Dashtsend Tsetseg Suren was just three years old when she first walked into the church com-pound in Ulaanbaatar holding the little finger of her Buddhist father, who was one of the workers engaged in constructing the parish church.
During the Easter Vigil this year, the 14-year-old Suren will receive the baptism in the now-completed St. Sophia parish, which is under the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar, based in Mongolia’s capital.
The ninth grader started her catechism classes in 2021 with the guidance of Father Thomas Ro Sang-Min, the parish priest of St. Sophia parish.
“In the initial years, I did not know that this place was a religious place. I was still small and just came to eat something delicious,” she told.
“But now I come here to pray because I know the church is a place to meet with God.”
Her constant contact with the church people for almost a decade in her childhood, which also meant she joined church celebrations and feasts, helped her to become a part of the tiny Catholic community.
Changing political scenario: Jesuits entrust Pakistan mission to Asia-Pacific region
Jesuit superior general Father Arturo Sosa has brought the congregation’s works in Pakistan under its Asia-Pacific region.
The general announced the change of jurisdiction for the mission in Pakistan in a March 28 message to Father Antonio Moreno, president of the Jesuit Conference of Asia-Pacific (JCAP). Father Sosa says the change will come into effect from April 1st.
The change has been done in view of the current political scenario in South Asia. The Pakistan mission has been served by the Jesuits in Sri Lanka, who come under the Conference of South Asia that comprises Ban-gladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Jesuits’ global website says Pakistan currently has three Jesuits working in Lahore and five scholastics of Pakistan mi-ssion studying in Indonesia.
The general’s message says, “For several years now, the Paki-stan mission has been entrusted to the Sri Lanka Province. Re-cently however, difficulties have arisen that have made it extremely difficult for Sri Lanka to support the mission in Pakistan. First, geopolitical factors have severely restricted travel from Sri Lanka to Pakistan. Second, an acute shortage of Jesuit personnel in Sri Lanka has come to a point that the Province is no longer able to send Jesuits to Pakistan, now or in the near future.”
Father Sosa agrees that ideally other countries in South Asia should help Pakistan, given their geographical and cultural proxi-mity to Pakistan. “Unfortunately, neither is this possible, given the longstanding hostility between India and Pakistan, and the impossibility of travel between these two countries.”
The Asia-Pacific region will manage the Pakistan mission for three years on an experimental basis, the general says.
“I am confident, Fr. Moreno, that with your leadership and the assistance from the other Major Superiors of Asia Pacific, the mission in Pakistan will be able to carry on with its good work, and receive adequate guidance, sustenance, and support,” says Father Sosa’s letter to the head of the Asia-Pacific region.
Cardinal Bo calls for peace, freedom in Myanmar
Cardinal Charles Bo of Yan-gon has appealed for peace and freedom in Myanmar, where tens of thousands of people, including Christians, continue to bear the brunt of an ongoing civil war between the military and ethnic rebel groups.
“As a nation and as a people, let us roll down the stones of hatred, human suffering and let the message of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has risen ring in our hearts, in our streets and in every household in this nation,” said Cardinal Bo in an Easter message on April 9.
Just like “the stone was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb, so too can the stones that weigh us down be lifted, allowing us to experience the joy and freedom of new life in Christ.”
The 74-year-old cardinal further said that “let a new Paschal message be heard in this country and let my country rise again into freedom and peace.”
Cardinal Bo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar (CBCM), said, “We are people of life, we are people of resurrection.”
Churches, hospitals and schools in Christian strongholds in Kayah, Chin, Karen and Ka-chin states remain prime targets for the junta as thousands of internally displaced persons have taken refuge there, while thou-sands more have fled to neighbouring India and Thailand.
Calls for Pakistani MP to resign after anti-Bible remark
Members of the Christian Awakening Movement Pakistan demanding the resignation of Member of Parliament Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali for insulting the Bible during a speech at the national assembly, at the Islamabad Press Club on April 1st.
Christian groups in Pakistan are demanding the resignation of a Muslim parliamentarian after he allegedly insulted the Bible during a speech at the national assembly last week.
Politician Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali of the Jamaat-e-Islami party was speaking against the policy of giving additional marks to medical students who can memorize Quran or Bible. He was speaking at the National Assembly, the lower house of the bicameral Pakistan parliament.
“The gospel, Torah and the psalms are cancelled (scriptures). We believe in all of them and don’t reject them but Quran is permanent and will remain till the judgment day,” he said on March 28.
Hundreds of Christians condemned Chitrali on social media for insulting the Bible with some demanding a public apology while some others wanted his resignation from parliament.
Some 20 members of the Christian Awakening Movement Pakistan, shouted slogans outside the Islamabad Press Club on April 1st, demanding Chitrali’s resignation.
Many flee homes after 8 Christians killed in Bangladesh
Some 200 people were forced to flee their homes in Bangladesh after eight tribal Christians were killed on Maundy Thursday in a gun battle between two insurgent groups in a remote village in the restive Chittagong Hill Tracts.
They fled their homes fearing further violence in Khamtangpara, a village in Bandarban district where the attack took place on April 6, said Naiton Bawm, a leader of the ethnic Bawm people.
“Around 200 people fled the area. They now live in government-run schools. The government provides them with food. They can return home only when the situation becomes normal. We Bawm people live in fear,” Naiton told.
Police recovered eight bodies from the village on April 7, Abdul Mannan, the Ro-wangchhari sub-district police chief told.
All the dead were Christians – four Baptists and four Presbyterians, said Pastor Georgy Loncheu of the local Presbyterian Church.
“Our Good Friday and Easter were very painful. We Bawm people are worried. On Easter Sunday, we prayed for the souls of those who were killed. We prayed to God so we have the patience to overcome this shock,” Loncheu told.
Mannan said local people alerted police to the gunfight between insurgent tribal groups – the Kuki-Chin National Front and the United People’s Democratic Front. Two guns were also found near the bodies, Mannan said.
Loncheu said only one of the eight victims might have been a member of the Kuki-Chin National Front, but did not give details.
“Terrorists killed them and claimed they were insurgents,” he said.
The wife of one of the victims, Sankhum Bawm, who now lives with her daughters in a government school, told they were “afraid to return home” fearing further violence.
“Our daughters’ education will stop now because my husband was the only earning member in our family,” she said.
Vote for de Lubac beatification raises Jesuit influence in modern-day Church
In the first week of April the French bishops voted in favour of opening a beatification cause for the late Cardinal Henri de Lubac, a celebrated theologian whose writings influenced not only the Second Vatican Council, but every pope since.
De Lubac was one of several Jesuits who were key protagonists in the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, including Cardinal Jean Danielou, whose writings were a prominent point of reference to then-Father Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.
In a March 31 communique following the conclusion of their March 28-31 plenary assembly, the French bishops announced the election of new leaders for a slew of councils and commissions and said they had voted in favour of opening a cause for de Lubac’s beatification.
De Lubac was born in Cambrai in February 1896, and is widely hailed as one of the greatest theologians and intellectuals of the 20th century. A staunch opponent to Nazism and anti-Semitism, de Lubac co-founded the collection Sources chrétiennes, or “Christian sources,” a collection of bilingual patristic texts, with a priest named Jean Danielou in 1941.
Danielou, who was also a Jesuit and was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1969, was a prominent voice in the Second Vatican Council and a hero to then-Father Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.
I have forgiven them’-Women kidnapped by Boko Haram met with Pope Francis
Janada Marcus, 22, spent more than a year in Boko Haram captivity.
Mariya Joseph, now a teen-ager, was kidnapped by Boko Haram when she was 8 years old. She escaped last August, after more than eight years in captivity.
Marcus told The Pillar that meeting the pope – in a trip organized by Aid to the Church in Need – was among the most important experiences of her life.
“I felt so excited when I saw the pope. Something moved inside of me. I felt peace; it was the best day of my life. When he touched me, I felt so special, excited and loved” she said.
Marcus told The Pillar that she has endured several encounters with Boko Haram.
When she was young, her family home was set on fire, killing relatives trapped inside.
In 2020, her father was killed by terrorists in front of her, and Marcus was taken captive for six days.
But in 2014, when she was a teenager, Marcus and her mother were kidnapped from a hospital, where she had just undergone surgery to treat appendicitis.
Zollner’s resignation and the credibility of papal reform
Zollner, 56, has been one of the best-known faces of Vatican-led reform efforts on child protection for years – he is widely regarded among Church leaders as an honest broker, a candid voice with a singular commitment to initiating and implementing reform efforts. The priest’s resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) points to the problems plaguing the Vatican’s efforts to respond decisively to the clerical sexual abuse problems, which came to the fore after the scandals of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2018. It also indicates the crumbling credibility of Pope Francis’s reform efforts.
Milan archbishop overhauls seminary formation as numbers drop
A seven-page document out-lining the changes noted that in the five years from 2017 to 2022, the annual number of new entrants to priestly formation in the archdiocese fell from 24 to 6.
Delpini, who signed the document March 25, announced the “reconfiguration” of seminary training at a Chrism Mass in Milan Cathedral April 6.
“I would like to inform this particular assembly that I have approved, on a trial basis for a three-year period, a reconfiguration of the seminary path, according to what has been pre-pared by the seminary formators and discussed with the Milanese episcopal council,” he told arch-diocesan clergy, referring to the new document.
Delpini, who succeeded Cardinal Angelo Scola at the arch-diocese’s helm in 2017, said that seminarians will spend their third year living in small groups in parishes, while attending daily classes at the seminary. They will be connected with families, which will offer them support.
According to the new document, there were a total of 150 seminarians in the year 2013-14, 139 in 2017-18, and 78 in 2022-23. There were 24 new admissions in 2017, 19 in 2018, 18 in 2019, 16 in 2020, 11 in 2021, and 6 in 2022.
Trads Target Francis With Latin Mass Billboard Blitz
On March 29, dozens of posters urging the pontiff to cease his hostilities against the TLM were plastered on billboards in Roman neighbourhoods surrounding Vatican City.
The posters featuring images and quotes from Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius V will be displayed in Rome for 15 days in an act of resistance to Francis’ Traditionis Custodes – his July 2021 motu proprio that aims to suppress the TLM.
“Those who go to the ‘Latin Mass’ are not second class believers, nor are they deviants to be re-educated or a burden to be gotten rid of,” traditionalist groups promoting the poster campaign warned in a press statement.
“The growing hostility to-wards the traditional liturgy finds no justification on either a theological or pastoral level. The communities that celebrate the liturgy according to the 1962 Roman Missal are not rebels against the Church,” the statement noted.
“On the contrary, blessed by steady growth in lay faithful and priestly vocations, they constitute an example of steadfast perseverance in Catholic faith and unity, in a world increasingly insensitive to the Gospel, and an ecclesial context increasingly yielding to disintegrating impulses,” the organizers observed.