Washington D.C., Jan 7, 2020 / 04:52 pm (CNA).- Pro-life advocates are hopeful that 2020 will see the pro-life movement building on its victories from the past year, despite court challenges and efforts by pro-abortion lawmakers to loosen abortion rest… […]
Buffalo, N.Y., Jan 7, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Buffalo, has said he was not given the results of a Vatican-ordered investigation into the scandal-hit diocese.
“I was… […]
Wilmington, Del., Jan 7, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- An 18-year-old man is being held in custody and is charged with federal crimes after he allegedly threw an incendiary device at a Planned Parenthood location in Newark, Delaware early on Friday, Jan. 3.&… […]
Cairo, Egypt, Jan 7, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt attended a Coptic Orthodox Liturgy Monday, praising cooperation between the Christians and Muslims of the country.
“God saw fit for us to live in difficult circumstances…. But as long as we’re together … no one can do anything to us,” the AP reported him saying Jan. 6 at a Liturgy celebrated by Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, at the Cathedral of the Nativity in Egypt’s new administrative capital, about 40 miles east of Cairo.
The liturgy celebrated Christmas Eve, as Christmas in the Coptic calendar falls Jan. 7 in the Gregorian calendar. Sisi has made a tradition in recent years of attending Liturgy for Christmas Eve among the Copts.
According to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom, Egypt’s religious freedom conditions “generally trended in a more positive direction related to high-level official discourse and actions” in 2018, while “persistent challenges at the community level and a poor, broader human rights situation remained consistent with recent years.”
In the past year, Sisi’s government has seen both a Coptic activist arrested on terrorism-related charges, and the sentencing of 30 men for planning to bomb a church in Alexandria.
USCIRF said in its 2019 report that Sisi has “heightened the inclusion of religious tolerance in public discourse” and has encouraged “the inclusion of churches in plans for new urban developments and calling for wider freedom of belief and worship.”
The commission also said that “the government’s initial effort to combat Islamist violence and ideology has evolved into a more general and severe crackdown on all perceived dissent or criticism toward the country’s leadership.”
Human rights activists in recent years have warned repeatedly that Christians in Egypt are enduring persecution and violence from Muslim groups, and the government has neglected to act.
The country has seen a number of attacks on churches in recent years, motivated in part by a call from the Islamic State.
Sisi has in the past deployed armed forces to help guard important installations and churches across Egypt.
The disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has moved from the Kansas friary where he had been living since 2018. A spokesman for the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Conrad told CNA Jan. 7 that McCarrick […]
Tehran, Iran, Jan 7, 2020 / 11:25 am (CNA).- As tensions escalate between Iran and the United States following the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the pope’s diplomat in Tehran is appealing for dialogue.
Archbishop Leo Boccardi has served as apostolic nuncio to Iran since 2013. Speaking to EWTN News from Tehran, Boccardi said he has been keeping the Vatican updated on the situation on the ground in Tehran with regular dispatches to the Secretariat of State.
“I believe that the words of the Holy Father have been an invitation to moderation, to dialogue, to negotiation to get through the tension and to see, to hope, that there are none of these … acts of revenge,” Archbishop Boccardi told EWTN News Jan. 6.
The pope called for dialogue and self-control in the “terrible air of tension” in his Angelus address Jan. 5.
Archbishop Boccardi said he does not foresee immediate implications for the small population of Christians living in Iran due to the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani, saying it is not a religious conflict. “It is a war that is unfolding between Iran and another particular opponent who has a name and surname,” Boccardi said.
US President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, as well as Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, at the Baghdad International Airport Jan. 3.
The airstrike followed an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and U.S. officials claim that Soleimani had planned additional attacks against Americans. The US State Department had designated Soleimani a global terrorist in 2011.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani pledged revenge for the drone attack that killed Soleimani, and Trump threatened in a tweet Jan. 4 to target Iranian cultural sites if Iran were to strike any Americans, a move which Pentagon officials later rejected. Chants of “Death to America” were heard at Soleimani’s funeral Jan. 6.
“Good politics is at the service of peace, the whole international community must put itself at the service of peace, not only in the region but in the whole world,” Archbishop Boccardi said in an Italian Vatican Radio interview Jan. 3.
“The appeal is to lower tension, call everyone to negotiation,” he said. “We must believe in dialogue.”
Boccardi said that a peaceful Middle East is the responsibility of the international community. The nuncio said “pacta sunt servanda” (agreements are to be kept) is an important rule for diplomacy, and underlined that the rules of law must be respected by everyone.
“We must ‘arm ourselves’ with other weapons which are those of justice and goodwill,” he said.
Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, echoed the nuncio’s sentiment, calling for prayer, prudence, and dialogue.
“I have to say personally that I am very shocked by hearing the words ‘taking revenge,’” Sako told EWTN News Jan. 6.
“We are very lucky to be Christian because our culture and our education and our mentality is a mentality of peace, respect, and life, and not of blood and taking revenge,” the Iraqi cardinal said.
Sako said that he believes that Europe can be a bridge to aid with dialogue between Iran and Iraq, as well as with the United States.
“The international community has a responsibility for what is happening in the region in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran now. They should help people to sit together and to dialogue in a civilized way and to look for a political solution … not fighting, and threatening people and so on,” he said.
“And I ask all of our Christians to pray for us and to keep us in their prayers,” he added.
Alan Holdren contributed to this report.
Ottawa, Canada, Jan 7, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Increasing numbers of people killed by euthanasia are supplying a “boon” for organ transplant surgeries in Canada, according to an Ottowa newspaper. But politicians and ethicists told CNA the practice was “rather horrifying” and raises questions of “coercion.”
A Jan. 6 article titled “Medically assisted deaths prove a growing boon to organ donation in Ontario” in the Ottawa Citizen, explained that while the number of people in need of a transplant in Ontario has remained relatively static, fewer and fewer people are registering in advance as donors, with assisted deaths providing a positive answer.
“This relatively new source of organs and tissues is significant in that Ontario’s waiting list for organs typically hovers around 1,600 without any great headway made to eliminate that number,” Bruce Deachman reported.
From January until November of 2019, there were 18 organ and 95 tissue donations from patients who died by euthanasia. These numbers, which do not include the month of December, represent an increase of 14% over all of 2018, and 109% compared to all of 2017.
According to the Trillium Gift of Life Network, which runs organ and tissue donation in the province of Ontario, these donations were 5% of the province’s overall number of organ and tissue donations. This was more than double the percentage of euthanasia-related donations in 2017.
“Medical assistance in dying,” as it is legally referred to in the country, has been legal in Canada since 2016. Canadians who have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” are able to elect to end their lives. This is defined as a “serious and incurable illness, disease or disability” that results in “an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability,” and causes “enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable” and cannot be treated in an “acceptable” manner.
A person’s death has to become “reasonably foreseeable” in order to be approved for euthanasia, but their condition does not necessarily have to be considered terminal.
In Ontario, Trillium “proactively” solicits patients to discuss organ donation once they have elected to be killed. It is provincial law that Trillium be made aware once a person has been approved to end their life.
Ronnie Gavsie, the CEO of Trillium, defended this as “the right thing to do for those on the [organ donation] wait list.”
“And, as part of high-quality end-of life care, we make sure that all patients and families are provided with the information they need and the opportunity to make a decision on whether they wish to make a donation,” Gavsie told the Ottawa Citizen. “That just follows the logical protocol under the law and the humane approach for those who are undergoing medical assistance in dying.”
In Quebec, it recently was approved for Transplant Quebec to raise the possibility of organ donation after a person’s request to die by euthanasia is approved by doctors.
Conservative MP Michael Cooper told CNA that while he is not necessarily opposed to someone donating their organs after dying by euthanasia, he said the practice raises questions regarding consent, and opens up the possibility of coercion.
“The concern that I have is that it muddies the waters in terms of the patient making a decision freely, without any degree of coercion or influence from anyone,” said Cooper. He added that with the current setup of physician-assisted death in Canada, there is a chance that it is administered to a patient who is not able to properly consent or who may not want to die.
Organ donation “should not be part of the conversation” when a patient makes a decision regarding physician-assisted dying, said Cooper, and that he feels as though the decision to donate one’s organs should be “completely separate” from the decision to pursue euthanasia.
Dr. Moira McQueen, a moral theologian and the executive director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute, told CNA said such practices appear “rather horrifying.”
McQueen cited the scenario of a patient who opts to begin the euthasia process at home and be transferred to a hospital for organ donation as one that sparks “even more ethical and legal problems.” In this case, a patient would essentially be sedated at home and then transported to a hospital for the final dose of lethal medication and then have their organs removed.
“That situation makes it clearer that the focus is truly on ‘harvesting’,” said McQueen. “The donor’s dignity is compromised and the ‘separation’ of teams that is supposed to be the warrant of independence of the teams is completely blurred.”
While the Church does not have ethical issues with the use of organ donations from consenting donors who died natural deaths, or from unconscious donors whose relatives have elected to donate their organs, McQueen said there are serious ethical questions about the transplant use of organs retrieved after euthanasia.
“There’s no Church teaching on it that says specifically, you can’t. There is definitely something that talks about the dignity of the body, and I would think, as a Catholic, most of us would say ‘oh no, you can’t use these organs because the person has died a sinful death, died a wrong death by asking for euthanasia,” she said.
The ethical questions regarding this situation have not been resolved, she explained, and that she could see both sides of the issue. McQueen told CNA that she feels the conversations regarding organ donation and euthanasia need to be completely separate. If this were the case, following the death of the patient, the organs could be considered “neutral.”
“I think there could be a possibility that [the organs] could be used, despite the fact now that we are talking about people who have asked for euthanasia,” she said, but could only be considered if the medical team administering euthanasia was entirely and wholly separate from the medical team that handled the organ retreival.
“I think the Church will eventually deal with all these implications, but right now everyone is watching these events unfold and it’s tricky to separate what’s morally wrong,” she said.
Given that a person who is approved for euthanasia may not be terminally ill, McQueen said it is not out of the realm of possibility that a primary physician “might well suggest organ donation as, if not an incentive, a kind of ‘consolation’ for the person’s own loss of life.”
“These scenarios are all too real, and many people will be all too willing to ‘justify’ their decisions by turning something which even to them cannot be an unqualified good into something quite noble,” she said.
St. Paul, Minn., Jan 7, 2020 / 12:52 am (CNA).- Reflecting on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, the Catholic and Lutheran bishops of Minnesota issued an open letter encouraging Christians to adopt a welcoming attitude toward refugees.
“W… […]
New York City, N.Y., Jan 6, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- During a solidarity march with the Jewish community of New York, which suffered numerous attacks during the week of Hanukkah last month, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state… […]
Santiago, Chile, Jan 6, 2020 / 06:50 pm (CNA).- A mob of masked protesters set fire Jan. 3 to a Catholic church dedicated to serving the national police in Santiago, Chile, while an anti-government demonstration was in progress in nearby Plaza Italia.
According to local reports, a group of masked individuals surrounded Saint Francis Borgia Church, located two blocks away from the plaza, around 8 p.m., setting fire to a vehicle parked outside and then starting fires inside the church and an attached building.
Three companies of firemen arrived at the scene, but the masked mob blocked their passage and they were unable to put out the fire in a timely manner, according to reports.
The church was built in 1876 and was originally the Sacred Heart of Jesus Chapel of Saint Borgia Hospital. In November 1975, it was set aside to serve the spiritual needs of the Carabineros, the national police force.
The church is situated in the same area of Santiago where Assumption and Veracruz (True Cross) churches were also set on fire last November.
The Carabineros tweeted “we deeply regret to report that Saint Francis Borgia church where we have said farewell to our more than one thousand martyrs has been set on fire by a mob of vandals.”
Anti-government demonstrations broke out in mid-October in Santiago over a now-suspended increase in subway fares. Other regions joined in the protests, expanding their grievances to inequality and the cost of healthcare.
A number of churches across Chile have been attacked and looted amid the demonstrations in the country.
The protests have put pressure on the administration of President Sebastián Piñera to introduce reforms, in addition to announcing the drafting of a new Constitution to replace the one enacted by the military regime of Augusto Pinochet in 1980.
Protest marches often start our peacefully, but end up with clashes between the police and masked protesters, who often turn to attacking churches as well as public and private property.
In a Jan. 4 message following the fire at Saint Franics Borgia church, Chile’s bishop for the military and security forces, Santiago Silva Retamales, expressed his closeness to the Carabineros and condemned the persistent violence in the country.
He called the attack “bewildering” and “incomprehensible,” noting that the church serves not only the national police, but also the whole community.
“To all the members of the beloved institution of the Carabineros throughout the country, spiritually united around this church during recent decades, I express my closeness in these difficult moments and I encourage you to remain determined safeguard order and social peace,” the bishop said.
While the local Church has promoted respect for human rights and the legitimate, just demands of society, it also condemns the “persistent violence that only deepens Chile’s wounds,” he said.
“The future of the country depends on our capacity for sincere dialogue to discern what is just,” Bishop Silva stressed, “with agreements involving all parties that should be respected and concrete actions that would restore to Chile its soul as a people with the vocation of unity, respect for everyone, and integral development.”
A Mass of reparation was offered in front of Saint Francis Borgia church Jan. 5, celebrated by Bishop Silva and concelebrated by the apostolic nuncio, several other bishops, the chaplains of the three branches of the Armed Forces and the Carabineros, along with clergy from these institutions.
In attendance were the General Director of the Carabineros, General Mario Rozas Córdova and his wife, accompanied by the High Command, delegations from the Armed Forces and the Carabineros along with their families, friends of the Carabineros, neighbors and hundreds of other people.
In his homily, Silva said that although “they had burned the church, they had not burned the community, they did not burn the faith.”
“Our hope is untouched,” he said.
© Catholic World Report