In an interview given to the Corriere della Sera, on the eve of his journey to Rome, Monaco and France, President Xi Jinping’s words are a true love song for Italy. Yet what is really amazing about this long ode to relations between our nation and the Middle Empire is his silence on Matteo Ricci and the Cultural Revolution.
Catholic lay body concerns at polarization on eve of elections
The All India Catholic Union (AICU), Asia’s oldest Laity organization, has expressed deep concern at the communal polarization that is peaking on the eve of the general elections in the country in April and May, AICU president Lancy D’Cunha and spokes-man Dr John Dayal said in a statement here on March 24.
The AICU leadership said many communities including Muslims and Dalits (formerly untouchables) are victims of targeted violence. Of particular concern is the sudden and sustained violence against the Christian community in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Christian leaders from Jaunpur gave a graphic account of the situation when they addressed the working committee of the AICU at Navsadhana, the noted Catholic mass media centre in Varanasi.
Uttar Pradesh had, in the brief period between September and December 2018, seen as many as 109 cases of violence against Christian pastors, small house churches, and women and men faithful at worship in small towns and villages. This was the highest in the country. More than 40 cases had taken place in Jaunpur alone. In the first months of 2019, the region recorded 15 more cases.
The AICU noted with concern the continuing targeted violence by hard core activists of the Sangh Parivar (right wing Hindu nationalists) in any parts of the country. In most cases, the police was either complicit, or stood by watching. The state impunity had further encouraged mobs taking the law in their own hands.
Caritas India’s Lenten campaign against malnutrition
“Nutrition: our right,” is the theme of the Lenten campaign of Caritas India for 2019. Caritas India, the charitable arm of the Catholic Church of India, has launched a Lenten campaign against hunger by creating an awareness among people regarding solidarity, food security, medical care and a dignified life for all citizens. The theme of the Lenten campaign 2019, launched “Nutrition: our right.” It aims at fighting the scourge of malnutrition, which it regards as a “painful and shameful for humanity.” According to Caritas India, the nation, with its resources, is be able to feed its inhabitants, yet it continues to be one home to one of the highest numbers of malnourished women and children in the world. According to official data, 38.4% of children in India suffer from rickets and 35.8% from underweight, both of which are liked to malnutrition.
3 German Catholic dioceses to join Lutherans in Lenten fast for climate protection, climate justice
The campaign “Climate Crisis” starts on Ash Wednesday (6th March) for the sixth time. At the initiative called by the Institute for Church and Society of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia (EKvW) under the motto “So much you need …” (Exodus 16), this year a total of eleven Protestant regional churches and three Catholic bishoprics are invited putting climate protection at the centre of our own Lent.
Everyone can take part in thinking about their own actions in everyday life, trying out new things and making changes together. “Limiting to Enough is Urgently Required,” Dr Irmgard Schwaetzer, President of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Vice-President of the Central Committee of German Catholics, Dr. med. Karin Kortmann, in their joint greeting of the accompanying fasting booklet agree. In view of the “multiple transgressions of ecological boundaries and consequences,” they call for “a mindful and frugal way of life.” With the climate key, you can try out different steps for climate-friendly alternatives in your own everyday life. It is about practicing an ethics of enough, “Volker Rotthauwe, environmental pastor of EKvW and one of the” climate field “initiators, describes the goal of the action.
In a fast-paced booklet, the initiators provide suggestions and ideas for focus topics in the seven days of fasting: After a personal pause and the conscious perception of the self and the fellow creatures at the beginning of Lent, the following weeks are dedicated to concrete actions on the subject of “energy budget” – “mindful cooking and eat “-” fair consumption “-” be different on the way “and – new this year – the” plastic-free life.
The number of churches “regularized” by the Egyptian government rises to 783
In Egypt the process of “legalization” of Christian places of worship built in the past without the required permits, along with the granting of authorizations for the construction of new churches, continues at a rapid pace. The Egyptian Council of Ministers, chaired by Premier Mostafa Kamal Madbouly, approved last March 5 the report of the Committee for the regularization, restoration and construction of new churches, which formally attested the verification and the subsequent authorization to the legitimate use of 783 Christian places of worship subjected to ministerial controls.
Government and ecclesiastical sources, relaunched by the Egyptian media, expect that at the end of 2020 the controls and the consequent ministerial authorizations will be completed for more than 700 Christian places of worship awaiting regularization.
The churches submitted to the scrutiny of the ad hoc government commission are mainly those built before the new law on the construction of Christian buildings of worship came into force, approved by Parliament at the end of August 2016. The work of the government commission, consists in verifying if thousands of churches and Christian places of prayer built in the past without the required authorizations meet the standards established by the new law.
Pope: God is purifying the church with ‘unbearable’ pain of abuse scandal
The clerical abuse scandal has caused everyone in the Catholic Church “pain and unbearable suffering,” Pope Francis said, but it also is a call to repentance and the renewal of the church.
“Our humble repentance, which remains silent between our tears for the monstrosity of sin and the unfathomable greatness of God’s forgiveness, this, this humble repentance is the beginning of our holiness,” the Pope told priests from the Diocese of Rome.
Pope Francis’ annual Lenten meeting with the priests on 7th March began with a penitential prayer service and individual confessions at the Basilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.
In a long, impromptu talk on priesthood and forgiveness, the Pope acknowledged the clerical sexual abuse crisis and the particular way it had impacted priests.
“Sin disfigures us,” he said, and it is “humiliating” when “we or one of our brother priests or bishops falls into the bottomless abyss of vice, corruption or, worse still, of a crime that destroys the lives of others,” like the sexual abuse of minors does.
Pope Francis said he is convinced the abuse scandal is ultimately the work of the devil.
God is working “to restore the beauty of his bride, surprised in flagrant adultery,” the Pope said.
Americans’ drinking habits vary by faith
In the United States and many other countries, religiously active people are less likely to drink alcohol than those who are not as religious. That may not be a surprise: Holy texts from the Christian New Testament to the Quran and the Hindu Dharmashastras warn against the dangers of excessive drinking and other potentially harmful “vices.” Many religious leaders, including the late Rev. Billy Graham, have urged followers to abstain from alcohol. Despite these teachings, the relationship between religion and alcohol consumption remains a nuanced one, and not all U.S. religious groups eschew alcohol to the same degree, according to a Pew Research Centre survey conducted in 2015.
Half of U.S. adults (51%) who say they attend religious services at least once a month report drinking alcohol in the past 30 days, according to the survey. That compares with roughly six-in-ten (62%) among people who attend worship services less often or not at all. Similarly, only 13% of monthly attenders engaged in recent binge drinking – defined as four or more drinks on a single occasion for women and five or more for men – compared with 21% of less frequent attenders.
Christianity played a large role in the U.S. temperance movement. Yet alcohol remains a prominent part of the Christian religion, from the Gospel account of Jesus turning water into wine, to present-day European monks who support themselves by brewing beer, to the use of wine in some contemporary communion services.
Among U.S. Christians, for example, Catholics are more likely than Protestants to say they’ve consumed alcohol in the past 30 days (60% vs. 51%). Adults who don’t belong to any religion, meanwhile, are more likely (24%) than both Catholics (17%) and Protestants (15%) to have engaged in binge drinking in the past month.
(The survey did not include enough Mormon or Muslim respondents to analyze separately, but both of these religious groups teach their followers to abstain from alcohol).
China, nearly 50,000 baptisms in the Catholic Church in 2018
At least 48,365 baptisms were celebrated in churches and Catholic communities in the People’s Republic of China in the year 2018. This is the number reported in the official publication of the Faith Institute for Cultural Studies, based in Shijiazhuang, the capital of the Chinese province of Hebei. The figures bring together data from 104 Catholic dioceses recognized by the Chinese authorities, scattered in more than 30 national provincial divisions. These data appear in substantial continuity with those of the previous year, when the Faith Institute had certified the celebration of 48,556 baptisms in the Chinese Catholic communities.
Also in 2018, as in previous years, the largest number of new Catholics baptized reported by the Faith institute (almost 13,000) was concentrated in the Chinese province of Hebei with other remarkable percentages of new baptisms celebrated in the Catholic communities of the provinces of Shanxi (4124), Sichuan (3707) and Shandong (2914). Faith institute also reported on baptisms celebrated in Catholic communities in the regions where Muslim populations and ethnic minority groups are found, such as Tibet (8 baptisms), Hainan (35), Qinghai (43) and Xinjiang (57).
China recommits to sinicisation of religion
“There will be no official or unofficial church when the church is united,” he said. Asked if it meant the so-called underground church would be forced to dis-appear, he said: “Don’t you want the church to be united? A church schism is not the fundamental aspiration of Catholics.”
Bishop Zhan said those Catholics who refused to join the official church were acting in their personal interests, but there was no timetable for the integration of the underground church — those who have refused to register with the government — with Beijing’s hierarchy.
“Everyone works hard and works together,” he said. The push to “Sinicise religion” — make it more culturally Chinese — was introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2015 and written into party orthodoxy in 2017. Experts see it as an attempt by the officially atheist Communist Party to bring religions under its absolute control.
“The agreement is provisional only, and we will improve it in the future,” Cardinal Filoni said after celebrating Mass in Hong Kong March 5.
Caste-away: Dalits seek escape through conversion in Nepal
The Christian community in Nepal has not been spared the wrath of society’s caste-based inequality, even though bottom-rung Dalits are increasingly turning to Christianity as a means to escape their fate.
Religious conversions are illegal in Nepal but the numbers suggest many consider it a risk worth taking as the “untouchables” are among the most oppressed by this complex social system, which leaves no sphere untouched. Testament to how legions of Dalits are prepared to gamble on breaking the law in search of a more dignified life, Nepal now harbours one of the fastest-growing Christian populations in the world.
The Federation of National Christians Nepal (FNCN) estimates there are 12,000 churches in the country and millions of Nepalese are believed to have turned to Christianity despite a 2011 census claiming Christians make up just 1.4% of the population, or several hundred thousand people. A whopping 65% of the newly converted are Dalits, according to the FNCN.
There are between 3.6 million and 5 million Dalits in Nepal, which means they could comprise as much as one fifth of the total population.
There are three Dalit sub-groups: those who live in the hilly regions, the mountain dwellers, and the Madeshi Dalits of the Terai, a lowland region in the south that extends to northern India.
The discrepancy in numbers is partly due to so many having legally changed their surname to make it sound like they belong to a more privileged caste as a last-ditch attempt to ease the discrimination they so often face.