The iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil was lit up March 18 night with flags and messages of hope to the nations affected by the growing coronavirus pandemic.
The stunning light show atop Rio de Janeiro’s Corcovado mountain featured more than 150 flags, representing every country with confirmed COVID-19 cases, as well as the phrase “pray together” projected in multiple languages.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has called for an international probe into the cause of the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking in a televised Mass on March 15, the archbishop of Colombo said powerful countries cannot be allowed to play with the lives of the innocent public. He said that experimenting with nature had resulted in the coronavirus.
“We know that in several areas of the world researchers of all types for various reasons are engaging in research to destroy human life and nature. Some of these viruses are the products of aimless experiments,” said Cardinal Ranjith.
“This kind of research is done not by people in poor countries but in laboratories in rich countries. Producing such things is a very serious crime for mankind.
“I ask the Lord to reveal who made these poisonous seeds. The United Nations or international organizations must find out who is behind these incidents and punish them. Such research should be banned.”
The cardinal’s comments came as the Sri Lankan Church cancelled Masses and other services in all parishes because of a rapid rise of coronavirus cases in the country.
It announced on March 15 that it is cancelling all church services until the end of the month. The decision came in the middle of the Lenten season that features common gatherings such as the Way of the Cross, Lenten pilgrimages, group meditation, healing services and group prayer services.
In a press briefing, Cardinal Ranjith requested all political parties to join together to fight Covid-19 while asking people not to gather extra goods unnecessarily.
The number of infections in Sri Lanka has risen to 18. Most of the patients had arrived from Italy recently.
Emanuel Marianus Tapu, 29, usually goes to church to attend Sunday Mass. However, for the last two Sundays he has been unable to do so because Mass and other church activities have been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. Luckily, though, churches have turned to the internet and are streaming daily and Sunday Masses.
Last Sunday, at his home in the Jakarta suburb of Parung Panjang, he placed a lit candle and a cross next to his laptop and followed a livestreamed Mass from Jakarta Cathedral.
“Although it was through YouTube, I still felt I was attending a normal Mass. I feel the need to maintain my spiritual life in the midst of this crisis,” the 29-year-old devout Catholic told UCA News.
In places particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic and with severe limits on people leaving their homes, conditions may exist to grant general absolution to the faithful without them personally confessing their sins first, the Vatican said.
The Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican tribunal that deals with matters of conscience, including confession, issued a notice March 20 that while individual confession and absolution is the normal means for the forgiveness of sins, “grave necessity” can lead to other solutions.
In a separate decree, the Apostolic Penitentiary also offered the spiritual assistance of special indulgences to people afflicted with COVID-19, to those in quarantine, to medical personnel caring for coronavirus patients and to all those who are praying for them. “This Apostolic Penitentiary holds that, especially in places most impacted by the pandemic contagion and until the phenomenon subsides, there are cases of grave necessity” meeting the criteria for general absolution, the notice about confession said.
Determining what constitutes grave necessity generally is up to the local bishop in consultation with his bishops’ conference. But throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Vatican sought to limit the use of general absolution and encouraged increasingly strict definitions of what constituted an emergency situation.
“Taking into account the supreme good of the salvation of souls” and the level of contagion in his diocese, the local bishop must determine “the cases of grave necessity in which it is licit to impart collective absolution: for example, at the entrance to hospital wards where faithful in danger of death are hospitalized, using — within the limits of what is possible and with appropriate precautions — means for amplifying the voice so that the absolution is heard” by the patients.
Cardinal Joseph Zen publish-ed Saturday a blog post accusing the Vatican’s secretary of state of manipulating Pope Francis, and continuing his ongoing criticism of the Holy See’s approach to the Catholic Church in China.
“My personal impression is that [Cardinal Pietro] Parolin manipulates the Pope, at least in things regarding the Church in China,” Zen, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, wrote in a post published on his personal blog.
The post “Supplement to my answer to Cardinal G.B. Re,” was dated March 10, although it was actually published March 21. It seemed to be an addendum to a March 3 open letter Zen wrote to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.
Zen’s March 21 and March 3 letters came in response to a Feb. 26 letter from Re, dean of the Church’s College of Cardinals, to the Church’s cardinals, which claimed that that the China-Vatican deal represents the minds of St. John Paul II and of Benedict XVI, and that Zen’s opposition to the deal is misguided.
Even before it was signed, Zen has been a zealous critic of the Vatican’s 2018 provisional agreement with the People’s Republic of China. He says the agreement, which has not been publicly released, concedes a deliberative role to the Chinese government in the selection of bishops, and puts at risk of persecution many of the Catholics in China.
Zen’s more recent post claimed that while he has been critical of Re over the China deal, “The Problem is not between me and Re. The problem is with Cardinal Parolin.”
“It’s difficult to understand how this man has become so powerful to dominate the whole Roman Curia. He could dismiss the Commission for Church in China without a word and nobody stood up to protest against such impoliteness.”
Vietnam’s communist government has thanked Christians, including the Catholic hierarchy, for taking preventive steps to check the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Head of religious affairs Vu Chien Thang used a March 17 statement to extend Easter greeting to all Catholics, Protestants and their leaders, Vietnam News Agency reported.
“We thank the Episcopal Council and bishops of dioceses for proactively implementing the instructions of the government and all-level administrations in disease control,” Thang wrote.
The collective efforts put for-ward by religious organizations, including the Catholic and Protestant churches, have helped Vietnam effectively control the outbreak, winning kudos from the international community, he said. Although Vietnam remains geographically and culturally close to China, the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, it has only 75 confirmed cases with zero deaths, according to its health ministry. Thang regretted his inability to visit Christian leaders personally and exchange Easter greetings because of the virus restrictions in place.
In the past week alone, more than 3,000 people have died in Italy after contracting the coronavirus. Among the dead are at least 60 priests this month, according to local media reports.
“I pray to the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of light and strength. Everyday I do the Via Crucis asking the Lord … to carry this cross with us,” Bishop Gianni Ambrosio of Piacenza-Bobbio said in an Italian interview. Avvenire, the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops conference, published the names of 51 diocesan priests who died after contracting COVID-19, and noted that religious communities in Italy had also reported nine coronavirus related deaths.
The majority of the deceased were over the age of 70 years old, and some of these priests had underlying health conditions.
The youngest priest to die from COVID-19 in Italy was Fr Paolo Camminati, who died in the hospital on March 21 at age 53. Fr Camminati was known for his dynamic youth ministry, service to the poor, work with Catholic Action, and passion for the mountains. He was the parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes in Diocese of Piacenza, where five other priests with COVID-19 have died.
Among the dead in Piacenza is Fr KidaneBerhane, a Cistercian monk originally from Eritrea, who resided in the historic Chiaravalle Abbey in Lombardy. Also deceased are 87-year-old twin brothers, Fr Mario Boselli and Fr Giovanni Boselli, who died within a day of each other.
Indonesian Catholics have called on the Vatican to re-schedule Pope Francis’ visit to Indonesia after it was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Though the Vatican never confirmed the pope would be visiting Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea this September, diplomatic sources had said the visit was planned. However, officials have now said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic the visit has been called off.
“The cancellation is understandable because now the whole world is fighting Covid-19 and it will remain a serious threat over the next few months,” Father Antonius Benny Susetyo, a member of a presidential unit promoting communal tolerance, told UCA News on March 15.
However, the former executive secretary of the bishops’ interfaith committee hoped the Vatican would reschedule the pope’s visit for next year “because his visit is very important for Indonesia.”
“His visit will have a positive impact on Indonesia, particularly in strengthening interreligious dialogue,” he said.
Hermawi Fransiskus Taslim, a Catholic lay leader, expressed a similar view.
A Filipina Benedictine nun has succumbed to coronavirus in Spain, her congregation reported on March 28.
Sr Maria Gratia Balagot, who was the superior of their community in India, was only visiting Spain to renew her visa when she was infected with Covid-19. “And while there, (she) contracted the virus,” the US-based Missionary Benedictine Sisters – Norfolk Priory said in a Facebook post. “Please pray for her and for her community in India and for the whole congregation during this difficult time,” the post reads. Sr Balagot, who is originally from Aringay, La Union, died at the age of 71. She has been a missionary in India since 2016.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, head of the Catholic Church in India, on March 20 urged his people to cooperate wholeheartedly with the people’s curfew called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to contain coronavirus epidemic. Cardinal Gracias lauded the prime minister’s public appeal to India’s more than 1.3 billion people to observe a self-imposed curfew on March 22.
“Last evening the prime minister made an appeal to all of us to stay at home on Sunday March 22 in a self-imposed curfew. It is evident that the deadly coronavirus is spreading posing an extremely danger to all,” Cardinal said in a video message circulated through YouTube channel and the Bombay archdiocese’s website.
The cardinal said he has decided to heed the premier’s call and cancel all public Masses in the archdiocese of Mumbai from March 20 to April 4, “in the larger interest of safety of our people which is truly paramount.”
On March 19 at 8 pm, the prime minister appealed Indians to observe the “Janata curfew” (people’s curfew) as a test run for social distancing over the next few days to fight the spread of coronavirus. As part of the self-curfew, Modi said everyone must stay home from 7 am to 9 pm that day and abide by it.
The premier also cautioned citizens against hoarding and panic-buying, assuring that there would be no shortage of essentials like milk, medicines and food.
