A police officer who saved a woman accused of blasphemy from a mob of 200 men in eastern Pakistan has described how she had to negotiate with the crowd to lead her to safety.
The woman, who has not been named for security reasons, was surrounded in a Lahore restaurant by men who wrongly claimed her shirt was adorned with verses from the Koran.
Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in ultra-conservative Pakistan, where mobs have lynched people they deem to have insulted Islam.
Syeda Shehrbano Naqvi, an assistant superintendent with Punjab police, was among the first officers on the scene on Sunday.
“The crowd was pretty charged, and they were chanting slogans. They were talking about how people who commit blasphemy must be punished,” Naqvi told AFP.
A video shared on social media showed the woman sitting in a corner of a cafe protecting her face with her hands.
Crowds were later heard chanting: “The only punishment for blasphemy is beheading.”
“There was a confusion and nobody was willing to listen to us. We feared that if the dialogue didn’t begin, the woman’s life would be in danger,” Naqvi added.
In the end, Naqvi appealed with the crowd to let police determine whether Pakistan’s blasphemy laws had been breached.
Officers then formed a human chain to help lead the woman out of the restaurant.
The woman was in fact wearing a shirt with the Arabic word for “beautiful” written on it.
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Pakistani Christians ‘fasting and praying’ against unrest and violence
In a world often divided by global conflicts and tensions, Pakistan’s current situation is a distressing practical representation of the negative impact that wars have on international peace and harmony. This South Asian country, embroiled in global wars, has had its share of difficulties in maintaining stability and finding comfort in the face of hardship.
For the people of Pakistan, Christian prayers are a glimmer of hope and strength in the midst of chaos. Christian prayers are more than just words spoken in space; they are a channel to the supernatural and a way to ask for comfort, direction and help from an infinite being. Both individuals and communities can find the courage to persevere and overcome obstacles precisely through prayer.
Christian prayers provide comfort and firmness in times of turmoil. Believers believe that prayer can repair broken relationships, be a source of miracles and bring peace. Through prayer, they gain the strength to persevere in faith in the face of suffering.
Another significant habit with strong roots in Christianity is fasting. This is a renunciation of eating, or certain foods, for a specific period of time, often combined with prayer and meditation. Fasting is a spiritual activity that helps people get closer to God and strengthens their resolve in the current situation in Pakistan.
Asia is no more on the margins of global Catholicism
As the Catholic Church witnesses the constant emergence of new spiritual movements, devotional networks, and religious initiatives, their recognition and institutionalization are complex processes. The Church as a whole needs time to carefully discern their spiritual value, orthodoxy, and contribution to the body of Christ.
But these processes of growth and regulation, renewal and discernment, creativity and obedience keep the Church alive. Initiatives that may come from the Holy Spirit need to be recognized as such by other parts of the Body of Christ – including the head of the Church.
“Yet, this long discernment is not only happening between the Roman centre and some local communities. It is rarely limited to some localities only. It takes almost the whole Church – with numerous mediators and encounters – to truly recognize the vitality, renewal, and challenges that the Holy Spirit brings to us.
Singapore hosted the March 1-5 extraordinary International Congress of the Flame of Love. About 60 delegates came from all around the world to spend five days of retreat and work.
Over the past few years, the Flame of Love has rapidly grown across all continents. Taking many members by surprise, the new movement is now present in more than 50 countries – including Singapore, India, the Philippines, etc. With more people involved and national associations established, the Flame of Love needs to adapt its structures to let the Vatican discern an inter-national recognition.
Hong Kong’s ‘Article 23’ is an implicit threat to the Sacrament of Penance
Hong Kong is on the verge of enacting a new domestic security law which is even more repressive than the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020 — and may well strike at the very heart of the Church’s conscience, with a potential assault on the confidentiality of the Sacrament of Penance.
One of the most dangerous, insidious, and outrageous aspects of the new security law is the proposal, made on March 7 by Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Lam Ting-kwok, regarding the crime of “failing to disclose the commission of treason by others.”
It means if a person knows that another person has committed “treason” but fails to disclose the knowledge to the authorities within a reasonable time, that person is guilty of a crime and could face 14 years in jail.
There is increasing concern that this poses an implicit threat to the Sacrament of Penance (or Reconciliation or “Confession”) in the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions – and Lam said nothing to reassure the Church to the contrary.
For Catholics, Confession is a spiritual act of pivotal importance. It is something we are encouraged to take up regularly, especially during the holy seasons of Lent and Advent.
Yet at the heart of Confession is its absolute confidentiality. The Church’s “Seal of Confession” is exactly that. What is confessed by a penitent, before a priest, in front of God stays solely between those three beings.
“Forcing a priest to reveal something said in Confession is an assault on the very integrity of the Church”
If a serious crime under law is confessed, a priest might advise a penitent to confess to the authorities — but he can never report it himself, and certainly should never be held criminally liable for having heard that confession.
I have never committed criminal acts (except under Hong Kong’s draconian laws, extraterritorially), but like all of us I sin, and while some of my flaws are already known to friends and colleagues, what I say in Confession I would not broadcast to the world.
Russian Catholics join in mourning Alexei Navalny
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.”
Church must revisit concept of complementarity, women say
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.”
Argentine President Milei: Abortion is aggravated homicide
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.
Irish voters resoundingly reject proposals to redefine family
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.”
Belgian bishops reportedly back women deacons, end to priestly celibacy
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: The liturgy must be for all the people of God
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.