The World Council of Churches (WCC) has decried attacks on holy sites in Jerusalem and is calling for their protection.
In a statement issued in the wake of the March 19 attack against the Church of Gethsemane in East Jerusalem, the WCC Secretary General, Rev. Prof. Dr. Jerry Pillay, made the appeal, joining in that of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
The Patriarchate had strongly decried the attack by two men against the church, where the Tomb of the Virgin Mary lies, during a religious service. Its Patriarch, Theophilus III, appealed for better protection of Christians and their holy places.
The WCC General Secretary underscored, “We stand in solidarity with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and all those calling for protection of holy sites, and we reiterate our calls for such protection during Christian holidays and during all days of importance for all faith communities.
“The WCC is extremely concerned about the increasing attacks on holy sites in Jerusalem and deems it necessary to facilitate a meeting of key religious leaders in the near future to discuss what can be done to stop these uncalled-for attacks on religious leaders, sacred places, and institutions.”
“This terrible attack – which appears to have purposely targeted religious leaders,” he stressed, “is an egregious violation of international law.”
This attack represents the latest in a series of attacks against Christians, churches, and cemeteries in the Holy Land.

Recently released political prisoners and human rights activists testified before members of Congress Wednesday about the ongoing persecution in Nicaragua, which one witness called an “unholy war against the Catholic Church.”
In recent years, the Nicaraguan government under Daniel Ortega has detained, imprisoned, and likely tortured numerous Catholic leaders, targeting at least one bishop and several priests.
In addition, the Ortega regime has repressed Catholic radio and television stations and driven Catholic religious orders, including the Missionaries of Charity, from the country.
Among those to testify March 22 was Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a former presidential candidate opposed to the Ortega regime who detailed his arrest and imprisonment.
“I was kidnapped by the police from my house the night of June 8, 2021. I was captured in front of my wife and my daughter … My family did not know anything about me until I was able to see my sister … almost three months after my arrest,” he said.
“Today, as the result of this authoritarian project in Nicaragua, there is no law, there is no media, and there are no civil rights.”

In another crackdown on religious freedom, local authorities in an eastern Chinese city ordered parents of kinder-garteners to sign a pledge that affirms they are not religious. Guardians of children at schools in Wenzhou, a city in the Zhejiang province, were asked to sign a “pledge form of commitment for family not to hold a religious belief,” according to the human rights group China Aid.
The pledge states that the parents affirm they “do not hold a religious belief, do not participate in any religious activities, and do not propagate and disseminate religion in any locations.” It also makes them affirm “exemplary observance of the [Chinese Communist] Party discipline and the country’s laws and regulations [and to] never join any Falun Gong and other cult organizations.”
Falun Gong, a religious movement founded in China in the 1990s, is openly critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
The order came from Chinese Communist Party officials in the Longwan district of the city of Wenzhou, according to ChinaAid. The nonprofit is a Christian human-rights organization that received the Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy for its commitment to religious freedom in China in 2019.
The district is home to about 750,000, people. Christians represent about 10% of the city’s population and have grown in number over the past decade. This is much higher than the national average, which is less than 1% Christian.

The 3rd International conference “Catholics and Shiites facing the future. On the occasion of the 2nd anniversary of Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq” will be held in Najaf from the afternoon of 8 until 10 March. The dialogue conference has been organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio together with the Al-Khoei Institute of Najaf. It will be attended by a delegation of the Community including the founder Andrea Riccardi, the president Marco Impagliazzo and Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, Cardinals Ayuso, Coutts and Sako, Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldean, will also be present.
The delegation on the Shia side includes several clerics from the High Shiite Seminary in Najaf, as well as representatives from other Middle Eastern countries and Europe. The conference is scheduled to end on Friday, 10 March, with the final session at the Chaldean Patriarchate in Baghdad. This new phase in the friendship between Catholics and Shiites is part of a journey that began in January 2004, when a delegation from Sant’Egidio, invited to Najaf by Shiite clerics engaged in dialogue in the ‘spirit of Assisi’, met with Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani. In 2015, the first international Catholic-Shiite Conference took place. It was followed by numerous and varied presences of Shia religious at the International Meetings for Peace, promoted by Sant’Egidio in the “spirit of Assisi”.

There are calls for the Catholic Church to ordain women as deacons and priests and to allow women to preach the homily during Mass from in a new survey of more than 17,000 Catholic women around the world.
The International Survey of Catholic Women, carried out last year in response to the call for submissions to the 2021-2024 Synod of Bishops on synodality, is published as women worldwide celebrate International Women’s Day.
Recommendations include changes to Canon Law to permit women to preach the homily during Mass and considering the ordination of women to the diaconate and priesthood as a legitimate expression of doctrinal development.
There are also calls to respect women’s freedom of conscience in matters of sexual and reproductive health and decision-making, and for changes to Catholic theology, doctrine and liturgical practice to ensure women, LGBTIQ+ Catholics, and divorced and remarried Catholics “are valued and fully included in all aspects of church life”.
The report, devised and managed by researchers Dr Tracy McEwan and Dr Kathleen McPhillips at the University of Newcastle in Australia and Professor Emerita Tina Beattie at the University of Roehampton, London, draws on 17,200 responses from women in 104 countries.
Of those surveyed, 79 per cent agreed women should be fully included at all levels of church leadership, 84 per cent agreed reform is needed, 85 per cent agreed clericalism is damaging the Church and 80 per cent agreed Church leaders are not doing enough to address the perpetration and cover-up of sexual abuse.
Participants were recruited across multiple networks and forums worldwide including dioceses, parishes, and women’s networks and organisations.

In the latest move against the Catholic Church and government opponents in Nicaragua, the government of President Daniel Ortega has reportedly banned the traditional public processions of the Way of the Cross in all parishes in the country.
During Lent, and also on Good Friday, the ritual will take place inside churches and not in public venues.
The move comes in the context of President Daniel Ortega’s escalating crackdown against the Nicaraguan Church, and follows the widespread outcry over the recent sentencing of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa to 26 years’ imprisonment and the deportation to the United States of 222 political opponents.
They have all been stripped off citizenship along with other 94 Nicaraguan citizens, including the exiled Auxiliary Bishop Silvo José Baez of Managua, and a priest from Matagalpa.
Tensions between the Sandinista regime and the Catholic Church reached its peak last week when, in a speech for the 89th anniversary of the killing of Nicaraguan national hero Augusto Sandino.

Aside from the ruthless crack-down on protests over the death of Kurdish girl Mahsa Amini in police custody, 2022 was another year in which Iranian Christians continued to face harassment, arrests and imprisonment only for practicing their faith, a new report of four non-profit organi-zations advocating for persecuted Christians in the world says.
Christians along with other religious minorities in the Islamic Republic continued to be systematically deprived of their right to freely practice their religion,  according to the 2023 Report on “Violations to the rights of Christians in Iran” released  by Article18, a London-based ONG, dedicated to the protection and promotion of religious freedom in Iran, with its partners Open Doors International, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and Middle East Concern.
The 25-page study, in its fifth edition, was issued in recent days to coincide with the 44th anniversary of the murder of Anglican pastor Arastoo Sayyah, the first Christian killed for his  faith in the Islamic Republic,  just eight days after Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in February 1979.134 Christians arrested in 2022 for faith related issues.

In a new interview, Pope Francis has discussed the possibility of revising the Western discipline of priestly celibacy.
“There is no contradiction for a priest to marry. Celibacy in the Western Church is a temporary prescription: I do not know if it is settled in one way or another, but it is temporary in this sense,” Pope Francis said in an interview published on March 10.
“It is not eternal like priestly ordination, which is forever, whether you like it or not. Whether you leave or not is another matter, but it is forever. On the other hand, celibacy is a discipline.”
When asked by the Argentine journalist Daniel Hadad if celibacy “could be review-ed,” Pope Francis responded: “Yes, yes. In fact, everyone in the Eastern Church is ma-rried. Or those who want to. There they make a choice. Before ordination there is the choice to marry or to be celibate,” according to a transcript provided by Infobae.
In response to the interviewer’s inquiry if the pope thought that making celibacy opt-ional would lead more people to join the priesthood, Pope Francis said: “I do not think so,” noting that there are already married priests in the Catholic Church in the Eastern rites.
The pope added that earlier that day he had met with an Eastern Catholic priest who works in the Roman Curia who has a wife and a son.
Pope Francis has spoken about the value of priestly celibacy before. In January 2019 he said: “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church. I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.”
The pope added at the time that he thinks there is room to consider some exceptions for married clergy in the Latin rite “when there is a pastoral necessity” in remote locations due to a lack of priests, such as in the Pacific islands.
The nearly one-hour-long interview published Friday with Infobae, a Miami-based Spanish-language online news outlet, also touched on Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua, drug trafficking in Latin America, the war in Ukraine, and marriage annulments.
When speaking of annulments, Pope Francis advised to look to what his prede-cessor Benedict XVI had said on the subject and said that “a large part of church marriages are invalid for lack of faith.”
“And think about it: Sometimes [one] goes to a wedding and it seems more like it’s a social reception and not a sacrament,” Pope Francis said.

These are the names of the four asteroids named after three astronomers from the Vatican Observatory, and Pope Gregory XIII.
Pope Gregory, who was born Ugo Boncompagni, is the Pope to whom we owe the reform of the calendar (later known as the Gregorian Calendar) and the beginning of the tradition of papal astronomers and observatories. The astronomers after whom three celestial bodies have been named are the Jesuits Johann Hagen, who was director of the Vatican Observatory from 1906 to 1930, Bill Stoeger, cosmologist and theologian, and Robert Janusz, currently on the staff of the Vatican Observatory.

There are currently 1,165 female employees working for the Pope, compared to only 846 in the year Francis took office in 2013. The percentage of women in the total workforce at the Vatican rose in the current pontificate from just under 19.2 to 23.4 per cent today. These figures refer to the two administrative units Holy See and Vatican City State together.
The increase in female employees is even more pronounced if one looks exclusively at the Holy See, i.e. the Roman Curia. Here, the proportion of women has risen from 19.3 to 26.1 per cent over the past ten years. This means that more than one in four employees at the Holy See is now a woman – in absolute figures 812 out of 3,114.
In the ten-part salary scale used in the Vatican, most women in the Curia have been found for many years on the sixth and seventh step. They thus exercise professions that usually require an academic degree, such as lawyers, department heads, archivists or administrative specialists. In 2022, 43% of the women employed at the Curia worked at the sixth and seventh levels.
Secretaries and undersecretaries are the second and third levels of management respectively in most curia authorities and are part of the management team together with the prefect, i.e. the superior of the authority; all three levels are filled by appointment by the Pope. At the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Pope Francis appointed a female secretary for the , the Italian religious Alessandra Smerilli. It is the highest post ever held by a woman at the Holy See.