Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 3, 2020 / 09:10 am (CNA).- Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris questioned a judicial nominee over his affiliation with a Christian adoption agency, and another about briefs he wrote for religious liberty lawsuits ag… […]
Vatican City, Sep 3, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- The secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has argued that as tribalism and identity politics increase, the Catholic Church should cooperate with other religions to p… […]
Vatican City, Sep 3, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis offered his condolences Thursday after Dutch Cardinal Adrianus Simonis died at the age of 88.
The cardinal led the Archdiocese of Utrecht for nearly 25 years, and is remembered for his dedicati… […]
Vatican City, Sep 3, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Thursday that science and faith together can help humanity to overcome ecological crises.
Addressing a delegation of French ecological experts Sept. 3, the pope said that the Catholi… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Australia’s new ambassador to the Holy See is a 36-year-old mother of two with a passion for youth outreach.
Ambassador Chiara Porro presented her credentials to Pope Francis last week and is now t… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- A Catholic bishop has sharply criticized a text produced by the German Church’s “Synodal Way” forum on the role of women.
In an open letter published Sept. 2, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer … […]
Denver Newsroom, Sep 3, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Newark, Delaware was damaged by arson in the late evening hours of Aug. 25. The building, which serves Jewish students of the University of Delaware, was unoccupied at the time, and no one was hurt.
The State Fire Marshal’s Office has ruled the blaze to be arson, adding that the motive of the fire remains under investigation. The assistant state fire marshal initially estimated the damage at some $200,000.
Father Tim McIntire, OSFS, pastor of St. Thomas More Oratory and chaplain at the University of Delaware’s Catholic Campus Ministry, told CNA that his church, which is located just across campus from the Chabad Center, took up a second collection at Sunday Mass to raise money for their neighbors.
He said the fire greatly upset many of the Catholic university students who attend the Oratory, who are now eager to help the Chabad Center get back on its feet. The center serves between 100-200 Jewish students regularly.
“It just continues this streak of attacks on our Judeo-Christian heritage; Churches being burned, statues being destroyed and vandalized. I find it really sickening,” McIntire commented, referring to the spate of attacks against churches and art across the US in recent months.
The Oratory reached out to the Chabad Center via email and telephone soon after the fire, McIntire said. Although they haven’t yet received a response from the rabbi, he said they plan to send over the check for the Center to use as they see fit in their rebuilding efforts.
McIntire also said he had told the rabbi that they are welcome to use space in the Oratory building, if necessary, until their building is usable.
Chabad is a Hasidic movement of Judaism. The Chabad Center in Newark is not university-owned, but the university’s president offered support to the campus’ Jewish community in an Aug. 26 message.
“Respect for others is a key value at the University of Delaware, and we condemn anyone who would seek to harm any part of our Blue Hen family,” President Dennis Assanis and Vice President for Student Life José-Luis Riera said Aug. 26.
“We stand firmly with our friends in the Jewish community at this difficult time.”
According to another Jewish student organization at the university, there are about 2,250 undergraduate Jewish students at UD, making up about 13% of the undergraduate population. UD has three registered student organizations serving Jewish students.
Several online fundraisers, including a GoFundMe set up by the Students of Chabad UD, have to date raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from more than 8,700 donors across the country to rebuild the Center.
Newark officials confirmed this week that they are investigating several intentional fires set in the city over the past few weeks. These include the fire at the Chabad Center, as well as a townhouse under construction that was set alight, and several trash fires.
Another Chabad Center for Jewish Life, located in Portland, Oregon, was damaged in a fire Aug. 19, but authorities have not declared that fire an arson.
In the first year of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI famously recalled the Second Vatican Council, which had ended 40 years previously. Benedict, with the steely-eyed realism that has marked his whole life, posed hard […]
CNA Staff, Sep 2, 2020 / 08:00 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of Belarus are calling for prayers that one of their archbishops, who was blocked from re-entering the country last week, be allowed to return home.
“It is inadmissible that a bishop of the Catholic Church, who is the pastor of the faithful entrusted to him, is deprived of the opportunity to be in his own diocese and to carry in it the ministry entrusted to him by [Pope Francis],” the Belarusian bishops said Sept. 2.
Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk-Mohilev was attempting to enter Belarus from Poland when he was stopped by border guards and denied entry “without explanation,” the website of the Catholic Church in Belarus reported Aug. 31.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz himself has spoken out saying that the border guards’ decision to refuse him entry to his homeland was “absolutely incomprehensible” and contravened the law. The archbishop said he visited eastern Poland to celebrate the First Communion of a relative; he is now in Białystok.
The ban on Kondrusiewicz’s reentry to the country is not only illegal, the bishops asserted, but also is detrimental to the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Belarusian state.
“The Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus hopes that the refusal of Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz to enter the Republic of Belarus is only an unfortunate misunderstanding that will be resolved as soon as possible, and that such incidents will not occur in the future,” the bishops concluded, encouraging all Catholics to pray for Kondrusiewicz’s safe return.
Catholics are the second-largest religious community in Belarus after Orthodox Christians, comprising roughly 15% of the population.
Kondrusiewicz had spoken out in defense of protesters following a disputed presidential election Aug. 9.
Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people bordering Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, has seen widespread protests since the incumbent Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner of the presidential election with 80% of the vote.
Lukashenko has served as president of Belarus since the office was established in 1994, three years after the country declared independence from the Soviet Union.
Electoral officials said that the opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, earned 10% of the vote. She was detained for several hours after complaining to the electoral committee, and has fled to Lithuania.
Police arrested thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets demanding a recount. Despite a severe crackdown, protests have continued across the country.
Last week Kondrusiewicz demanded an investigation into reports that riot police blocked the doors of a Catholic church in Minsk while clearing away protesters from a nearby square.
He prayed outside of a prison Aug. 19 where detained protesters were reported to have been tortured.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz told CNA Sept. 1 that “at the present time, we are asking for prayer, not only for the Catholic Church, but for a peaceful solution for the situation in Belarus because I’m very much afraid of civil war. The situation is very, very difficult, very critical.”
He expressed appreciation “to Catholics around the world for their solidarity, for their prayers, for their moral support in this very critical time for my nation.”
CNA Staff, Sep 2, 2020 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- While the Australian state of Tasmania is debating a bill that would legalize assisted suicide, the state of Victoria reported more than ten times the anticipated number of deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia in its first legal year.
Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board reported 124 deaths by assisted suicide and euthanasia since June 19, 2019, when the legalization of the precedure took effect, The Catholic Weekly reported. There were a total of 231 permits issued for the procedure that year.
According to the review board’s report, 104 of those who died under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 committed assisted suicide, while 20 people were euthanized by a medical practitioner.
“That number blows apart Victorian Premier Daniel Andrew’s much-publicised prediction of ‘a dozen’ deaths in the first 12 months,” Marilyn Rodrigues wrote in The Catholic Weekly, an Australian publication.
Victoria Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, of the Australian Labor Party, expected the number of persons seeking assisted suicide or euthanasia to be low initially, and increase in later years.
“We anticipate that once the scheme has been in place for some time, we’ll see between 100 and 150 patients access this scheme every year,” Mikakos told the ABC shortly before the law took effect.
“In the first year, we do expect the number to be quite modest — maybe only as low as a dozen people,” she added.
Applicants under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 ranged in age from 32 to 100, with an average of 71 years of age. Of those applicants, 44% were female, 55% were male and 1% were “self-described.” Metro-area residents made up 62% of applicants, while 38% were from a regional or rural area. A majority of applicants – 78% – had diagnoses of malignant cancer, while 15% of applicants had neurodegenerative diseases and 7% had other diseases.
Anti-euthanasia advocate and director of HOPE, Branka van der Linden, called the number of deaths and the rate at which they were occuring “alarming,” The Catholic Weekly reported. “Half of those who applied for lethal drugs made their final request for euthanasia less than three weeks after they first requested it,” van der Linden said.“That’s not a lot of time for reflection, for alternative options to be offered and explored, or for the necessary support to be provided.” Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne said the number of suicides was “heartbreaking,” and that the attitude toward death contradicts the extreme cautionary measures being put in place for the coronavirus pandemic. “The whole state is making sacrifices to protect people from COVID-19 while on the other hand public hospitals are encouraging assisted suicide,” Comensoli told The Catholic Weekly. “The contradiction is baffling for many doctors.”
Tasmania is currently debating a bill that would legalize assisted suicide for Tasmanian residents 18 years of age and older, who “have decision-making capacity, (are) acting voluntarily, and have a relevant medical condition,” ABC News Australia reported.
Relevant conditions include “a disease, illness, or injury” that is “advanced, incurable, irreversible and expected to cause death,” ABC reported. A person who qualifies is then given two days to consider their request for assisted suicide before they must pass the eligibility test again. Two doctors must then approve the request, and doctors would be allowed to refuse on philosophical grounds. The Tasmanian branch of the Australian Medical Association told ABC News that they do not support the bill, or assisted suicide in general. “The bill as it stands is really physician-assisted suicide and we don’t support that … we don’t agree that a doctor should ever do any action with a primary purpose of ending a person’s life,” AMA Tasmania President Helen McArdle told ABC. Live and Die Well, a Tasmanian group that advocates for palliative care rather than assisted suicide, has argued against the bill on the grounds that it does not provide enough safeguards for the vulnerable.
“The system doesn’t really allow for (the vulnerable) to be picked up and they should be protected rather than taken down the path towards assisted suicide,” spokesman Ben Smith told ABC.
“If we improve palliative care, that’s a much easier fix than to actually completely re-engineer the health system to include this sort of option.” The Tasmanian bill will go before the state’s parliament for a second reading next week.
Tasmania rejected a similar bill in 2013.
© Catholic World Report