Australian bishop steps aside during Vatican abuse investigation

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Denver Newsroom, May 19, 2022 / 16:58 pm (CNA).
New South Wales has become the sixth and final Australian state to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. Its legislation forces health care and e… […]

Adelaide, Australia, Feb 16, 2019 / 05:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A local bishop is speaking out against a bill to remove regulations on abortion in Adelaide, Australia, saying it would be the nation’s most radical abortion law.

“The unborn deserve love and protection, not destruction,” said Bishop Gregory O’Kelly SJ, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Port Pirie.

He warned that the legislation being considered “drastically reduces safeguards for the unborn” and would allow abortions “even well into the ninth month of pregnancy.”

In a Feb. 14 letter to the people of his diocese, O’Kelly said the faithful “should all be extremely concerned about the proposed Abortion Law Reform Bill.”

The Adelaide proposal would place abortion under the regulations of the state’s health laws, rather than the state’s criminal code. This would remove current rules such a requirement that a woman have been a resident in South Australia for at least two months before procuring an abortion.

The legislation would also ban protestors from entering within 150 meters of an abortion clinic.

The bill was introduced to Parliament by Greens MP Tammy Franks and will be debated in the comings weeks, with a vote later this year.

Similar legislation was recently passed in Queensland.

“This bill treats abortion simply as a medical procedure without moral significance,” O’Kelly said in his letter. “There is no need for a medical opinion or a doctor’s involvement and no reason need be given for an abortion. It will be the most radical abortion law in the country.”

“We believe life to be a gift of God, to be cherished and revered,” the bishop continued. “Christ said that he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Abortion is the destruction of the human life, an act that defies the sacred.”

He urged people to contact their local Member of Parliament and ask them to vote against the bill.

Bishop O’Kelly also published a letter from Dr. Elvis Šeman, a gynecologist and member of the Guild of St Luke.

The doctor stressed the adverse effects that abortion can have on a woman’s physical, psychological and emotional health.

He warned that the proposed legislation “aims to radically deregulate abortion and outlaw two important things – conscientious objection to abortion and the freedom to pray and offer pregnancy support near abortion clinics.”

Under the bill, he said, abortion could “be performed by a non-medical provider, using any method and for any reason (including sex-selection for social reasons), at any gestation (up to term), leaving babies born alive to die, and using SA Health funding without the accountability of reporting.”

Furthermore, Šeman warned, “Imposing a ‘health access’ zone makes pregnancy support services unlawful within 150m, restricts freedom of speech, denies potential support to vulnerable women who are ambivalent or may have been coerced, and provides excessive powers to police.”

The doctor also emphasized the need to do more for women facing difficult pregnancies.  

“As a Church community, I believe that, with few notable exceptions, we have done poorly in supporting those women and their families facing an unplanned pregnancy. They are left at the mercy of a health system which fast-tracks women to abortion and offers no alternatives.”

Bishop O’Kelly agreed that the Church must reach out to women in need.

“We believe our main focus should be on supporting women who find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy and are grappling with this terrible choice,” he said, “while also offering our unequivocal support and prayers to those women who are experiencing grief and loss.”

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This work of art was displayed at St. Peter’s on the occasion of the Vatican’s Celebration of the Canonization of 117 Vietnamese Martyrs on July 19, 1988. / Credit: Public domain

CNA Staff, Nov 24, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Today, Nov. 24, is the feast day of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and companions, a group of 117 martyrs, led by Father Andrew, who died for the Catholic faith in Vietnam during a 19th-century persecution. 

The group was made up of 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spaniards, and 10 French. Roughly half were clergy and half were laypeople, including a 9-year-old child. Some of the priests were Dominicans; others were diocesan priests who belonged to the Paris Mission Society.

According to the Vatican, Father Andrew Dung-Lac was born with the name Dung An-Tran to a poor family in northern Vietnam around the year 1795. When his family moved to Hanoi to find work, the 12-year-old Dung met a Christian catechist who shared the faith with him and baptized him with the name “Andrew.” 

The climate at the time was very dangerous for Christians in Vietnam under the Emperor Minh-Mang, who banned foreign missionaries and commanded Vietnamese Christians to trample on crucifixes in order to publically renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. (Japanese authorities had for years forced Christians to do something similar, a practice that is dramatized in the film “Silence.”) 

Later, in 1823, Andrew was ordained a priest, and his preaching and simplicity of life led many others to baptism, despite the young priest needing to be hidden by the faithful in order to keep him safe from the emperor. He was imprisoned multiple times and each time was ransomed by the Catholic faithful. Many Christians during this time were suffering brutal martyrdoms — strippings, torture, beheadings — and the priest changed him name to Lac in an attempt to avoid detection. 

It’s estimated that from 1630 to 1886, between 130,000 and 300,000 Christians were martyred in Vietnam, while others were forced to flee to the mountains and the forests or be exiled to other countries.

In 1839, the Vatican recounts, he was arrested again along with another Vietnamese priest, Father Peter Thi, to whom Dung-Lac had visited in order to go to confession. The two were ransomed, then arrested again, tortured, and finally beheaded in Hanoi on Dec. 21, 1839. He is the patron saint of Vietnam. 

Described as the “Nero of Indochina” for his harsh persecutions, Minh Mang’s reign ended the next year. 

Pope John Paul II canonized the 117 martyrs together on June 19, 1988. At the time, the Vatican said, the communist government of Vietnam did not permit a single representative from the country to attend the canonization. But 8,000 Vietnamese Catholics from the diaspora were there, “filled with joy to be the children of this suffering Church.”

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