CNA Staff, Aug 25, 2020 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- After a number of recent massacres in Colombia, Bishop Elkin Fernando Álvarez Botero, secretary general of the Colombian bishops’ conference, lamented that a "scandalously painful" point has been reached in the country.
Massacres in August have claimed the lives of 42 people. Of these killings, 28 have taken place in three contiguous departments in the southwest corner of the country bordering the Pacific, and 14 in three departments in the northern half of the country.
The latest massacre occurred Aug. 23 in the municipality of Venecia in the department of Antioquia, where three people were killed, including a minor.
“We believe that behind these massacres there is a great degradation into violence. We don’t know where it’s coming from and the real causes of this, but we have reached a scandalously painful point for the Colombian people,” the auxiliary bishop of Medellín said in a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner.
Bishop Álvarez told ACI Prensa Aug. 24 that "according to our conversations with the bishops of the affected regions, these massacres are not isolated events, they have to do with phenomena happening for many years."
The bishops have always condemned these incidents, he said, just like "the illicit economy created by the entire drug trafficking process."
"We don’t know for sure which groups are involved in this, but they’re probably already known illegal armed groups that are causing terror in the region," the bishop speculated.
“The Colombian episcopate has issued a statement strongly upholding once again the right to life, which is the fundamental right, calling on the armed groups to stop the violence and asking the government for more intervention and presence in these regions; and also calling for the peace accords to continue to be put into effect, in order to continue working with regions so there’s more security for everyone’s lives,” Bishop Álvarez said.
On Aug. 22, six people were murdered in the department of Nariño and two others are missing.
On Aug. 21, two massacres took place. One in the rural municipality of El Tambo, in the department of Cauca, where six people were killed, allegedly executed by members of a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
On Aug. 18, three members of the Awá indigenous community were murdered in the department of Nariño. Three days earlier, eight youths were executed in the town of Catalina in the municipality of Samaniego, also in the department of Nariño.
On Aug. 12, five minors were murdered in Llano Verde, a neighborhood on the east side of Cali, in the department of Valle del Cauca.
On Aug. 2, a massacre of six people was reported in the rural area of the municipality of Puerto Santander de Cúcuta in North Santander department.
The other massacre occurred in the El Caracol district in the department of Arauca, where the FARC dissidents were allegedly responsible for five murders.
A 2016 peace deal between the national government and the FARC was meant to wind-down the country's now 56-year conflict among the government, right-wing paramilitaries, and left-wing guerillas.
The conflict has left some 260,000 people dead and an estimated 7 million displaced.
On Aug. 23 the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, told TV channel RCN that “there are people saying that the massacres have returned or that mass murders have returned; but they haven’t returned because they never went away, since 1998 we’ve had 1,361 of these incidents in the country and under our administration we’ve had 37, or 2.7% of the total. These crimes must be faced without hypocrisy and with determination.”
After visiting Cali and Samaniego, the president said that "the first thing we have to do is determine the facts, identify the perpetrators and exact penalties to make an example of these despicable acts."
According to the BBC, the number of Colombian homicides in 2019 was among the lowest such figures since 1975.
Speaking to ACI Prensa, the secretary general of the Colombian bishops’ conference noted that “in the affected regions the dioceses are very present to the people when this kind of incident occurs. The presence of priests in the communities is valued and very recognized.”
"There’s been support for the families of the victims and the entire peace process continued on the ecclesial level, seeking reconciliation and calling for the protection of people’s lives,” Bishop Álvarez concluded.
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Managua, Nicaragua, May 24, 2018 / 05:10 pm (ACI Prensa).- Nicaragua’s bishops urged president Daniel Ortega Tuesday to comply with a recommendation that he investigate April’s violence in order to facilitate talks between the opposition and his government.
The Nicaraguan bishops’ conference’s May 22 letter encouraged Ortega to create “a mechanism of international investigation of the acts of violence which occurred, with guarantees of autonomy and independence to ensure the right to the truth and duly identify those responsible.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited Nicaragua May 17-21 to document human rights violations in four cities and to issue recommendations.
The commission found that since protests began April 18, there were at least 76 deaths and 868 injured, the vast majority “in the context of the protests.” Five of those injured “remain in the hospital in critical condition.” In addition, “438 people were arrested, including students, civilians, men and women human rights advocates and journalists.”
A priest of the Diocese of Matagalpa was wounded by shrapnel May 15 while trying to separate protestors and security forces, the AP reported.
In their letter the bishops stated that “only by fulfilling this recommendation of the IACHR” will the stakeholders be able “to continue making progress toward a good outcome to the national dialogue.”
They also stressed that agreeing to this “becomes imperative for the well being of the nation” and so that the talks produce “fruitful results of truth, justice, freedom and true and lasting peace for all Nicaraguans.”
Finally, the bishops offered their disposition “to collaborate in the path to peace, with justice.”
“We respectfully greet you, imploring the light of the Holy Spirit for you and the intercession of the Virgin Mary so that you can make the best decisions,” they concluded.
On the same day, May 22, the bishop’s conference charged in a statement that bishops and priests are being discredited by attacks orchestrated by the government and that they have been receiving death threats through “anonymous social media” posts.
The bishops stated that Nicaragua is currently going through “one of the worst crises in its history after the blatant crackdown by the government, which is trying to evade its responsibility as the main actor in the various attacks.”
Talks to overcome several weeks of anti-government protests and riots in Nicaragua which have been met harshly by security forces began May 16 under the mediation of the Catholic Church.
Protests began April 18 after Ortega announced social security and pension reforms. The changes were soon abandoned in the face of widespread, vocal opposition, but protests have only intensified after more than 40 protestors were killed by security forces.
Demonstrators have called for freedom of expression, an end to violent repression, and for Ortega to step down from office. The Church in the country was quick to acknowledge the protestors’ complaints.
Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.
He was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu. / Credit: Alan Holdren/CNA
ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 19, 2023 / 10:15 am (CNA).
The trial of Cardinal Angelo Becciu ended Dec. 16 with the prelate being convicted of embezzlement and sentenced by the Vatican co… […]
Members of the Sts’ailes First Nation at Holy Rosary Cathedral last year for the first Mass to integrate a First Nation language. A Cardus report presents the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking about their faith and distinguishing it from the traditional spirituality they’re often associated with. / Photo courtesy Nicholas Elbers, 2022
Vancouver, Canada, May 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
A groundbreaking report published by the Ottawa-based Cardus Institute has given voice to Indigenous Canadians who are frustrated by secular society’s unawareness of — or unwillingness to accept — the fact that almost half of them are Christian.
“I find that insulting to Indigenous people’s intelligence and freedom,” Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette said of the prejudice he regularly encounters.
Bouvette, who has mixed Cree-Métis and Italian heritage and now serves as vicar for vocations and Young Adults in the Diocese of Calgary, was one of 12 individuals interviewed by Cardus for the report “Indigenous Voices of Faith.”
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, left, leads a post-production discussion by Indigenous Voices of Faith participants. Photo courtesy of Cardus
Prejudice against Indigenous Christians has become so strong, even inside some Indigenous communities, “that Indigenous Christians in this country right now are living in the time of new martyrdom,” Bouvette said.
Although that martyrdom may not cost them their lives, “they are ostracized and humiliated sometimes within their own communities if they openly express their Christian or Catholic faith.”
Statistics Canada reported last year that the 2021 census found that 850,000, or 47%, of Canada’s 1.8-million Indigenous people identify as Christian and that more than a quarter of the total report they are Catholic. Only 73,000, or 4%, of Indigenous people said they adhere to traditional Indigenous spiritual beliefs.
In a new report, Cardus wants to “amplify the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking for themselves about their religious commitments, which sometimes clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Photo courtesy of Cardus
Ukrainian Catholic Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Faith Communities, conducted the interviews for the think tank last fall. He published his report in March at a time when Canadian mainstream media and many political leaders continued to stir division and prejudice through misleading commentary about abandoned cemeteries at Indian Residential Schools.
The purpose of the report, he writes, “is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of Indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”
Too often, however, “the public narrative implies, or boldly declares, that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous Canadians and Christianity or other faiths,” Bennett said. “[M]any Indigenous Canadians strongly disagree with those narratives.”
Father Bouvette is clearly one of those.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of [my Indigenous grandmother’s] time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to,” Bouvette said. “No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down.”
Bouvette said his “grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for 99 years and 11 months of her life. She was a Christian from the day of her birth, and she remained a Christian until the day of her death. And so that was not by the consequence of some imposition.”
Nevertheless, Canadians continue to labor under a prejudice holding the opposite view. “I do believe that probably the majority of Canadians at this time, out of some mistaken notion of guilt for whatever their cultural or ethnic background is, think they are somehow responsible for Indigenous people having had something thrust upon them that they didn’t want,” Bouvette said.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us,” Father Cristino Bouvette says in a Cardus report on Indigenous faith. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“But I would say, give us a little more credit than that and assume that if there is an Indigenous person who continues to persevere in the Christian faith it is because they want to, because they understand why they have chosen to in the first place, and they remain committed to it. We should be respectful of that.”
The executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, Christian Elia, agrees and says society should grant Indigenous Catholics the respect and personal agency that is due all Canadians.
“Firstly, I am not an Indigenous person, so I cannot speak for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but neither can non-Indigenous secularists who choose to ignore that Indigenous people in Canada continue to self-identify as Christian, the majority of these Catholic,” Elia said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
He said his organization has heard from many Indigenous Catholics who are “growing weary of the ongoing assumption that somehow they have been coerced into the faith, that it is inconceivable that they wish to be Catholic. This condescending attitude must stop.”
Deacon Rennie Nahanee, who serves at St. Paul’s Indian Church in North Vancouver, was another of the 12 whom Bennett interviewed. A cradle Catholic and member of the Squamish First Nation, Deacon Nahanee said there is nothing incompatible with being both an authentic Indigenous person and a Catholic.
“I’m pretty sure we had a belief in the Creator even before the missionaries came to British Columbia,” he said. “And our feelings, our thoughts about creation, the way that we lived and carried out our everyday lives, and the way that we helped to preserve the land and the animals that we used for food, our spirituality and our culture, were similar to the spirituality of the Catholic Church.”
“I believe that’s why our people accepted it. I don’t think anybody can separate themselves from God, even though they say so.”
Interviewed later by The B.C. Catholic, Nahanee said he is not bothered by the sort of prejudice outlined by Bouvette. “People are going to say or do what they want,” he said.
Voices of Indigenous Christianity
Bennett, program director of Cardus Faith Communities, interviewed 12 Indigenous Canadians, most of them Christian, about their religious commitments, “which often clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Here is a selection of some of their comments:
Tal James of the Penelakut First Nation in Nanaimo spoke about the relationship between Indigenous culture and his Christian faith:
Tal James and wife Christina. Photo courtesy of Project 620 – James Ministry
“I think … that our [Indigenous] cultures were complete, and in Jesus they’re more complete. I think that’s a big thing and a big step for a lot of us. You’re going to have a lot of non-Indigenous people look at you and question your actions based on your Aboriginal heritage. Don’t take that to heart. They’re the ignorant ones who don’t want you to flourish. Those of you who are Christians, First Nations Christians, you come to the table with the same gifting that non-Aboriginal people have. For them to say, ‘We want to make room for you at the table,’ correct them. You are already at the table, and encourage them to step back and allow your gifts to flourish. Because it’s one in the same spirit.”
Rose-Alma McDonald, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, which borders New York, Ontario, and Quebec, talked about re-embracing her Catholic faith:
Rose-Alma McDonald. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“I surprised everybody, including myself, in terms of embracing Catholicism after 20 years away. So I’ve had a few epiphanies in the sense that this is why my mother made me do so much in the church growing up. When I’m working, volunteering, and doing stuff in the church, I remember that. I keep remembering I’m Catholic and I’m still Catholic. I will stay Catholic because of the way I was raised.”
Jeff Decontie, a Mohawk from the Algonquin First Nations who lives in Ottawa, talked about being a person of faith in a secular world:
Jeff Decontie. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“Secular worldviews can sort of eat up everything around them and accept a whole wide range of beliefs at the same time. For example, you have the prevailing scientific thinking alongside New Age believers, and people in society just accept this, saying, ‘Oh, whatever it is you believe in, all religions lead to the same thing.’ No one questions it. How can these contradictions coexist? … Then we ask an [Indigenous] elder to lead prayer? Any other religion would be a no-no, but you can ask for an elder who’s going to pray a generic prayer to some generic Creator, and it’s not going to ruffle any feathers. I think that’s the danger of secular thought creeping into Canada: It goes unnoticed, it’s perceived as neutral, but at the same time it’s welcoming a whole wide range of beliefs. And it doesn’t just influence Indigenous thought. It’s influencing Christianity.”
Rosella Kinoshameg, a member of the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, spoke about being Indigenous and Catholic:
Rosella Kinoshameg. Photo courtesy of the Catholic Register
“Well, I can’t change being Indigenous. That’s something that is me. I can’t change that. But to believe in the things that I was taught, the traditional things, the way of life and the meanings of these things, and then in a church, well, those things help one another and they make me feel stronger.”
This article was originally published May 10, 2023, in The B.C. Catholic, a weekly publication serving the Catholic community in British Columbia, Canada, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
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