the debates happened, the arguments were heard.”

In the lead up to this year’s closing session of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, the Belgian bishops have apparently opened a national discussion on allowing women deacons and ending the requirement of priestly celibacy.
According to Belgian Catholic news site Kerknet, the Belgian bishops’ conference ahead of the October 2-27 synod have sent a letter to all dioceses proposing, among other things, an openness to the women’s diaconate and an end to mandatory priestly celibacy.
In the draft text, apparently sent to various diocesan discussion groups and councils throughout Belgium, makes three basic points, the first of which is that “a synodal missionary Church requires open dialogue with the world around us.”
The Church, it says, cannot limit itself “to a one-way street” when it comes to sharing the Gospel with the world.
In a second point, the bishops ask that the Synod of Bishops “define our Church tradition(s) as dynamic and in constant development.”
They also asked for encouragement in pursuing “concrete form to the decentralization” of certain topics of discussion in the Church, “allowing us to work together in unity with more legitimate diversity.”
“We ask for a concretization of the ‘accountability’ of the bishops in a synodal Church,” they said.
The bishops then apparently called for a deeper reflection on the role of women in the Church, proposing that the decision regarding women deacons be left up to individual dioceses or national or continental bishops’ conferences.
Asking for “the green light to take certain steps per bishops’ conference or continental bishops’ meetings,” the bishops said that by doing this, “the giving of increasing pastoral responsibility to women and the ordination of women to the diaconate need not be universally obligatory or prohibited.”

Pope Francis on February 14 met with members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as they gathered for their plenary assembly.
The Holy Father opened his discourse by noting that, even sixty years after the pro-mulgation of the Sacrosanctum Concilium, it is still highly relevant. It contains, the Pope said, “a precise will to reform the Church in its fundamental dimensions: to make the Christian life of the faithful grow more and more every day; to adapt the institutions subject to change better to the needs of our time; to foster that which can contribute to the union of all believers in Christ; to reinvigorate that which serves to call all to the bosom of the Church.”
This is therefore a profound work of spiritual, pastoral, ecumenical and missionary renewal, said the Pope, adding that the Council Fathers were aware that “without a liturgical reform there is no reform of the Church.”
Pope Francis then went on to explain that Church reform depends on the Church’s love for Christ, like “spousal fidelity”, to the point of being fully conformed to him.
Speaking of the role of women in the Church, Pope Francis stressed the importance of the Church itself being a woman. “That is why I said that every instance of Church reform is always a matter of spousal fidelity, because she [the Church] is a woman”, he said.
The purpose of the liturgical reform – within the broader framework of the renewal of the Church – is precisely to “bring about that formation of the faithful and promote that pastoral action which has the sacred Liturgy as its summit and its source,” the Pope said.
Francis went on to note that although liturgical formation is necessary, “it does not exclude that there is a priority in the formation of those who, by virtue of the sacrament of Orders, are called Pope to be.

In a significant setback for the Synodal Way project in Germany, the German bishops will not be voting on a step toward a forbidden “Synodal Council” at their upcoming plenary assembly at the Vatican’s request.
German Bishops Conference (DBK) spokesman Matthias Kopp confirmed on February 17 that the bishops have removed a vote on endorsing a committee that is preparing the Synodal Council, a mixed body of laity and bishops that would govern the Church in Germany, from the agenda of their Feb. 19–22 meeting in Augsburg.
The development comes after the DBK received a letter from the Vatican on the same day.
“This letter requests that the General Assembly – also due to upcoming discussions between representatives of the Roman Curia and representatives of the German Bishops’ Conference – not vote on the statutes of the Synodal Committee,” Kopp told Germany’s Catholic News Agency (KNA).
Although it had not been explicitly on the publicly available agenda of the DBK assembly, a vote on approving the committee preparing the Synodal Council had been widely expected to take place in Augsburg.
The DBK’s co-sponsor of the Synodal Way, the Central Committee of German Catholics lay lobby (ZdK), had previously approved the statutes of the preparatory committee.

Nuns have been conned out of thousands of pounds after being targeted by artificial intelligence posing as fake Bishops.
The “brides of Christ” have been put on alert after a string of attempts by callous conmen to defraud the convents of cash.
They have been using artificial intelligence to alter their voices and faces to impersonate religious leaders and beg for money for operations in Spain. The Guardia Civil police force said that up to 15 convents in the southern province of Jaen have been targeted in the last few weeks.
One posing as the Bishop of Jaen, Sebastián Chico, telephoned several nuns asking them to transfer 5,000 euros (£4,260) to pay for surgery. A convent in Torredonjimeno fell for the trick and handed over £2500.
In the coastal town of Almeria, the bishop’s office warned that fraudsters are using artificial intelligence technology “to achieve almost perfect imitations of voices and, in the case of videos, even the face and gestures of the impersonated person.”
One nun said she told a fraudster who telephoned and introduced himself as the Bishop of Jaen: “You’re not Don Sebastián, your voice is very hoarse.”
But she said he replied and said: “Yes, I am. I need the money for an operation on my throat.”

Iranian Christians continued to face harassment, arrests and imprisonment last year for practicing their faith, according to a report.
The 35-page report, issued by four non-profit organizations ad-vocating for persecuted Christians across the world, found that Christians have been deprived of their right to freely practice their faith.
This lack of religious freedom, the report said, affected both “recognized” Christians of Armenian and Assyrian descent and converts.
The report, issued each year, was released on Feb. 19 to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the murder of the Rev. Arastoo Sayyah, the first Christian killed for his faith in the Islamic Re-public of Iran.
The 2024 joint annual report from Article 18, CSW, Open Doors and Middle East Concern focuses on the many victims whose names and faces remain unknown due to fear that publication of their cases may worsen their plight.
“Despite a comparable number of Christians being arrested in 2023 as in previous years – 166 arrests were documented in 2023, compared to 134 in 2022 – fewer names and faces could be publicized,” according to the report.
While it is not common for Iranian Christians to be killed for their faith, the report said that, contrary to the claims of the Islamic Republic, there is still no religious freedom in Iran, which is governed as a theocracy.
The report found that a notable trend detected in 2023 was “how arrests of Christians came in waves, with just a handful of arrests reported prior to June, then over 100 within the next three months, before a further rash of arrests during Christmas.”
The report added, “Very few of those arrested agreed to publicize their cases, leading to an increasing number of faceless victims. A similarly targeted approach was reported by the Baha’i religious minority, and, as with the arrested Christians, in many cases these individuals were not named.”