Catholics in Argentina appear both somewhat startled and also divided by the surprising recent success of a firebrand politician who’s termed the country’s most famous native son, Pope Francis, a “communist,” an “imbecile” and even a “leftist son of a b*.”
That politician, Javier Milei, was the big winner of the country’s Aug. 13 primaries, coming in first place with 30% of the vote, ahead of both the major right and left-wing coalitions, and despite lacking a strong party structure of his own.
Milei ended up ahead of Patricia Bullrich, whose right-wing coalition obtained 28% of the ballots, and of Sergio Massa, the current Economy Minister in Argentina’s center-left Peronist coalition, who got 27%of support.
In another tweet last year, Milei criticized Francis after the pontiff said citizens should pay taxes to protect the poor’s dignity. Milei asserted that the pontiff was “always standing on the evil’s side” and told him: “Your model is poverty.”
Once during a TV show, Milei was criticizing the concept of social justice and attacked Pope Francis for his defense of it, calling him “the imbecile who is in Rome.”
During an interview earlier this year to a progressive Argentinian journalist, Francis appeared indirectly to compare Milei to Adolf Hitler, saying that the Austrian-born dictator was initially presented as “a new politician, who spoke beautifully, who seduced the people.”
“Everybody voted for little Adolfo, and that is how we ended, right?” the pope said, adding that he fears “saviours without history.” He also declared that he was worried about the progress of the far-right around the world.
In general, observers in Argentina say that Catholic reaction to Milei’s verbal assaults on the pope break largely along political lines, with progressives expressing outrage but conservatives largely silent.
“Many [Argentine Catholics] were happy about [Francis’s] election as the pope in 2013, but disliked his ideas and the documents he released and ceased to approve of him,” said Father Lorenzo De Vedia, known as “Padre Toto,” a priest who works at a slum in Buenos Aires.
Pope Francis writing a second part of Laudato si’
The Director of the Holy See Press Office says the second part of the Laudato si’ encyclical letter which Pope Francis mentioned on August 21 will focus on the recent climate crises.
Speaking off-the-cuff to a delegation of lawyers from member countries of the Council of Europe on August 21, Pope Francis said he was writing a second part of his Laudato si’ encyclical to update it to “current issues”.
The Pope was expressing his appreciation for the attorneys’ commitment to developing a legal framework aimed at protecting the environment.
“We must never forget that the younger generations have the right to receive a beautiful and livable world from us, and that this implies that we have a grave responsibility towards creation which we have received from the generous hands of God,” said the Pope. “Thank you for your contribution.”
In a statement later, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, explained that the new updated version of Laudato si’ will focus in particular on the most recent extreme weather events and catastrophes affecting people across five continents.
Lawmaker warns of Chinese communists changing the Bible
The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned on August 17 of efforts from the Chinese government to subvert Christianity by changing parts of the Bible.
“The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting the Bible,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wiscon-sin, said in a pre-recorded message to the biannual gathering of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago held Aug. 14 through Aug. 18.
Gallagher discussed two examples in which the Chinese government has rewritten parts of the Bible and taught it as fact. In one example, he noted a mis-representation of the account in the Gospel of John in which Christ says, “Let he among you with-out sin cast the first stone” when a woman is accused of adultery.
“It’s a beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy – unless, of course, you’re a CCP official,” Gallagher said. “Then it’s a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends not with mercy but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.”
Pakistan pays Christians who lost homes to
Pakistani authorities on August 21 handed out thousands of dollars to nearly 100 Christian families whose homes were destroyed or damaged by a Muslim mob angered over an alleged desecration of the Quran last week.
The government of caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said each household was getting 2 million rupees ($6,800) in compensation on Monday. Police said they have arrested dozens more rioters in ongoing raids, bringing the total number of those detained over the attacks in the city of Jaranwala to 160.
On August 16, hundreds of Muslims went on a rampage over allegations that a Christian man and his friend had desecrated Islam’s holy book. Christians who fled their homes to escape the attackers later returned to a scene of destruction. Many have been living outside since, fearing the burned structures may collapse.
The rampage, one of the most destructive in the country’s history, drew nationwide condemnation. Kakar on Monday traveled to the area to meet with some of the victims of the attacks and hand out the compensation. He promised in a televised speech that the state will ensure the protection of minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadis.
Kakar said none of the rioters will go unpunished, describing those behind the attacks as “enemies of humanity.”
Earlier in the day, Mohsin Naqvi, the top official in Punjab province, where Jaranwala is located, announced the compensations on X, previously known as Twitter. Naqvi visited the city on Sunday and held a meeting of local officials at a burned church.
“They are worried for their safety, they are worried for their children, who witnessed the tragedy and are traumatized,” priest Khalid Mukhtar said of the local Christians. All 26 churches in Jaranwala were attacked, burned or damaged, he said.
Don’t weaponize Eucharist, Catholics urge papal delegate
Catholics in India are urging the papal delegate to not weaponize Eucharist to enforce obedience among the dissident priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly arch-diocese in Kerala.
As Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil’s threat of excommunication looms large on those dissident priests, Catholics in other parts of the country want the delegate to practice synodality promoted by Pope Francis to resolve the dispute over the mode of offering Mass.
The delegate, who landed in the southern Indian state of Kerala on August 4 to help resolve the decades-old dispute, ordered the dissenting clergy to offer Mass approved by the Syro-Malabar Synod in all parishes of the archdiocese or face excommunication. The deadline to implement the order is on Sunday, August 20.
Archbishop Vasil “seems to weaponize the Eucharist with his latest warning on the Syro-Malabar liturgy under the guise of obedience,” laments Father George Pattery, former president of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia.
Father Pattery, who is currently in Kolkata, urges the papal delegate to employ Jesuit expertise on discernment to help the Syro-Malabar Church discover true synodality and, if needed, revise its earlier decisions on liturgy, as “purity and pollution theories are questioned in the New Testament.”
“For Jesus, the eucharist should lead to washing one another’s feet, and not in ritual purity/pollution theories – something that Jesus strongly interrogated,” said the Jesuit, a native of Kerala.
HC Orders ‘Organiser’ to Take Down Article Accusing Christian Principal of Exploiting Nuns, Students
The Delhi high court has ordered Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) weekly Organiser to take down an article alleging that the principal of a Delhi-based Christian minority school was exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men and was involved in sexual activities with students, staff members and chefs, Bar and Bench reported.
The article titled ‘Indian Catholic Church Sex Scandal: Priest exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men exposed’ was published in Organiser and another news plat-form, The Commune, in June.
Justice Jyoti Singh directed both publications to remove the defamatory article from their platforms.
It takes years to build a reputation, and therefore, the right to reputation has been recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution, the bench observed, per the news report.
“No doubt, Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution provides the right of freedom of speech and expression to all persons, how-ever, it cannot be overlooked that the same is subject to restrictions under Article 19(2) which includes defamation.
The right to freedom of speech and expression cannot be taken as an unfettered right so as to defame and tarnish the reputation of another person. It has been repeatedly held by Courts that fundamental right to freedom of speech has to be counterbalanced with the right of reputation of an individual.”
The high court said that prima facie, Organiser and The Commune published the articles “in a reckless manner without any factual verification”, the report said. Additionally, the court said that the news coverage was harm-ing the reputation of the school principal. The principal is a well-regarded individual within the country and has affiliations with multiple educational establish-ments, it added. It noted that the school principal has presented a strong case in his favour. The principal said that as long as these articles remain in the public domain, there is a high likelihood that they will keep causing harm to his reputation.
On Indian Independence Day, bishops reiterate Christians’ patriotism
As India celebrated its 77th Independence Day marking freedom from colonial British rule on Aug. 15, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) asserted the patriotism of Christians and called for “resolving internal challenges with empathy, understanding, and unity.” “India’s journey to freedom was not solely forged on the battlefield but also through unwavering determination, sacrifices, and visionary leadership from those of diverse backgrounds, including the Christian community,” the CBCI said in a press release. Though British imperialism spread in India when the East India Company began trading there in the 17th century, the British Parliament took total control over the Indian subcontinent in 1858.
Following the massive freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi – the prophet of nonviolence – the British ended their rule over the Indian subcontinent in August 1947, dividing it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Hindu nationalist outlets, under the influence of the ruling BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress), have called into question the patriotism of India’s 34 million Christians.
UN urged to stop anti-Christian violence in India, Pakistan
A Catholic bishops’ body has appealed the United Nations (UN) to intervene and stop the targeted attacks against Christians in India and neighbouring Pakistan. “Christians are increasingly becoming the target of riots and mob attacks in India and Pakistan,” said an Aug. 19 statement from the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) based in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The call for UN intervention comes as Manipur state in northeast India is gripped by sectarian violence since May 3 while mobs targeted Christian homes and churches at Jaranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Aug. 16 following allegations of Koran desecration.
In Manipur, violence has reportedly claimed close to 200 lives and displaced over 50,000 people, many of them now staying in relief camps and jungles. Two Christian women were paraded naked and one among them was gang raped.
Over a dozen cases of atrocities again women had been registered during the violence but the number of such cases could be higher and victims may not be able to register complaints fearing retaliation, Church leaders said. The violence also led to the torching of hundreds of Churches and other Christian institutions including schools.
Despite papal ultimatum, resistance continues in India’s Syro-Malabar Church
Despite a dramatic threat by a papal delegate to excommunicate priests who failed to comply with orders about how to celebrate Mass from the governing synod of India’s Syro-Malabar Church, the deadline came and went Sunday with only a handful of parishes celebrating Mass in the prescribed fashion and one rebel priest actually suing the papal envoy in a civil court.
In the primatial basilica of the Syro-Malabar Church, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ernakulam, a recently appointed vicar who attempted to celebrate the Mass in the prescribed fashion was turned back by protestors, and the vicar was forced to announce that Mass is suspended until further notice.
All told, estimates are that only six of 328 parishes in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly actually obeyed the delegate’s warning.
The resistance came in the teeth of an ultimatum issued Aug. 17 by Slovakian Archbishop Cyril Vasil, a Jesuit and the former number two official at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Churches, who was appointed by Pope Francis on July 31 as his delegate to Ernakulam-Angamaly, where a swath of priests and laity have been in open rebellion for months.
Vasil had set Sunday, Aug. 20, as the deadline for priests to celebrate Mass in the fashion prescribed the bishops of the church, which envisions the priest facing the people during the Liturgy of the Word but turning toward the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and warned priests who didn’t obey of possible punishments under church law.
Papal delegate throws down a gauntlet to dissidents in India’s Syro-Malabar Church
That edict has been strongly resisted in Ernakulam-Angamaly, where the custom is for the priest to face the congregation throughout the celebration.
According to a spokesperson for Almaya Munnettam, an association of priests and laity that has been spearheading the opposition, only six parishes actually conducted Mass Sunday in the prescribed fashion, and in another seven cases, Mass was interrupted in churches where there had been an attempt to celebrate according to the new system.
According to a statement, the association “congratulated the priests, more than 450 of them, who courageously stood along with 550,000 believers” in resisting the edict of the church’s synod and the papal delegate.
Japan’s lost happiness amid population decline
It’s just one of those news items that the Japanese rarely pay attention to. But it’s much more alarming than it sounds.
JR Tokai – the Central Japan Railway Company – is planning to increase the number of vending machines on platforms of stations where the “Shinkansen” or bullet train stops so that customers can purchase beverages and ice cream that are in high demand for in-car wagon sales.
Population decline, and not only in Japan, presents a multifaceted challenge with far-reaching consequences, some less obvious than others. How many would guess that a shrinking population can trigger a series of interconnected economic repercussions that lead to the erosion of comforts, luxuries, and even basic services?
You might think Japanese people barely noticed this news. No. Instead, an under-current of sentiment emerged across the Japanese online landscape, a collective grief for products quietly cherished.
Presently, the Tokaido Shinkansen bestows its passengers with the convenience of on-board refreshments, tantalizing snacks, and drinks accessible within the confines of its wagons, on all ‘Nozomi’ and ‘Hikari’ trains. Yet, the chronicle is set to shift as JR Tokai unveils its decision to withdraw this service by the end of October this very year.
“Population decline poses several dangers to economic stability”
Travellers already miss their favourite ice cream that will no longer be served by the impeccable staff, a woman properly dressed in the JR uniform.
This iconic ice cream creation was introduced around 1991, its inception an endeavour of a food manufacturer nestled in Tenpaku Ward, Nagoya City.
As per JR Tokai passengers, this frozen treat is an extemporary “luxury” that is affordable and could always be counted on, as, just like on airlines, it is served to you before every stop. But this basic service has been deemed too costly, so much so that vending machines will soon replace it.
Population decline poses several dangers to economic stability. One of the most immediate and pronounced effects is the reduction in consumer spending.
When the number of consumers diminishes demand for goods and services also contracts, thereby leading to decreased revenue for businesses. This, in turn, can result in cutbacks, downsizing, and closures in industries that heavily depend on sustained consumer interest.
So we should not really be surprised by the news about ice cream and coffee on the bullet trains. And there could be more similar “fatalities” to come.
“The decline in passengers due to a shrinking population will render services like onboard coffee sales economically unviable”
The loss of population-driven consumer demand can undermine industries that provide comforts and luxuries, often leading to a shift towards more utilitarian and cost-effective options.