In Nigeria, you can be put to death under the law for the “cri-me” of blasphemy. Sufi musici-an Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, current-ly imprisoned for blasphemy, has petitioned the Nigerian Supreme Court to put an end to his criminal case, which centres on his sharing religious lyrics on the popular messaging platform WhatsApp. For exerci-sing his fundamental rights to free expression and reli-gious freedom, Yahaya’s life is on the line. This potentially land-mark case could abolish once and for all Northern Nigeria’s Sharia blasphemy law — an urgently needed step for the peaceful co-existence of faiths in the country.
In March 2020 Yahaya shared song lyrics via WhatsApp that others viewed as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. His house was burned to the ground by a mob, and he was promptly arrest-ed and charged with blasphemy under the Sharia Penal Code of Kano State. Without legal repre-sentation, he was tried, convict-ed and sentenced to death by hanging by a local Sharia judge.
Nobody should be punished, much less killed, for their religi-ous ideas. Any person of faith or no faith at all can be sanctioned, and even killed, as a result of a blasphemy accusation. In a country of over 200 million, split nearly evenly between Christians and Muslims, everyone stands to lose under these laws. Their abolishment would dramatically improve the prospects for human rights in Nigeria.

Pope Francis enthusiastically greeted Italian actor and come-dian Roberto Benigni at the Va-tican on Wednesday morning.
Benigni, best known for his Oscar-winning film “Life is Beautiful,” met privately with the pope to tell him about his latest project, a new show about St. Francis of Assisi.
The comic, who recited a line from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy from memory on the Oscars stage in 1999, now serves as the host of the Italian program based on St. Francis’ poem “The Canticle of the Sun.”
The show, “Francesco Il Cantico,” is currently streaming on Paramount Plus in Italy. Benigni also gave the pope a copy of the program on DVD, accor-ding to Reuters.
Pope Francis meeting with Roberto Benigni, Dec. 7, 2022. Vatican Media.
Greeting the pope with a hug, Benigni joked that the pontiff was “emanating light.”
Pope Francis told him not to exaggerate, to which the actor replied: “I have to exaggerate, I’m happy to be here.”

Pope Francis has firmly slammed the door on admitting women to holy orders on the grounds that women’s ordination constitutes a “theological problem” and a violation of the “Petrine principle.”
In an interview published Monday with left-wing Jesuit magazine America, the pontiff categorically stated that a woman “cannot enter ordained ministry … because the Petrine principle has no place for that.”
The pope was responding to a question that asked what he “would say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the Church but who still feels called to be a priest,” especially since “many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests.”
Francis stressed that focusing exclusively on “the ministerial dimension of the life of the Church” or the “Petrine principle” of the “ordained ministry” would be to “amputate the being of the Church.”
Instead, the “Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity in the Church, of the woman in the Church, where the Church sees a mirror of Herself because She is a woman and a spouse,” was “still more important” but sadly ignored, the pope explained.
“The ministerial dimension, we can say, is that of the Petrine Church. I am using a category of theologians,” Francis reiterated. “A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else.” Francis said the Church had failed “to develop a theology of woman that reflects” the “Marian principle, which is that of the spousal Church” and had neglected to explain through catechesis how a woman “looks more like the Church, which is mother and spouse.”

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen was found guilty of failing to register a pro-democracy charity in the Chinese territory and ordered to pay a $512 fine.
A court in the West Kowloon area of Hong Kong Nov.25 convicted Cardinal Zen, age 90, and other trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund of violating the Societies Ordinance, which requires local organizations to register or apply for an exemption within a month of their establishment.
The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was set up to help people who had been arrested during protests three years ago pay for medical and legal fees. The number 612 refers to June 12, 2019, the date of a major protest against a Beijing-sponsored extradition bill in Hong Kong. The fund has since shut down.
Cardinal Zen, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong and an outspoken advocate of religious freedom and civil liberties, was first arrested in May on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces under a Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
A number of trustees, including the cardinal, were each fined 4,000 Hong Kong dollars ($512). A sixth defendant, Sze Ching-wee, the fund’s secretary, was fined HK$2500 ($320) for his lesser role.
Zen’s lawyer, Robert Pang, argued in court last month that imposing “criminal sanctions on the failure to register must be an infringement of freedom of association,” according to Catholic News Agency.
Principal Magistrate Ada Yim said that the fund was not set up purely for charitable purposes but “clearly came into contact with matters of the public interest and zealously raised funds from the public to achieve their objectives.”
But she decided to impose a fine lower than the $1,200 for which the law calls.
According to former pro-democracy lawmaker and fellow defendant Margaret Ng, the case was the first time residents had to face a charge under the Societies Ordinance for failing to register.

After the Supreme Court of India asks the central government to tackle the issue of “forced conversions,” a leading Catholic archbishop warns “what is at stake is not conversion but the right to freedom of conscience as also the right to preach, profess and propagate one’s religion.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court directed the government to step in and make “very serious and sincere efforts” to handle the “very dangerous” issue of forced conversions, saying the issue may “affect the security of the nation and freedom of religion and conscience.”
Hindu nationalists often accuse Muslims and Christians of targeting marginalized low caste and Tribal Hindus to convert through illicit means, such as offering them food or money.
Several states have already passed anti-conversion laws, which impose fines and jail terms for anyone convicted of a “forced conversion.”
Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore said the Catholic Church is completely opposed to illicit means of proselytizing.
“The learned Judges of the Supreme Court of India have rightly said that forced conversions is a serious issue. We deplore forced conversions as also fraudulent conversions. They are an affront to our dignity. We do not support these unethical moves,” he told.

The Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is holding its annual international Red Week campaign to draw attention to religious freedom and persecuted Christians across the world.
Although the events are spread throughout the month, many of the prayer nights and testimonies around the world will be held on 23 November, #RedWednesday.
The annual campaign was launched on November 16 with the official release in London of the ”Persecuted and Forgotten?” Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith in 2020–22. The study supplements the annual Religious Freedom Report of the international charity and is prepared by ACN national office in the UK.One of its key findings shows that, in 75 percent of the 24 countries surveyed the  persecution of Christians has further increased in the past two years.
Of particular concern is the plight of Christians in the Middle East where, in several countries, once flourishing communities risk disappearing as a result of mass migration due to various reasons, ranging from Islamic fundamentalism to discrimination, wars and economic woes.According to the report, since the foundation of the State of Israel, in 1948, the number of Christians in the Palestinian territories has plummeted from 18 per cent to under 1 per cent of the population, due to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian tens-ions and economic difficulties. In the past two years over 5,000 Christians have left the territories, including Jerusalem, adding to the tens of thousands who have al-ready left, mostly for Europe, the United States, and Canada.
The Christian exodus from Syria and Iraq has been even more dramatic, especially during the Islamic State’s (Daesh) insurgency in 2014-2017.
Similarly in Syria, the ongoing civil war between Bashar al-Assa-d’s regime and  insurgents and the threat of a full-scale resurgence of Daes, as well as a dramatic economic crisis are still forcing Christians to leave the country and are discouraging many of them from returning to their homes.
As the crippling economic crisis grinds on in Lebanon, amid political and institutional instability, many Christians continue to leave this country too. Over the past 30 months, the Canadian embassy in Beirut received over 10,000 immigration applications from young people and families.
Regarding countries in other parts of the world, the study further calls attention to the sharp rise in terrorist violence from non-state militants, and in particular in Nigeria where the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram continues to sow terror and more than 7,600 Nigerian Christians were reportedly murdered bet-ween January 2021 and June 2022.

Fewer than half the people in England and Wales consider themselves Christian, according to the most recent census — the first time a minority of the population has followed the country’s official religion.
Britain has become less religious — and less white — in the decade since the last census, figures from the 2021 census released on November 28  by the Office for National Statistics revealed.
Some 46.2% of the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian on the day of the 2021 census, down from 59.3% a decade earlier. The Muslim population grew from 4.9% to 6.5% of the total, while 1.7% identified as Hindu, up from 1.5%.
More than 1 in 3 people — 37% — said they had no religion, up from 25% in 2011.
The other parts of the U.K., Scotland and Northern Ireland, report their census results separately.

Anti-Christian persecution in Nigeria and other countries “clearly passes the threshold of genocide,” according to a report released Wednesday by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
The Catholic charity found that oppression or persecution of Christians increased in 75% of the countries it tracked between October 2020 and September 2022, compared with the period 2017-2019.
The study, “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020–22,” concluded that “esca-lating violence – often aimed at driving Christians out – meant that the faithful suffered some of the world’s most vicious cam-paigns of intimidation orchestra-ted by militant non-state actors.”
“Of particular concern in this regard is Africa where extremism threatens previously strong Christian communities. In Nigeria and other countries this violence clearly passes the threshold of genocide,” it said.

The famous Jewish actor and humorist Gad Elmaleh, beloved in France, announced his conversion to the Catholic faith, a process in which he says the Virgin Mary played a crucial role.
Elmaleh, 51, was the partner of Charlotte Casiraghi, the daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco, with whom they have a son named Rafael.
His conversion to Catholicism is depicted in his new film, “Reste un peu,” (“Stay a while”).
The Jewish actor, who according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo will take the name of Jean-Marie when he is baptized, has studied theology in Paris, and in 2019 he participated in a musical in London about St. Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary who saw Our Lady of Lourdes.
Elmaleh told the French newspaper Le Figaro that “the Virgin Mary is my most beautiful love” and expressed his surprise that in France the “vast majority of Catholics don’t live their faith openly.”
As a child, he recounted in the interview, he entered a church and saw an image of the Mother of God.
“It wasn’t a vision, just a simple statue, but I was petrified. I began to cry and hid for fear of being discovered by my family, for fear of curses and super-stition. I kept it a secret for my entire childhood,” he recalled.
In an interview on the program “L’invité” (“The Guest”), posted Nov. 9 on YouTube, Elmaleh spoke about the film “Reste un peu,” which will open in France Nov. 16.
The actor’s actual parents are in the film, who are not very “happy” with his decision to convert to Catholicism but who have chosen to give him their support.
The actor and humorist said that “it’s true that it’s a spiritual, religious coming out. There’s a lot of mixture of fiction and reality,” but “it’s true that I question myself at the age of 50.”“It’s a search in which I ask myself where, who, when, there’s a God, there is no God,” he said, but he affirms that “the Virgin Mary calls me and protects me.”

After the fiercest presidential campaign in Brazil’s history, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva managed to beat his rival Jair Bolsonaro on Octo-ber 30 with a narrow margin of only two million votes.
As soon as the South Ameri-can country’s electoral authority proclaimed Lula’s victory, seve-ral world leaders called him or congratulated him on social me-dia, including President Joe Biden.
But more than one day after the election, Bolsonaro had not yet publicly acknowledged his defeat. All over the nation, groups of his supporters have been blocking roads and asking for a military coup to correct what they saw as “a voting fraud”– although there is no evidence of voting irregularities.
The protests are a signal that the political polarization in the country – intensified since the 2018 presidential campaign, when Bolsonaro was elected – may not end with the conclusion of the electoral process. Although the church is aware of the great ob-stacles ahead, it has been calling for Brazilians to leave their di-fferences aside and work together from now on.
On October 31, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) issued a statement in which it called the people to reconcile and seek “the common good.”
“The conclusion of the 2022 elections summons us, even more, to reconciliation, essential to the new cycle that is opening. Now, everyone, without distinction, needs to accompany, demand and supervise those who have achieved success at the polls. The exercise of citizenship does not end with the end of the electoral process,” the declaration said.