The German Catholic Bishops’ Conference (DBK) elected a woman for the first time as the conference’s top administrator on, in a move aimed at modernizing the body. Theologian Beate Gilles was appointed as general secretary of the conference, which is based in Bonn. After her election to the post, the 50-year-old noted her skills as a runner are also well suited to her new role.
“I am an endurance athlete,” Gilles said. “That means I know that a marathon is not decided in its 40 kilometers, but rather by the 1,000 kilometers in training — that’s my distance.” Gilles is taking on the role as Germany’s bishops face deep disquiet among 22 million German Catholics as well as demands for more leadership roles for women. During virtual bishop’s conference gathering, DBK chair Georg Bätzing described Gilles’ election as a “strong signal that the bishops are fulfilling their pledge to advance women into leadership positions.”
Gilles, who takes over as general secretary on July 1, will not only be the first woman to hold the top bishops’ conference post, but also the first layperson.
The high-ranking role of general secretary is responsible for implementing decisions made by the bishops.
She currently heads a department for youth, family, and childcare in Bätzing’s Limburg diocese.
From Stuttgart, where for a decade Gilles previously headed a Catholic educational entity, colleagues wished her endurance.
Mars missions can inspire next generation scientists, papal astronomer says
As Perseverance, the latest probe on Mars, gears up to send to Earth high-definition images, video and audio of its surroundings, one papal astronomer said he hoped the fresh new discoveries will inspire future explorers.
With advanced degrees in physics, philosophy and theology, Jesuit Brother Robert Macke said, “What really inspired me to come into this field was growing up with the results that were coming out of the spacecraft missions, like Voyager, and all the photographs that nobody had ever seen before” of Saturn and its moons and other objects in the solar system.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1974, Macke told Catholic News Service he only “dabbled a little” in enjoying science fiction, influenced by his father’s interest in the genre, and he credits it with inspiring him to think of new ideas.
But it was the reality of scientific discoveries that made him say, “Wow, these are real places that you can really explore and photograph and study,” he said Feb. 19 in a call from the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo near Rome.
“Seeing the results and the images that come out of missions like Perseverance, I hope these will be an inspiration to the next generation of young scientists,” he said.
The popular imagination has come a long way since early speculations about little green men and artificial canals of some ancient civilization once populating the red planet.
Spanish lawyers act to prevent removal of crosses by local officials
A group of Spanish lawyers has launched petitions and lawsuits to prevent the removal of crosses by local officials, after claims that Christian symbols are linked with the country’s former dictatorship.
“Many towns are being pressured to get rid of public crosses, which local people have spent weeks and months defending,” said Maria Riesco, spokeswoman for the Association of Christian Lawyers. “We are checking the documentation and investigating each case, as well as maintaining a dialogue with regional governments in hopes of having them restored.”
Riesco, a Catholic, spoke as the Valladolid-based association announced legal proceedings against the mayor of Aguilar de la Frontera, near Cordoba, for ordering the demolition of a cross outside the town’s Carmelite convent.
In a Feb. 12 interview with Catholic News Service, she said the 20-foot concrete cross had been taken down illegally amid Catholic protests, in violation of religious freedom.
The press office of the Spanish bishops’ conference told February 12 the Association of Christian Lawyers was acting independently of the church. It said the conference would not comment on the removal of public crosses.
Meanwhile, Polonia Castellanos, lawyers association president, said action was also under-way to protect crosses in Spain’s western Extramadura region, after at least 34 municipalities were ordered to remove them from streets and parks.
Bill Gates Hypes ‘Next Pandemic’ Hysteria
Microsoft multi-billionaire Bill Gates is calling for a “global alert system” backed by “mega-diagnostic platforms” that could test over “20% of the global population every week” in preparation for the next pandemic.
“The world wasn’t ready for the COVID-19 pandemic. I think next time will be different,” declares the pro-abortion philanthropist, warning that “the threat of the next pandemic will always be hanging over our heads — unless the world takes steps to prevent it.”
“The world needs to regularly run germ games — simulations that let us practice, analyze and improve how we respond to dis-ease outbreaks, just as war games let the military prepare for real-life warfare,” exhorts Gates, boasting his foundation has donated $1.75 billion in the fight against COVID-19.
Researchers say the vaccine zealot has become “the subject of a diverse and rapidly expanding universe of conspiracy theories,” including 44% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats in the United States who believe Gates “is linked to a plot to use vaccinations as a pretext to implant microchips into people.”
“Until vaccines reach every-one, new clusters of disease will keep popping up,” Gates asserts. “Those clusters will grow and spread. Schools and offices will shut down again. The cycle of inequality will continue.” Gates did not confirm if a blanket bombing of the globe with vaccines would include encoding of medical information in a patient’s skin using near-infrared quantum dots (NIR QDs).
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) project fund-ed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developed the technique — popularly misunderstood as “a cover for implanting some form of microchip, radio frequency identification (RFID) chip or other digital tracking device” — interpreted by some as the satanic “Mark of the Beast,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted.
The MIT report, published in December 2019 in Science Translational Medicine, confirm-ed that “intradermal QDs can be used to reliably encode information and can be delivered with a vaccine, which may be particularly valuable in the developing world and open up new avenues for decentralized data storage and biosensing.”
Vatican projects nearly 50M-euro deficit due to COVID losses
The Vatican said it expects a deficit of nearly 50 million euros ($60.7 million) this year because of pandemic-related losses, a figure that grows to 80 million euros ($97 million) when donations from the faithful are excluded.
The Vatican released a summary of its 2021 budget that was approved by Pope Francis and the Holy See’s Council for the Economy, a commission of outside experts who oversee the Vatican’s finances. The publication was believed to be the first time the Vatican has released its projected consolidated budget, part of Francis’s drive to make the Vatican’s finances more transparent and accountable. The Vatican has run a deficit for the past several years, narrowing it to 11 million euros in 2019 from a hole of 75 million euros in 2018. The Vatican said Friday it anticipated the deficit would grow to 49.7 million euros in 2021 but that it expected to make up the shortfall with reserves.
Francis particularly wanted to release information about the Peter’s Pence collections from the faithful, which are billed as a concrete way to help the pope in his ministry and works of charity but are also used to run the Holy See bureaucracy.
The funds have come under scrutiny amid a financial scandal about how those donations were invested by the Vatican’s secretariat of state.
28, Mostly Christians, booked under MP’s anti-conversion ordinance
Chhatar Singh Katre, a teacher in a small village school run by the government in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district organized a get-together and a prayer meet on January 27. The occasion, his daughter said, was to celebrate her college admission.
Before the program started, the police reached the spot, and detained Katre, and his friends Mahendra Nagdeva J Nathan; all three were taken to the police station for interrogation, and subsequently arrested for luring and coercing people for conversion.
All three remain in jail, their bail pleas having been rejected by the Balaghat sessions court.
Katre’s daughter Kalyani Katre said, “My father organized the meet for me and now he is in jail for no reason. The case was registered against him and two others on the complaint of a person who was booked 10 years ago for assaulting and harassing my father and others for participating in a religious program.”
Raghunath Khatarkar who is investigating the case at Lalbarra police station of Balaghat district, said the complainant Hemant Thakre recorded his statement before the court and accused Katre and two others of offering him 10,000 rupee for conversion. “In the name of God, they also tried to scare people that something bad would happen to them.”
In a month since the enactment of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance to regulate interfaith marriages and conversion, 28 people have been booked and at least half of them are Christians, according to police records.
The ordinance, which replaces the MP Freedom of Religion Act 1968, came into force on January 9. State home department data shows that eight cases have been registered in eight different districts in a month, and 28 people named. While four cases are against nine Muslims for allegedly forcing women to change their religion for marriage, another four were against 19 Christians for luring and coercing people to change their faith through prayer meetings, police reports showed.
Bishops warn of sectarian politics ahead of Indian state’s polls
Ahead of state elections in Kerala state, Catholic bishops have cautioned people against misleading political campaigns that polarize people on religious lines in this Indian southern state. The bishops’ warning came after a political leader justified the takeover of the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Turkey and turning it into a mosque.
“It is true. The efforts are on to create a Christian-Muslim divide in the state ahead of the elections with fake, misleading and maligning campaigns,” said Bishop Joseph Pamplany, chairman of the media commission of Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC).
The KCBC urged political leaders to abstain from any act that polarizes voters on communal lines in a statement issued on Feb. 5.
State elections are due in Kerala in April-May to elect 140 legislators for the state’s 33 million people as the current government’s five-year term ends on June 1.
The state is set to see a fierce battle for power as the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the federal government, tries to find a foothold in Kerala.
Arunachal village marks 25 years of Catholic faith
Residents of a remote village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district have mark-ed the silver jubilee of becoming Christians with the blessing of a new church.
Hetlong village under the diocese of Miao has 30 families belonging to the Tangsa tribe. The community conducted worship in a bamboo structure with tin roof for quarter of a century. They marked the 25th year of receiving the Catholic faith with a new concrete church on February 10 in the presence of guests and dignitaries from around the district.
Blessing the church, Bishop George Pallipparambil of Miao congratulated the community for staying strong in their faith for the last 25 years. He invited them to have a stronger faith along with the new church. He also encouraged them to keep alive the flame of faith to withstand possible threats to it in future.
“In the Bible we see several letters of St Paul addressed to the Corinthians and Philippians. These communities do not exist today because they did not live according to the teachings of the faith they received. This could happen to us too if we are not fervent in the faith we celebrate today,” the Sales-ian prelate cautioned.
Christian women express horror at Delhi border fortification
A national body of Catholic and Protestant women leaders has urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to heed the protesting farmers’ demand and repeal the three recently enacted farm laws.
“Our farmers have never failed our nation through the last 71 years. Please do not fail them now,” pleads a letter from the Indian Christian Women Movement addressed to the prime minister as the farmers’ pro-tests on the Delhi borders entered 70th day on Feb. 3.
At the same time, the women says they watch with horror how the protest sites outside Delhi’s borders are being fortified with barbed wires, cement barriers and spikes on the roads. They also point out that wooden batons in the hands of the police have been replaced with steel batons.
Church must support resistance movements: Kerala priest
There is a need for Christians to close ranks with the protesting farmers who are fighting for justice, says Father Y.T. Vinayaraj, theologian, writer and chief editor of the Malankara Sabha Tharaka, the organ of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church head- quartered in Thiruvalla.
“The Christian faith is essentially anti-imperialist and the Church is duty-bound to join forces with people’s resistance movements,” says Dr Vinayaraj, who took to Face-book the other day to make a fervent appeal for support to the farmers.
According to him, the Centre is colluding with neo-liberal capitalist forces to divest the farmers and other ordinary people of their rightful share of resources. “This government relies on religious nationalism to gain political legitimacy and deals with an iron hand democratic protests seeking justice. We have had so many instances of this: the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University, the anti-CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] protests, the justice for Rohit Vemula movement and now the farmers’ agitation. It is time subaltern and democratic forces came together to offer resista-nce,” Dr Vinayaraj, who also teaches at the Mar Thoma seminary told.
He feels let down by the leaders of a section of the Catholic Church who he thinks “are only trying to push their vested interests by joining hands with the undemocratic forces.”
“What are they trying to strike a deal for? Mere representation in minority forums or for some personal gains? When asked if they discussed the farmers’ protest during their meeting with the Prime Minister, one bishop said they had not discussed any political issue. But isn’t solidarity with the suffering and the deprived classes, the Dalits, at the heart of Christianity? It is a fake religiosity without that,” argues Dr Vinayaraj, who wants the Church to be a reformist force.
Images of the exodus of migrants, the protesting farmers, imprisonment of human rights activists, persecution of women, Dalits and sexual minorities and a government that was increasingly becoming authoritarian were all invoked by the editorial of the Mar Thoma Church organ in its December 2020 issue, ask-ing what these signs portended for the Church.