Cardinals visit Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh

July 31, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Chittagong, Bangladesh, Aug 1, 2019 / 12:01 am (CNA).- Two cardinals from the Philippines and Burma visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh this week, meeting with refugee families as well as relief agency personnel and government officials.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila and Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon traveled to refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh on July 29, according to ucanews.com.

Cardinal Tagle is the president of Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of Catholic relief and development agencies, which has helped more than half a million Rohingya refugees by providing shelter, water, sanitation, hygiene, and living supplies.

Cardinal Bo is the president of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC).

The cardinals talked to refugee families in the camps and met with Caritas volunteers and staff, who are helping provide necessities to the refugees.

They also met with Muhammad Abul Kalam, the chief of Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, which oversees the 30 refugee camps housing nearly 1 million refugees in the country.

Abul Kalam told ucanews.com that he thanked the cardinals for the Church’s efforts to help the refugees, and explained to them the serious obstacles facing those in the camps.

“I believe the cardinals now have a good idea of the various challenges the refugees are going through, especially the risks during monsoon season as well as health and environmental problems,” he said.

The cardinals were joined during their visit by Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario of Dhaka, Bangladesh; Holy Cross Archbishop Moses Costa of Chittagong; and Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi, ucanews.com reported.

In 2017 the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, faced a sharp increase in state-sponsored violence in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

The Burmese government refused to use the term Rohingya, and considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and numerous other rights since a controversial law was enacted in 1982.

The violence reached levels that led the United Nations to declare the crisis “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

More than 1 million Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh, and are living in refugee camps, many of which are located in a swampy sort of “buffer zone” along the border between the two countries.

Bangladesh and Burma agreed to a repatriation program late last year, but few Rohingya have returned to their homeland.

This trip was Cardinal Tagle’s second visit to a Rohingya refugee camp. He made a similar visit last December, describing the camp as “a cry to the whole world for a better politics based on compassion and solidarity.”

“When will we learn our lessons and be able to stop a crisis of this magnitude happening again? How as an international community and a human family can we get back to the basics of dignity, care and compassion?” he said at the time.

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Investigation of ‘suspicious fire’ at Australian cathedral underway

September 18, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2020 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- A fire that burned some of the sacristy and part of the roof of St. Carthage’s Cathedral in Lismore, Australia is being investigated as a possible crime, authorities have said.

According to The Catholic Weekly, an Australian publication, the local fire department was alerted of a fire at the cathedral around 6:30 am on Sept. 18.

The fire, which seems to have started in the sacristy, had spread to the roof, from which “large volumes of smoke” were issuing before the fire was extinguished. A diocesan spokesperson told The Catholic Weekly that no one was inside the cathedral during the fire, and that the main part of the church, including the tabernacle, were unharmed by the blaze.

Lismore is a city in the far northeastern corner of New South Wales.

Authorities are investigating the “suspicious fire” as a crime scene.

“We’re obviously in the early stages of the investigation and we don’t know exactly how it was started, but the base of the outside door of the sacristy was on fire and even though the sacristy was well-secured the fire got into the building that way,” Acting Inspector Anthony Smith at Lismore Police Station told The Catholic Weekly. 

“There is a little bit of damage, but they have done really well to keep it out of the main part of the cathedral and all the relics have been kept safe,” Smith said. Construction of the cathedral, which is dedicated to St. Carthage of Lismore in Ireland, began in 1904 and was completed in 1919. Some renovations were done to the church in the 1970s and 2003. In 2007, the cathedral suffered major damage to the roof and stained glass windows, leading to subsequent repairs and renovations.
Bishop Greg Homeming, OCD, of Lismore said in a video to local Catholics that he was grateful for the work of the firefighters and he was glad no one was injured. “All we have is a damaged building. A damaged building is only a building, the Church remains undamaged because the Church is the people of God,” he said.

“The Church is you, and as long as you continue in your faith and in your love and care for others, the Church will go on strongly, perhaps even with greater strength. So I’m not disturbed by what has happened, it’s a building and I thank God that no one was injured.” Homeming added that he had “no idea” how the fire started and that he was awaiting the results of the investigation.
The fire comes five months after St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne was vandalized following Cardinal George Pell’s acquittal by Australia’s High Court of a sexual abuse conviction, and his release from prison.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP, of Sydney told The Catholic Weekly that he called Bishop Homeming to offer his sympathies. Fisher said he has twice experienced fires at the cathedrals at which he served – once in Parramatta and once in Sydney. The cathedrals were “lost to fire and people were devastated for decades thereafter,” Fisher said. “Happily the fire at the beautiful Lismore cathedral was extinguished before it got out of control,” Fisher added.

“But whatever the damage, we will rebuild, as the Church must be rebuilt in every generation by every generation for every generation.”


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