Center for women with crisis pregancies to open in Argentina

July 19, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jul 19, 2018 / 03:29 pm (ACI Prensa).- Priests who work in the slums of Buenos Aires announced Tuesday a “Home of the Motherly Embrace” to care for women in crisis pregnancies.

The initiative, presented at Christ the Worker parish July 17, seeks to respond  to the needs of women who live in the slums and also is a sign of the commitment of the Church to defending the lives of the unborn and their mothers.

Besides lamenting the progress of the abortion bill which passed in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and is now being debated in the Senate, the priests explained that the Home of the Motherly Embrace will receive teens and young adult women with at-risk pregnancies who are abandoned and who may be tempted to abort, as well as women who have procured abortions.

They will be provided nutrition, medical care and checkups, psychological support, and legal and social counseling during the pregnancy and their babies’ first years, until they enter the educational system.

The center will seek to facilitate access to maternity policies and programs, and, if necessary, the process of adoption.

“In a family atmosphere that welcomes, embraces and accompanies (we) will especially seek to encourage and strengthen (the women). The center will also receive and accompany teenage or young adult dads in their growing responsibilities,” the priests said in a statement.

“We choose to take on the  responsibility for these dramatic situations as a community and we’re not uncritically awaiting the establishment of an actual throwaway culture of human beings.”

The priests will carry out their work “there (in the slums) where life goes forward despite the difficulties; and every pregnancy, every girl and every boy, is awaited and welcomed as a gift, with the hope that a future different and better than the existing one awaits him or her.”

The proposal was signed by four bishops, more than 20 priests, and two nuns.

 

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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In Venezuela, garbage dumps have become places to eat

May 11, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Caracas, Venezuela, May 11, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Garbage dumps have become “a regular place for people to eat” in Venezuela, says a local priest lamenting the nation’s increasingly dire economic and political crisis.

“There’s a lot of suffering,” Fr. Victor Salomon, a priest who works in the Archdiocese of Caracas, told CNA.

“This has been something commonly seen. It is really something very painful because the people are really in great need.”

Riots have spiked in Venezuela in recent years, resulting from unemployment, food and medicine shortages, and President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian policies.

Price controls in 2003 caused inflation rates to sky rocket on basic necessities, baring the access of food and medicines to the people. Poor socialist policies have effected an estimated 160 products, and while they remain affordable on the shelf, they are soon swept off and sold on the black market at a triple digit inflation rate.

Violent riots have fluctuated since the death of the previous president Hugo Chavez in 2013, but gained even more traction after opposition leaders were arrested last year and Maduro’s attempt for more power by dissolving the legislature in March of this year.

Speaking to CNA, Fr. Salomon said that repression has intensified since President Maduro announced the convocation of a Constitutional Assembly.

In that regard, he said that “some very painful scenes have come out, for example armored vehicles running over some of the protesters, or even people from the National Guard with a repression never seen before, firing at point blank range at those who are protesting. It’s really very painful.”

The priest said that Venezuelans do not want more violence, shortages or “more violations of the constitution and human rights.”

Pope Francis recently sent a message to the country’s bishops, urging them to continue promoting a culture of encounter.

“Dear brothers, I wish to encourage you to not allow the beloved children of Venezuela to allow themselves to be overcome by distrust or despair since these are evils that sink into the hearts of people when they do not see future prospects,” the Pope said May 5.

“I am persuaded that Venezuela’s serious problems can be solved if there is the desire to establish bridges, to dialogue seriously and to comply with the agreements that were reached.”

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