Iraqi Christians “are fleeing” from their country and many of them belong to the “productive segment” or the “most educated” sectors of the population (also) due to the “divisions” between the Churches, so far unable to implement strong and unitary policies and initiatives to give them a future.
The j’accuse was launched by the Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Card. Louis Raphael Sako, in a long message to the faithful in Iraq and around the world published on the patriarchate website and sent to AsiaNews for information.
From the temporary seat of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the cardinal has withdrawn until the controversy linked to the presidential decree which is a source of conflict and further division is resolved, he renews the appeal for a common commitment and evokes the creation of a “crisis unit”.
In Iraq, observes the Chaldean primate, “there is no strategy, security or economic stability”, there is a lack of “sovereignty” and there is a “double” application of the concepts of democracy, freedom, constitution, law and citizenship by those who should be at the service of the country and its inhabitants.
In this way the institutions have been “weakened” and there has been a “decline” in morals and values, services, healthcare and education have worsened, as well as “widespread corruption” and “growing unemployment” combined to a returning illiteracy.
In this context, the Christian component, already on the margins, has become even more fragile and has been the subject of kidnappings, killings that began in 2003 with the US invasion and culminated in the years of domination of the Islamic State (ISIS), with the great escape from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.
China bars Tibetan kids from private classes, religious activities
Ethnic Tibetans have expressed alarm over door-to-door inspection by China’s communist authorities to ensure children are not taking private classes and participating in religious activities during their winter break.
The authorities are conducting random inspections in “residential areas and commercial establishments” in Tibet and other Tibetan-populated regions, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Jan. 9 citing unnamed sources.
“In addition to random door-to-door investigations, local authorities are also carrying out surveys of the Tibetan children,” a source in China’s south-western Qinghai province told RFA. The surveys were aimed “to find out what subjects are being taught to them in their out-of-school courses and where,” the source added.
In a notice issued on Nov. 30, 2023, the Lhasa city Education Department, while announcing the winter break from Dec. 30, 2023, until Feb. 27-29, 2024, had outlined the kind of education parents could give their children.
The notice also highlighted the work that teachers would need to do during the holiday period.
Parents were urged to not engage in the religious education of school children, and they were to “make sure the children are completely free from the influence of religion,” the notice said.
Tibetan children could participate in supplementary classes and workshops taught only by government-authorized individuals and organizations and on subjects approved by the authorities, the notice added.
The notice also emphasized the continued ban on Tibetan children’s participation in religious activities.
Earlier this month, the Chinese Education Department issued a notice reiterating a 2021 ban prohibiting Tibetan children from taking informal Tibetan language classes or workshops during their winter holidays.
The notice also ordered local authorities to intensify their supervision and investigation of supplementary lessons for Tibetan children and to carry out strict disciplinary action against those violating the rule, prompting inspections.
Conservative Cardinal Burke says he is ‘still alive’ after rare pope meeting
Conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of Pope Francis’ fiercest critics, had his first private audience with the pontiff in seven years on December 29, a month after the pope said he was stripping him of some of his Vatican privileges.
Asked by Reuters outside his residence in Rome if the meeting had gone well, Burke responded: “Well, I’m still alive”.
The 75-year-old cardinal declined to further discuss the content of what was, according to Vatican records, his first private audience with Francis since Nov. 10, 2016.
Wearing a floor-length black overcoat and black hat and with rosary beads in his left hand, he walked away on a street near the Vatican.
The Vatican listed the meeting on the pope’s official schedule but, as is customary, did not say what was discussed.
Last month, Francis told Vatican officials at a regular meeting of department heads that he had decided to strip Burke of some of his Vatican privileges, including a rent-subsidised apartment, according to a person who was in the room at the time.
The official quoted the pope as saying that Burke was “working against the Church and against the papacy” and that he had sown “disunity” in the Church.
When asked on Friday, Burke also declined to discuss the apartment.
Burke is a hero to traditionalists in the Church, particularly in the U.S., where he often has been a guest on conservative Catholic media outlets that have made criticism of the pope a mainstay of their operations.
Christmas Massacres Challenge Secular Explanations of Nigeria Conflict
Attacks on 26 villages in Plateau State began December 23, led by suspected extremists among Fulani Muslim herdsman against Christian farming communities. Some media reports cite nearly 200 dead, with many missing as local residents fled from gunmen into the bush.
Grace Godwin was preparing Christmas Eve dinner when her husband burst in with news from the neighboring village, ordering her and the children into the fields. Rebecca Maska similarly took cover but was shot and bled for three hours until help arrived, while her son had his hand chopped off with a machete before escaping. Magit Macham dragged his wounded brother to safety and hid overnight until the attackers moved on.
“These attacks have been recurring,” Macham told Reuters, having returned home from the regional capital of Jos to celebrate Christmas. “They want to drive us out of our ancestral land.”
For years, violence has plagued the West African nation’s Middle Belt, where a predominantly Muslim north intersects with a predominantly Christian south. Land rights issues are also contested, as seminomadic cattle herders press against settled agrarian hamlets in Africa’s most populous nation.
The Christmas massacres were the worst attacks since 2018. A local publication tallied an additional 201 deaths in Plateau State in the first half of 2023. Across the Middle Belt, at least 2,600 people were killed in 2021, according to the most recent data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
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African bishop urges Catholics to report priests with secret wives
Bishop Gaspard Béby Gneba has called on the people of his diocese in western Ivory Coast to report priests who secretly have wives and families, as well as those who commit sexual or financial abuse.
“Any lay believer who knows that a priest is not faithful to his celibacy, has a wife or child, or has committed sexual abuse or economic crimes, must have the courage to report it to the bishop, otherwise, they commit a sin of complicity before God, the pope, and the Church,” Bishop Gneba said in an open letter to people of the Diocese of Man, which he read January 4 on diocesan radio.
“The pope speaks of zero tolerance for these priests,” said the 61-year-old bishop, a former seminary professor of spirituality and liturgy who has led the diocese since early 2008.
He said his message was “urgent, important, and necessary” and aimed at helping him in”the fight against sexual abuse, economic crimes within the clergy of Man, and the treatment of priests who have wives or children.”
After extensively reiterating these directives, he went on to discuss the “specific measures taken to transparently handle cases of sexual abuse or economic crimes committed by priests” in the diocese during his nearly 16 years at the helm.
“They must come to see me as soon as possible to submit their resignation,” he insisted, while deploring the behavior of some who “give the impression that priestly celibacy has been abolished or that continence is optional.”
Over 130 Catholic priests and religious arrested, kidnapped, or murdered in 2023
Throughout 2023, more than 130 Catholic priests and religious were either arrested, kidnapped, or murdered, according to a new report on Catholic persecution published by Aid to the Church in Need.
The report published by the Catholic charity found at least 132 instances of arrests, kidnappings, and/or murders, which is slightly higher than the report from the previous year, which found 124. The uptick was mostly driven by arrests from authoritarian governments, which went up from 55 in 2022 to 86 in 2023.
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on political dissent among members of the clergy was a primary driver of persecution throughout the year. The report found that the regime held 46 clergy in custody in 2023, including two bishops and four seminarians. This included 19 clerics arrested in December, including Bishop Isidoro de Carmen Mora Ortega of Siuna.
According to the report, many of the priests in Nicaragua who were arrested before December were either released or expelled from the country and refused reentry. The government also released two of the priests arrested in December, but the other 17 are still in custody.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was arrested in August 2022 and sentenced to 26 years in prison after refusing to leave the country, is also still in custody.
Vatican moves to calm bishops over same-sex blessings approval
The Vatican on January 4 moved to calm Catholic bishops in some countries who have balked over last month’s approval of blessings for same-sex couples, telling them that the measure is not “heretical” or “blasphemous”.
In a five-page statement, the Vatican’s doctrinal office also acknowledged that such blessings could be “imprudent” in some countries where people who receive them might become targets of violence, or risk prison or even death.
The fact that the Vatican needed to issue a five-page clarification of an eight-page declaration – little more than two weeks after it was issued – appeared to underscore the extent of the confusion it caused in many countries.
After the original declaration was issued, a number of Catholic bishops’ conferences issued statements stressing that the blessings did not amount to an official approval of gay sex or a sacrament of marriage for same-sex couples.
The doctrinal office, known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, stressed these aspects in its statement on January 4 , saying that blessings for same-sex couples should not be seen as “a justification of all their actions, and they are not an endorsement of the life that they lead”.
The office said it wanted “to clarify the reception of Fiducia Supplicans while recommending at the same time a full and calm reading” of the Dec. 18 declaration, which it said is “clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality”.
It added: “Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or Blasphemous.”
Sombre Christmas Eve in Bethlehem as Gaza war rages
A pall of gloom descended over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve as the Gaza war weighed heavily on the biblical city in the occupied West Bank and the usual crowds of pilgrims stayed away.
The traditional giant Christmas tree, marching bands and flamboyant nativity scene were all absent in the city celebrated as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
While there were few festive lights, a huge Palestinian flag was unfolded in the centre of town and a banner declared that “The bells of Bethlehem ring for a ceasefire in Gaza”.
Bethlehem usually throngs with pilgrims and tourists at this time of year. But many residents have fled and few visitors have come since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
The bloody conflict was sparked when the Palestinian militants launched a deadly cross border attack on southern Israel, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation.
Research captures a fractured, distrustful priesthood in America
When asked to sum up the state of the American priesthood, Catholic University of America sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan describes it as “fractured,” in that individually priests are doing well, but their assessment of the institutional Church “is not very good.”
What’s more, research conducted by Vaidyanathan and others has found that not only is there a striking deficit in the trust priests feel in their bishop, but there’s also a significant generational mistrust priests have in each other that relates to differing theological and political alignments.
“There’s a mutual distrust of each other that is driven by political differences, and so young priests view older priests with suspicion and vice versa,” Vaidyanathan told Crux. “The younger priests are more conservative, and don’t see the older priests as sort of a part of the same program.”
The insight became apparent to Vaidyanathan and other researchers in an analysis of data compiled for “The National Survey of Catholic Priests,” which was published in October 2022 by CUA’s Catholic Project. The survey, the largest of American Catholic priests in over 50 years, got responses from 3,516 priests across 191 dioceses/eparchies.
The survey also included interviews with more than 100 priests selected from respondents, and a census survey of U.S. bishops receiving 131 responses.
Among the findings were that priests’ morale is high and they have a strong view of their personal vocations, but a high percentage of priests expressed some level of distrust in their bishop, and young priests especially experience burnout. After first survey findings were published last year, researchers conducted a deeper analysis of the data, which was published in November in a report titled “Polarization, Generational Dynamics, and the Ongoing Impact of the Abuse Crisis: Further Insights from the National Study of Catholic Priests.”
“Since [the initial survey was published] we have analyzed the qualitative data from about 104 interviews that we did, and our team was also looking at other kinds of interesting findings, patterns, that seemed to be present in the survey data that could help quantify and give us a sense of the distribution of some of the things we were finding,” Vaidyanathan, the chair of CUA’s Department of Sociology, explained.
“We formally forbid all blessings of homosexual couples”: Catholic Bishops in Cameroon
Catholic Bishops in Cameroon have added their voice to other Catholic Church leaders, who have prohibited the implementation of Fiducia Supplicans in their Episcopal Sees and territories they govern.
In a statement, members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC) weigh in on the document that the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) released on December 18 permitting the blessing of “same-sex couples” and couples in other “irregular situations”.
NECC members take the stance that their counterparts in Malawi and Zambia have taken, barring members of the Clergy from imparting blessings upon “homosexual couples”, and term the DDF directive that such blessings be nonliturgical as “hypocritical”.
“We, the Bishops of Cameroon, reiterate our disapproval of homosexuality and homosexual unions,” they say, and go on to issue their directive, “Consequently, we formally forbid all blessings of ‘homosexual couples’ in the Church of Cameroon.”