Denver Newsroom, Jun 8, 2020 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The Texas Supreme Court will hear the Diocese of Lubbock’s appeal of a legal decision allowing a former deacon to sue the diocese for defamation for including his name on a list of clergy credibly a… […]
Mexico City, Mexico, Jun 8, 2020 / 06:42 pm (CNA).- With reports of domestic violence on the rise during the coronavirus lockdown in Mexico, one pro-life platform is offering women help, shelter and legal advice.
Linda Rebolledo, the coordinator and s… […]
Denver Newsroom, Jun 8, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- A community of Dominican nuns in Hawaii is shaken but hopeful after a burglar broke into their convent last week and stole a minivan that the nuns use for their ministry.
“It was still a good running car, even if it was 13 years old,” Sister Bernarda Sindol told CNA.
Donations have poured in from far and wide to help the nuns replace the stolen vehicle.
“It’s a blessing in disguise, because now we’re going to buy a new car,” she laughed.
The sisters awoke May 30 to find their convent had been broken into during the night.
No one was hurt in the robbery; the nuns live on the upper floor, and for their safety have a heavy gate on the door leading upstairs.
In addition to stealing most of the nuns’ food from the kitchen, the assailant took the keys to their minivan— which were hanging on a bulletin board downstairs— and made off with the vehicle.
Six Dominican Sisters of the Rosary live at the convent, which is located behind St. Elizabeth Catholic Church and School in Aiea, about 10 miles northwest of Honolulu on Oahu.
The police are still investigating and have not yet located the stolen vehicle.
The minivan was important for the nuns’ ministry, Sister Bernarda said, because many of them teach at the school adjacent to the convent— which the order has managed since the 1960s— and also at other schools around town.
Having the car made it easier for the nuns to get around, for their ministry and also for things like shopping and errands, without them having to rely on public transportation.
Sister Bernarda said the robber must have known which windows and areas of the convent were not alarmed, and broke in with relative ease.
The thief removed a painting of the Last Supper hanging in the nuns’ dining room, apparently hoping to find a wall safe.
The town lies on Pearl Harbor in a relatively safe area, Sister Bernarda said, so they never really expected a break-in like this.
“Some people just don’t have any respect for the Church. And those are the people we have to pray for,” she said.
As of Monday, a GoFundMe page set up by St. Elizabeth’s pastor had collected more than $31,000 toward a new vehicle for the nuns.
Sister Bernarda said donations have poured in from all over— the last one she saw was from a trucker in Nebraska, who donated $20.
“Twenty dollars is twenty dollars. It’s from people’s hearts, and we appreciate it. People are just so generous,” she said.
Sister Bernarda asked for prayers for an end to the pandemic, as she suspects the thief likely broke into their convent out of desperation.
“People are frustrated, they’ve lost their jobs, they have to feed their families. So we just pray that this coronavirus will go away so that people can live more normally,” she said.
CNA Staff, Jun 8, 2020 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- A former employee for the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida has been charged with wire fraud and tax fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced June 4. Federal prosecutors say he received h… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 8, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- The GIVEN Institute has announced a free online event “Discover the Gift,” seeking to empower women to realize their worth and unique gifts. The event by the group, which works to foster leadership … […]
Denver Newsroom, Jun 8, 2020 / 01:50 pm (CNA).- The White House said Sunday that Washington’s archbishop was invited to attend an event with President Donald Trump several days before it took place, amid media […]
CNA Staff, Jun 8, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A Christian pastor and his pregnant wife were killed on their farm in northeastern Nigeria last week, the latest victims in a series of abductions and killings of Christians in the country.
Gunmen shot dead Pastor Emmanuel Saba Bileya and his wife, Julianna, on their farm in Taraba, Northeastern Nigeria, on June 1, according to the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies where Bileya had been enrolled since 2014. Julianna was pregnant with the couple’s ninth child.
Bileya was a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria (CRC-N). He and his wife leave behind eight surviving children, and were buried in Donga on June 5, according to the Hausa Christians Foundation.
A statement released by the state police said that “While they were working on the farm, suddenly armed men came and opened fire on them, leading to the death of the pastor and his wife.”
The Hausa Christians Foundation called the killings part of a “systematic, direct war against Christianity in Nigeria,” and said that “pastors, Christian leaders and seminarians are either being kidnapped or killed every week” in the country.
Taraba governor Darius Ishaku called the killings “wicked and inhuman” in a statement to the local newspaper This Day, on June 3.
“Killings of this nature have happened too often recently in Southern Taraba communities and this is unhelpful to the on-going efforts of the government to achieve lasting peace among communities in the area,” said Ishaku.
“I sympathize with the surviving members of Pastor Bileya’s immediate and extended families as well as pastors and members of CRC-N in Mararaba where he served until his death.”
The attack is the latest in a spate of violence against Christians in Nigeria, largely from the terror group Boko Haram, militant nomadic Fulani herdsmen, and the terror group Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) and occurring in the Middle Belt and northeast regions of the country.
More than 600 Christians have been killed so far in 2020, according to a report on May 15 by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety). Christians have been beheaded and set on fire, farms set ablaze, and priests and seminarians have been targeted for kidnapping and ransom.
In January, militants kidnapped four Catholic seminarians from Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna and eventually killed one of them, Michael Nnadi. On March 1, Nigerian priest Fr. David Echioda was kidnapped by gunmen after offering Sunday Mass, but was released days afterward.
In an Ash Wednesday letter to Nigerian Catholics, Archbishop Augustine Obiora Akubeze of Benin City called for Catholics to wear black in solidarity with victims and pray in response to the killings and kidnappings.
As the number of Christians killed in the country continues to rise, local leaders have increasingly blamed government inaction to protect lives. The Intersociety report concluded that “atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked,” “with the country’s security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists.”
In March, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja, Nigeria, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to address the violence and kidnappings in a homily during Mass with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria.
“We need to have access to our leaders; president, vice president. We need to work together to eradicate poverty, killings, bad governance and all sorts of challenges facing us as a nation,” Kaigama said.
On Feb. 27, U.S Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told CNA that the situation in Nigeria was deteriorating.
“There’s a lot of people getting killed in Nigeria, and we’re afraid it is going to spread a great deal in that region,” he told CNA. “It is one that’s really popped up on my radar screens — in the last couple of years, but particularly this past year.”
“I think we’ve got to prod the [Nigerian President Muhammadu] Buhari government more. They can do more,” he said. “They’re not bringing these people to justice that are killing religious adherents. They don’t seem to have the sense of urgency to act.”
It is sometimes said that tyranny is when the people fear their government; liberty is when the government fears the people. The pandemic has made this real. Government officials locking down cities and towns, deeming […]
Vatican City, Jun 8, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), commonly called the Vatican Bank, said it had made a net profit of 38 million euros in 2019 as it released its annual report Monday.
According to the report, t… […]
Washington D.C., Jun 8, 2020 / 10:20 am (CNA).- Priests in the Archdiocese of Washington will demonstrate outside of the White House on Monday as a “prayerful protest” against hatred and institutional discrimination of all kinds. … […]
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