A Catholic bishop in Burkina Faso has condemned an Islamist attack on a north-eastern village which left at least 160 people dead and urged residents to “keep faith and stay united.”
“They executed them, purely and simply, and then burned the market, houses and shops, and the vehicles, lorries and transport parked outside,” Bishop Laurent Dabire of Dori said, decrying the June 5 attack on Solhan, a village in his diocese.
Although no group claimed responsibility, authorities blamed Islamists for the attack, which also left 40 people injured. It is believed to be the worst violent incident since the start of an insurgency in 2015.
In a Vatican Radio interview June 7, Bishop Dabire, president of the bishops’ conference of Burkina Faso and Niger, said he believed the attack was retaliation for local involvement in a government-backed civil defence militia, set up in 2020 in the gold-mining area.
The early-morning attack fuelled a “sense of powerlessness,” Bishop Dabire said.
“People would like to do something, but what can they do, when faced with an invisible enemy, unknown and well armed?” the bishop asked. “We must not lose confidence in life, keeping faith firmly in hope, and staying united in face of the violence falling on us, in order to explore all solutions, including dialogue.”

The protesters killed in Tiananmen Square in mainland China on June 4, 1989, used to be remembered in Hong Kong with an annual candlelight vigil in the city’s expansive Victoria Park, attended by crowds as big as 130,000, all holding flickering candles.
Now the lawful gatherings seem to be limited to seven Catholic churches. The reason for the dramatic downsizing? Politics and the pandemic. Police said they had to cancel the event this year and last year because of social distancing rules put in place to control the spread of COVID-19. This year’s event is the first one banned since the Chinese government in Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong last June. The controversial legislation prohibits acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

Pope Francis has appointed South Korean Bishop Lazarus You Heungsik of Daejeon as the new prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Clergy.
The Vatican made the announcement June 11, adding that the outgoing prefect, Italian Cardinal Beniamino Stella, 79, would remain at the congregation until the new prefect could assume his role.
The new prefect has also been made an archbishop, the Vatican added.
Born Nov. 17, 1951, in Nonsan, Archbishop You studied in Seoul and in Rome, where he received his doctorate in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Lateran University.

Seventy-five-year-old Sister Giuseppina Berti, who has worked for 26 years in the leprosarium of Tabriz and now lives in Isfahan in the house of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, will have to leave Iran in the coming days. In fact, her visa has not been renewed and she has received a travel order. Her departure will make it difficult for her fellow nun, Sister Fabiola Weiss, a 77-year  years old Austrian, who has dedicated 38 years to the poor and the sick in the leprosy hospital, and whose residence permit has been renewed for another year. The two religious nuns, who have dedicated their lives to the country’s sick without distinction of religious or ethnic affiliation, are forced to abandon the Congregation’s house, built in 1937.

The head of Germany’s lay Catholics has said he is “shattered” by the resignation of Cardinal Reinhard Marx while others have written to Pope Francis, asking him not to accept.
The head of the Central Committee of German lay Catholics (ZdK), Thomas Sternberg, with whom Marx initiated the German synodal path for church reform in December 2019, told the Rheinische Post that he was “shattered” by Marx’s resignation. “Should the Pope accept his resignation, that will leave a huge hole in the German Church”, he said.

Abuse against a minor is a kind of “psychological murder” that can destroy the victim’s childhood, Pope Francis told an Italian association active in the fight against child abuse and online child pornography.
“Therefore, protecting children against sexual exploitation is a duty of every nation, (which is) called to identify both traffickers and abusers,” he said during an audience May 15 at the Vatican with members of the association, Meter.
The association was founded in 1989 by Father Fortunato Di Noto, an Italian priest who has been leading the fight in Italy to protect children from online predators around the world. It works with law enforcement, government agencies and schools in fighting the crime of child sex abuse and other forms of online abuse, in prevention and offering safety and help for victims.
The pope praised its work, especially in trying to protect children from danger online.
“It is a scourge that, on the one hand, must be confronted with renewed determination by public institutions, authorities and others and, on the other hand, it requires raising even more awareness in families and different educational agencies,” he said.
“Even today, we see how often in families the first reaction is to cover everything up,” he said, adding it has always been the first reaction by other institutions, too, including the church.
“We have to fight against this old habit of covering it up,” he said. “Abuse against minors is a kind of ‘psychological murder’ and in many cases an obliteration of childhood,” he said, calling on everyone to do their part to safeguard children.

A Swiss Catholic bishop has announced that he is appointing lay people in place of episcopal vicars in his diocese.
Bishop Charles Morerod, who has led the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg since 2011, revealed the decision in a May 25 interview with the Swiss Catholic Church’s website kath.ch. The Dominican prelate said that he had chosen two lay people and a deacon as his “lay representatives,” replacing three episcopal vicars.
“By virtue of baptism, lay people have an active role in the life of the Church and should not only take care of administrative matters, but also be active in pastoral care,” he said.
“This cooperation is a positive thing. It already exists, but we can further develop it positively.”
CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that the three vicariates concerned will now be known as “diocesan regions.”
According to the bishop, his representatives will take care of “local issues” and discuss them with him at the diocesan level.
The Code of Canon Law, the body of ecclesiastical laws for the Latin Church, says that “In each diocese the diocesan bishop is to appoint a vicar general to assist him in the governance of the whole diocese.”

The COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on participation in religious services just as it did on workplaces, but a new survey indicates strong emotional resilience from those who consider their faith vital to their existence.
That was part of the findings of a survey conducted late last year of 1,600 adults, mostly from Washington, Maryland and Virginia. Nearly 40% of the respondents identified as Catholic.
Survey results were discussed during a May 21 webinar hosted by Catholic University’s sociology department and the Institute of Human Ecology.
Respondents who reported a decline in religiosity since the pandemic had more than twice the odds of feeling isolated and lonely than respondents who did not report such a decline.
“Religiosity seems to be a buffer against negative stresses,” said Brandon Vaidyanathan, chair of the sociology department and an associate professor of sociology.
Fewer than 20% of the sample said their mental health had worsened, he added.
The one area where people report a deterioration in their lives was in feelings of isolation, but only “a very small number,” Vaidyanathan said, reported their “sense of purpose in life having been weakened.”
Vaidyanathan, who also is a fellow of the Institute of Human Ecology, and his colleagues conducted the Mental Health in Congregations Study. It was funded with grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the H.E. Butt Foundation.

Around 200 Muslims attack-ed a Christian village in the Okara District of Pakistan.
The incident was incited May 14 when a Muslim motorcyclist, Muhammad Khalil, complained that youths cleaning a church road threw dust and water at him. At that moment, a verbal dispute took place. A few hours later, Khalil brought some friends, and they began to hit the youths with firearms and hockey sticks.
The next day, motorcyclist Mohammedan Khalil ran a raid with 200 Muslims against the Christian village. They beat Christian men and women with iron bars, overran houses, destroyed furniture, stole property and assaulted young girls.
Police were called to investigate crimes against 66 people, but 20 of the participants could not be identified.
Police still have not arrested any attackers. Based in Lahore, Kamran Chaudhary, a journalist for UCA News, told Church Militant police still have not arrested any attackers.
Day labourer Mangta Masih lost his thumb when a mob attacked his house. The 45-year-old follower of Christ.
We hid our women inside while they tried to break in. One of them grabbed me from behind, and another struck with a sickle blade. I tried to prevent the blow with my right hand. I fell down, and they kept beating us with batons. They were armed with glass bottles, stones, axes, batons and bricks. Others used stairs to climb to our roofs and started breaking our furniture. We pleaded to spare the women, but the attack continued for half an hour.

In a further blow to Pope Francis’ secret Sino-Vatican concordat, China is enforcing new draconian laws compelling clergy to “practice the core values of communism” and pro-mote the “sinicization of religion” — under threat of criminal sanctions.
The Measures for the Administration of Religious Clergy, issued by the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) State Bureau of Religious Affairs (SBRA), came into force on May 1 — creating an “Orwellian system of surveillance” and tightening the noose on “the already strict control on all clergy.”
The 52 articles under the measures cover the five approved religions of Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and Taoism. However, the Catholic Church has been singled out for special sanctions on the issue of episcopal appointments.
Article 16 stipulates that “Catholic bishops shall be approved and ordained by the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China” (BCCCC) with the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), and BCCCC shall file a record of the ordination within 20 days to the SBRA.
Former Taiwanese bishop Andrew Tsien explains the objectives of the CPCA are “to substitute it for the true Roman Catholic Church” and, in the long term “to eliminate religion in order to achieve a pure materialistic and autocra-tic society.” The BCCC is the CCP-aligned episcopal organization.
The measure on Catholic bishops also requires “a copy of the bishop’s household registration booklet and a copy of the resident ID card” and “a statement on the democratic election of the bishop issued by the Catholic organization of the province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the central government.”