Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Law enforcement officials have conducted interviews with several senior figures at the Papal Foundation, a U.S. based charity which supports the charitable works of the Holy Father.
Officers from the FBI… […]
Erbil, Iraq, Jan 8, 2020 / 11:48 am (CNA).- After Iran attacked an air base in Erbil early Wednesday, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil said the current tensions between Iran and the U.S. threaten the fragile Christian communities in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains.
“The current tensions between the two powers must not escalate. Iraq has been suffering from proxy wars for decades; they have torn our country apart,” Archbishop Bashar Warda told CNA Jan. 8.
In retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran fired a more than a dozen ballistic missiles at the Al Asad and Erbil air bases, where U.S. troops are stationed. There were no casualties from the attacks, according to U.S. and Iraqi forces.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a speech Jan. 8 that he is asking NATO to become much more involved in the Middle East, and said Iran appears to be “standing down.”
Warda said his Catholic community in Iraqi Kurdistan is tired of war and its tragic consequences. “They have continually suffered far too much and can no longer face an unknown future,” he said.
“We are a courageous people of hope. Since the defeat of ISIS in May 2017 by the coalition forces, our archdiocese has been working with other church leaders, Christian agencies, humanitarian agencies, governments and NGOs to help rebuild our fractured communities in Mosul and Nineveh Plain. It has been a very challenging road to raise funds and international support to help us to physically regain what we lost starting in August 2014. The current tensions are threatening the serious fragility of the communities,” Warda said.
Iraqi Christians “need the certainty, reassurance, hope and the belief that Iraq can be a peaceful country to live in rather than being victims and endless collateral damage,” he said.
The Archbishop of Erbil said he was united with the appeal from Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, prudently to seek civilised dialogue and to pray for peace.
“As Church leaders we will always follow the path of God in seeking peace, reconciliation, mutual dialogue and not conflict,” he said.
Fr. Benham Benoka, a priest of the Syriac Archeparchy of Mosul, said that he hopes the situation of Christians in the Nineveh Plains will be taken into consideration as Iran and the United States confront one another.
“We feel increasingly insecure, especially now that we are talking about the withdrawal of military forces,” Benoka said in an an Italian interview with Vatican Radio Jan. 8.
Fr. Benoka is currently based in Bartella, a Christian city fewer than 20 miles east of Mosul controlled by Shia militiamen.
Following Islamic State’s occupation of the Bartella, the city’s Christian population has been reduced to less than a third of what it was, according to the Associated Press, who reported in 2019 that Christians families were afraid to return to Bartella due to intimidation by the Shabak, a Shia ethnic group who make up the militias controlling the town.
“Since we returned, even if only partially, to our land, after the defeat of IS in October 2016, we have been engaged in the reconstruction of houses and churches. But there are other forces, such as the so-called ‘Thirty Brigade’ of Shiite Shabak Muslims, who have taken control of the Christian city of Bartella and every day we must suffer their aggressive acts against churches and against our Christians, especially against women. This is why we have been asking for a solution to our situation for some time,” Fr. Benoka said.
The Iraqi priest said that he was particularly concerned to hear that the Iraqi parliament voted to ask the government to end the presence of international coalition forces.
“We only have 24 soldiers from the so-called NPU, the Protection Units of the Nineveh Plain, that is, Christian popular mobilization forces, and these 24 soldiers will never be able to defend us. So how can we do it? Where should we go?” he said.
“We truly pray that the military solution is not the only solution, but that there is a diplomatic solution to protect Iraqi blood,” the priest said.
Fr. Benoka said that his community prays the rosary every day for solutions to the problems facing the Iraqi people: “We ask that everyone agree – politicians and everyone else – to solve the problems that our Iraqi people suffer from, instead of chasing the interests of other foreign agendas.”
“We ask that the situation of us Christians here in the Nineveh Plain be taken into consideration: we have neither weapons nor anything,” the priest said.
Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- A new U.S. government report says that human rights abuse in China has worsened in the last year, and specifically highlighted the escalating persecution of Chinese Catholics in […]
Vatican City, Jan 8, 2020 / 05:39 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has offered his prayers for the souls of the 176 passengers of a Ukrainian International Airlines flight, who died when the plane crashed near Tehran, Iran on Wednesday.
The deadly crash took p… […]
Vatican City, Jan 8, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Love for God is always fruitful, Pope Francis said Wednesday, stressing that Christ can bring good out of any circumstance — even an apparent failure.
“Paul teaches us to live through trials by holdi… […]
Pope Francis concluded his pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia by invoking the memory of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, SJ, who died in September 2012. The Holy Father recalled that, “in his last interview, a […]
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jan 8, 2020 / 12:59 am (CNA).- In the wake of a series of earthquakes that left at least one dead, multiple injured and some 300,000 without water in Puerto Rico, Archbishop Roberto Octavio González Nieves called for praye… […]
Cheyenne, Wyo., Jan 7, 2020 / 10:01 pm (CNA).- A Wyoming lawmaker intends to introduce a bill to repeal capital punishment in the state when the legislative session begins next month.
Rep. Jared Olsen, R-Cheyenne, said the death penalty does not align with conservative principles.
“I oppose the death penalty because I believe in limited government over life and liberty matters concerning our citizens, fiscal responsibility in how we spend our justice dollars, and because executing our own citizens is immoral and a violation of God’s natural law,” he told CNA.
“If we’re taking a person’s life because we believe that it was unjust for that person to take another’s life, then that seems paradoxical. We ought to be consistent with our morals and our principles. Life is either precious or it’s not.”
In 2019, Olsen sponsored Senate Bill 145, which was defeated 18-12. He announced last week the decision to sponsor a similar bill again this year.
The Republican party holds 50 of the 60 seats in Wyoming’s House of Representatives, and 27 of the 30 Senate seats.
Wyoming has not executed anyone since 1992.
Olsen is working with Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Introduced to Wyoming in 2017, CCATDP states that small government and the death penalty are not compatible.
“Conservatives have a hard time trusting the government to fix pot holes, to deliver the mail, to decide which businesses to support. Conservatives would rather the government stay out of the business of picking winners and losers in corporations,” Olsen said, according to Oil City News.
“They want the government outside of all these areas in their lives. So why then would we concede that the government should be such an integral part of our justice system? It makes absolutely no sense.”
Kylie Taylor, Coordinator of CCATDP in Wyoming, expressed concern that because the justice system has the potential for error, capital punishment puts innocent people at risk of being executed.
“Since 1973 at least one-hundred and sixty-five inmates have been exonerated. That comes to about one in ten inmates on Death Row that are exonerated and that is huge,” she said, according to Oil City News.
“We know that the system isn’t perfect and that one mistake with a life is one too many,” Taylor further added.
Deacon Mike Leman, the Diocese of Cheyenne’s legislative liaison, told CNA that “For us as a diocese, it’s been about connecting life issues. One of the things I’ve done recently is researching comments from popes in the past and you realize they’ve been for a number of years calling for repeal on the death penalty.”
“It’s important to highlight and connect the life issues because until we do that it’s really hard to highlight for people our responsibility toward any other marginalized population if we turn right around and say, in certain circumstances, life really isn’t an inalienable right.”
He said the Church has emphasized a need for public safety and the responsibility of the government to defend its citizens from dangerous people. However, through the advancement in technology, this does not require the death penalty.
“Pope John Paul II said back in ’99 that through the development of our prison systems and our technology and all of these things, society can protect its citizens.”
He also drew attention to the importance of recognizing the system’s potential for failure and told a story about a man he met who was exonerated from death row.
“I’ve actually met a person who was on death row for 12 years. His father died while he was in prison, his mother, because he was on his last appeal, bought a plot for his grave, and then they found out that the process was completely wrong,” he said.
“When you actually meet someone who has been in that position, it makes you think a little bit more deeply about it.”
The Church has consistently taught that the state has the authority to use the death penalty, in cases of “absolute necessity,” though with the qualification that the Church considered such situations to be extremely rare.
Both Pope Francis and his immediate predecessors have condemned the practice of capital punishment in the West.
St. John Paul II called on Christians to be “unconditionally pro-life” and said that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” He also spoke of his desire for a consensus to end the death penalty, which he called “cruel and unnecessary.”
And Benedict XVI exhorted world leaders to make “every effort to eliminate the death penalty” and told Catholics that ending capital punishment was an essential part of “conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.”
In August 2018, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a new draft of the catechism’s paragraph regarding capital punishment.
Quoting Pope Francis’ words in a speech of Oct. 11, 2017, the new paragraph states, in part, that “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
Reasons for changing the teaching, the paragraph says, include: the increasing effectiveness of detention systems, growing understanding of the unchanging dignity of the person, and leaving open the possibility of conversion.
Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., a moral theologian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., told CNA at the time that he thinks this change “further absolutizes the pastoral conclusion made by John Paul II.”
“Nothing in the new wording of paragraph 2267 suggests the death penalty is intrinsically evil. Indeed, nothing could suggest that because it would contradict the firm teaching of the Church,” Fr. Petri continued.
Recently, we were treated to an article at Crux describing a “two-day symposium at Boston College” of “ecclesial heavy-hitters” dealing with the future of the priesthood. This was a follow-up to a previous confab which […]
London, England, Jan 7, 2020 / 04:57 pm (CNA).- The U.K.’s independent regulator for doctors has said it will review its decision to close a case against a Christian doctor facing second-hand complaints of breaking professional conduct rules by d… […]
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