As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is celebrating its 75th birthday, the Vatican’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, organized a symposium that aimed to focus on both human rights and care for creation.
The Dec. 8 symposium, co-sponsored by the Sovereign Order of Malta, Caritas in Veritate Foundation, and the International Catholic Migration Commission, formed part of week-long commemorations of the declaration, signed Dec. 10, 1948, widely seen as a foundational text for modern human and civil rights.
In his introduction, Archbishop Balestrero said the 30-article landmark document, adopted by the U.N.’s General Assembly, had recognized the “intrinsic dignity of the human person” in the wake of World War II.
However, he added that the global situation 75 years later looked “undeniably dire” and said the Vatican also believed human beings were “relational in nature,” and existed “not as isolated rights-bearers, but in a web of connections and relationships.”

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released a new report on anti-conversion laws around the world. Providing the legal text for 73 separate laws, the compendium notes that 1 in 4 nations (46 total) restrict the right of its people to either adopt or propagate a religion.
“The right to convert from one religion or belief to another, or to no religion or belief at all, is central to [the] protection for religious freedom,” said Susie Gelman, a USCIRF commissioner. “And in countries with anti-conversion laws, religious minorities tend to be broadly targeted for harassment, assault, arrest, and imprisonment.”
The USCIRF report grouped the laws into four categories. First, anti-proselytizing laws restrict witnessing of one’s faith in 29 nations, including in Indonesia, Israel, and Russia. In Morocco, for example, it is illegal to cause a Muslim to question his or her religion.
The second category of interfaith marriage is restricted in 25 nations, including in Jordan, the Philippines, and Singapore.

Pointing toward the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at the Saint Benedict Monastery cemetery in St.Joseph, Minnesota, 61-year-old Patrick Norton recounts the day 13 years ago when he was painting light posts in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and encountered who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas, OSB.
Zervas, a Benedictine sister, died in 1926 at the age of 26 of a debilitating skin disease.
Norton, who was plucked from the streets of Bombay as a child by Mother Teresa and later adopted by an American family, had been hired by the College of Saint Benedict on Oct. 27, 2010, to do some painting. He told that while finishing up the last light post in front of the grotto he thought to himself, “I wonder if the Blessed Mother thinks I am doing a good job?” When he looked down, there was a nun in full Benedictine habit.
“‘You are doing a good job,’ she told me. We talked a little, but I don’t remember what it was about. Then I watched as she disappeared,” he told.
The encounter was so astonishing that Norton kept it to himself for a year. But in a chance conversation, he was told “there is a holy nun buried in that cemetery” and he came to learn it was Zervas. Eventually, he saw a picture of her and was certain that she was the one who had appeared to him.
Patrick Norton stands beside the lamp post he was painting near the Marian grotto when he saw a woman in full Benedict habit who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas.
An elderly religious sister at Saint Benedict Monastery – who also happened to be named Sister Annella – shared with Norton pictures of Zervas and a booklet about the young sister’s life called “Apostles of Suffering in Our Day” by Benedictine priest Joseph Kreuter, published in 1929.

Pope Francis on December 11 received the prefects of the Italian Republic in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace and expressed his concern about the low birth rate in the country, lamenting that many times “dogs take the place of children.”
The pope reminded that the task of these government authorities is to act as intermediaries “between the state and the territory, constantly linking the whole with the parts, the centre with the peripheries, the common good with care for people.”
The pontiff highlighted three challenges that the prefects face: public order, critical environmental issues, and taking care of the migrants flowing in.
Regarding public order, the pontiff stressed that it’s a priority, where “respect for the law with care for humanity” must be combined. He stressed that “the protection of victims with the fair treatment of criminals” must be reconciled.
“Added to this is the great responsibility you have to face the risks that members of the police forces face daily, whose care is also your concern,” he continued.
Pope Francis also noted that “public order cannot be administered without personal and interior order. But when this exists, the responsibility of public order feels like a call to create that cli-mate of harmonious coexistence through which difficulties can be addressed and resolved.”
“I would say that yours is a kind of institutional fatherhood: exercised with conscience and dedication, it spares no sacrifices nor sleepless nights and deserves our gratitude,” he said.

The Supreme Court on December 11 rejected over the objections of three conservative justices a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Favored by some conservatives, the widely criticized practice is aimed at encouraging gay or lesbian minors to change their sexual orientations and trans-gender children to identify as the gender identities assigned to them at birth. Washington is one of 26 states that have barred or restri-cted such therapy for minors, the state’s lawyers say.
The court’s decision not to take up the case means the law remains intact.
“This is a victory for LGBT-Q+ civil rights. The research is clear – conversion therapy does not work, and can be particularly harmful to minors,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh all said they would have heard the appeal.
Thomas wrote that there is “a fierce public debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria” and that the state had “silenced one side of this debate.”
In a separate brief opinion, Alito said the case “presents a question of national importance” that clearly implicates free speech issues. Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment be-cause the government is seeking to dictate what he says.

A landmark Vatican fraud trial involving a top Italian cardinal and a murky London property deal wrapped up Tuesday after more than two years, with a verdict expected Saturday. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75, a former adviser to Pope Francis, became the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to face a Vatican court when proceedings opened in July 2021.
Becciu, who has always strongly pro-claimed his innocence, was among 10 defendants facing accusations of embezzlement, fraud, abuse of power, extortion, money laundering and corruption.
Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi in July called for a sentence of seven years and three months behind bars if Becciu is found guilty. Overall, Diddi requested more than 73 years in prison for all 10 defendants, in addition to fines.
The offenses relate to the Church’s loss-making purchase of a luxury property in London’s upmarket Chelsea district, funded in part by Peter’s Pence donations, money given by churchgoers for the pope’s charities.
Becciu also faced separate allegations over hundreds of thousands of euros of Church funds paid to his brother’s charity.
On Decmebr 12, the last of more than 80 hearings took place in a dedicated room within the Vatican Museums which housed the court, and where a portrait of a smiling Pope Francis hangs on the wall.
The trial “has shown that in all these in-vestments, the cardinal never took a measure not in accordance with what his office had prepared for him,” Becciu’s lawyer Fabio Viglione told the court on Tuesday, demanding his acquittal.
The verdict will be delivered on December 15, the judge said.
The trial was unprecedented in taking place before a Vatican tribunal of three lay magistrates rather than a religious court.
Francis – who has made cleaning up the Vatican’s murky finances a priority of his 10-year-old papacy – changed the law to stop cardinals and bishops enjoying legal privileges.
Had he not, Becciu would have been judged by a higher court presided by cardinals.
When the trial opened, prosecutors painted a picture of risky investments with little or no oversight, and double-dealing by outside consultants and insiders.