Four dead after Catholic Lay Committee protests in Congo

February 26, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Feb 26, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Four Congolese protesters were shot dead Feb. 25, during demonstrations organized by Catholics protesting President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down from power.

The casualties occurred just two days after a worldwide day of prayer and fasting for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, called for by Pope Francis.

An additional 47 people were wounded and more than 100 arrested in the Sunday protests, according to the United Nations mission in Congo.

Many of the demonstrations occurred in and around Catholic churches in the DRC. Some priests chose to hold protests within the parameters of their parish grounds to minimize violence.

“Security forces blocked the roads around the churches. They came in and threw tear gas canisters into churches. They used live ammunition,” Father Jean Claude Tabu, Curate of the St. Benoît Parish in the north of Kinshasa, told La Croix. This is the third round of demonstrations organized by the Catholic Lay Committee. Previous protests on Dec. 31 and Jan. 21 left over a dozen dead.

“I note with sorrow and deep concern the loss of life and injuries that occurred at the hands of those who are supposed to protect life and the rule of law.  I add my voice to that of the Holy Father in his call for calm and peace in the country,” wrote Archbishop Timothy Broglio, chair of U.S. Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, in a Feb. 14 letter to the bishops of Congo.

The Catholic church in the Democratic Republic of Congo has strongly advocated for free and fair elections in the country that has faced decades of political instability.

The Congolese Catholic Bishops’ Conference have called upon President Kabila to state that he will not run for an illegal third term as president. Kabila was supposed to leave office in December 2016, but elections have been continually postponed.

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Pope Francis blesses Marian statue desecrated by Islamic State

March 8, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Erbil, Iraq, Mar 8, 2021 / 01:37 pm (CNA).- A statue of the Virgin Mary that had been desecrated by the Islamic State was present at Pope Francis’ Mass in Erbil on Sunday.

The statue was decapitated, and its hands cut off, in Karemlesh, a largely Christian town 18 miles east of Mosul, during the Islamic State’s occupation of the villages in the Nineveh Plains from 2014 to 2017. It belonged to St. Adday church.

The statue has been partially restored; its head has been replaced, though its hands have not.

Speaking March 7 to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Fr. Thabet Habeb, the pastor of St. Adday, recalled that when he first saw the image of the beheaded Virgin he experienced “a very sad feeling, because I saw my church like this, along with everything else. We prayed before this Virgin for many years and it was destroyed. It was something very important for the parish, for our church.”

Fr. Habeb said the statue “will return to Karemlesh and will be in our church upon our return.”

The priest hopes that a fruit of the Holy Father’s visit to Iraq will be that the government and the world would look at “this martyr Church, which must be aided so it can continue to bring the Gospel.”

The Islamic State swept through large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, giving families of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities an ultimatum – convert to Islam, die, or leave.

In 2017 the Nineveh Plain the area was liberated from the rule of the Islamic State.


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