Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany on May 4.

In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the Pope emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies.”

Benedict XVI, who resigned as Pope in 2013, made the comment in response to a question about what he had meant at his 2005 inauguration, when he urged Catholics to pray for him “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

He told Seewald that he was not referring to internal Church matters, such as the “Vatileaks” scandal, which led to the conviction of his personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, for stealing confidential Vatican documents.

In an advanced copy of “Benedikt XVI – EinLeben” (A Life), seen by CNA, the Pope emeritus said: “Of course, issues such as ‘Vatileaks’ are exasperating and, above all, incomprehensible and highly disturbing to people in the world at large.”

“But the real threat to the Church and thus to the ministry of St Peter consists not in these things, but in the worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies, and to contradict them constitutes exclusion from the basic social consensus.”

He continued: “A hundred years ago, everyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual marriage. Today who-ever opposes it is socially excommunicated. The same applies to abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory.”

This year’s Holy Week celebrations resulted in a major spike of new viewers tuning in to watch Vatican liturgies – an increase from 1.5 million online viewers last year to 5.5 million this year – and a trend matched by ordinary parishes throughout the world forced to go virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet as technology has allowed many Catholic Churches to transition to a new schedule of online rosary groups, live streamed adoration, and televised Masses, parishioners and priests alike have struggled to adjust to the new normal.

For Catholics, who are used to the physical realities of participation in the Mass – from the kneeling to the sign of peace to, most importantly, the reception of Holy Communion – it’s been an abrupt change and theologians have differing opinions on whether, to use the language of Vatican II, one can engage in “full, conscious, and active participation” in a Mass if they are watching via television or online.

“If you turn to a TV Mass with the same attitude that you binge-watch the latest season of [Netflix series] The Crown, then this is not a real act of participation,” said Timothy O’Malley, the academic director at the University of Notre Dame’s Centre for Liturgy. “Of course if you attend Mass as a spectator, hoping to hear some nice music, to see some of your friends, this is not the ideal sense of participation either.”

In preparation for the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the German bishops conducted an in-depth study of the behaviour of their predecessors under the Nazi regime. On 29 April, the German bishops’ conference presented the conclusions they had come to in a declaration entitled “German bishops during World War II.”

They had been encouraged to undertake the study by repeated complaints that the Catholic bishops in Hitler’s Germany had left German Catholic soldiers alone to cope with the moral dilemma they were in at the time. The bishops came to the conclusion that despite individual opposition to Hitler on the part of one or two bishops, the Catholic Church remained part of society during the war. Its patriotic willingness to mobilise the Church’s material, personal and mental resources for the war effort remained unbroken until the very end, they say.

President Trump’s job approval ratings among some faith groups jumped in March as the number of coronavirus infections began to spread across the country. But that “Trump bump” has all but disappeared.

A new poll released on April 30 from PRRI shows Trump’s approval has fallen on average by 6 percentage points and is now more in keeping with 2019 levels among most demographic groups.

Among white evangelicals, Trump’s favourability ratings fell to 66% from a high of 77% in March. White Catholic approval ratings of the president dropped to 48% from 60%. Perhaps the largest drop was among white mainline Protestants. Only 44% approved of the president in April, down from 62% in March. (Among non-white Protestants, Trump’s favourability ratings did not change). Overall, 43% of Americans hold mostly or very favourable views of Trump (about the same as in February shortly after he was acquitted of impeachment charges).

In mid-March, it was 49%.

“The jump we saw in March was unusually high, particularly for white evangelicals,” said Natalie Jackson, research director at PRRI. “It was one of the highest favorability records we saw for Trump among that group. What we’re seeing in April is a return to where they had been previously.”

Jackson attributed the March bump to a “rally around the flag” effect, as more Americans saw Trump on TV daily responding to the virus as part of the White House briefings.

The poll also found that white Christians in counties less affect-ed by the coronavirus are more likely to view Trump favourably than those in more affected counties (63% vs. 50%).

“There is no such difference among other religious groups,” according to the survey.

Trump’s favourability among white Christians in battleground states — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — dropped to 48% from 75% in March. Over-all, the president’s approval rating in battleground states dropped from 53% in March to 38% in April.

Pope Francis urged people of every religion to fast and pray on May 14 for an end to the coronavirus pandemic and “other pandemics” of hunger and war.

“Today all of us, brothers and sisters of all religious traditions, pray in a day of prayer and fasting, of penance, called by the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity. Each of us prays… united in the brotherhood that unites us in this moment of pain and tragedy,” Pope Francis said in his homily on May 14.

The Pope said that this interfaith day of prayer, fasting, and charity is not an expression of “religious relativism,” but “a day of fraternity” and prayer.

“Perhaps there will be someone who will say: ‘This is religious relativism and it cannot be done.’ But how can we not pray to the Father of all?” Pope Francis said in the Santa Marta chapel.

He continued: “Everyone prays as he knows, how he can, as he has received from his own culture. We are not praying against each other, this religious tradition against this, no. We are all united as human beings, as brothers, praying to God, according to our culture, according to our own tradition, according to our beliefs, but brothers praying to God. This is the important thing.”

God willing, Father Edward Inyanwachi will soon again celebrate Mass for the members of his rural southeastern Nigerian parish. Until then he’s trying to keep them from starving.

The pastor of St Patrick Parish and two mission churches in the Diocese of Abakaliki in Nigeria’s impoverished Ebonyi State.

Over the last two months, he has travelled in a truck over dirt roads outside the village to buy food staples that are out of reach — physically and financially — for some parish families amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The cost of food items, especially the staple foods, is rising each day,” he shared in an April 24 email to longtime Holy Name of Jesus parishioner Angela Testani from the village of Uburu-Amachi.

Father Inyanwachi and Testani, a retired San Francisco nurse, met at the parish when the priest visited during his studies at the University of San Francisco. In 2016 they co-founded Mother of Mercy Charitable Foundation out of a mutual desire to improve the lives of the rural poor in Ebonyi, the third-poorest State in Nigeria.

Unlike most countries, Sweden has chosen a more relaxed approach to preventing the spread of the coronavirus, sparking a debate on how governments should confront the deadly pandemic.

Sweden’s high death rate among elderly men and women living in retirement homes have many, including the nation’s only cardinal, questioning whether measures meant to protect the most vulnerable have worked.

“Not being an expert, it’s difficult to judge, but I would say that many people here in Sweden are very worried and, also, the authorities have recognized that we have not been able to give elderly people the protection they needed,” Card. Anders Arborelius of Stockholm told Catholic News Service on May 7.

Although Swedish authorities called for people to work remotely and restricted gatherings of more than 50 people at the start of the crisis, restaurants and bars, as well as schools for children under the age of 16, remained open.

Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told CNBC on May 7 that cases in Stockholm, the epicentre of the outbreak, have peaked and that the numbers of those in hospitals “is clearly falling.”