A handful of Catholic leaders and others voice support for Cardinal Zen as his trial begins

Manila, Philippines, Apr 24, 2019 / 04:09 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders have offered prayers for the Philippines after two earthquakes struck the region this week.

A magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit the nation’s largest and most populous island of Luz… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 24, 2020 / 02:08 pm (CNA).- Researchers at an Australian think tank have found that re-education camps for Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region have expanded in the past year, despite government claims that most detainees had been released.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in a Sept. 24 report that it had “identified and mapped more than 380 suspected detention facilities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, highlighting ‘re-education’ camps, detention centres and prisons that have been newly built or expanded since 2017.”

“The findings of this research contradict Chinese officials’ claims that all ‘trainees’ from so-called vocational training centres had ‘graduated’ by late 2019. Instead, available evidence suggests that many extrajudicial detainees in Xinjiang’s vast ‘re-education’ network are now being formally charged and locked up in higher security facilities, including newly built or expanded prisons, or sent to walled factory compounds for coerced labour assignments.”

The think tank presented satellite imagery evidence showing construction and expansion at 61 sites since July 2019; half of these, it said, are ‘higher security facilities, which may suggest a shift in usage from the lower-security, ‘re-education centres’ toward higher-security prison-style facilities.”

It added that “at least 70 facilities appear to have been desecuritised by the removal of internal fencing or perimeter walls. This includes 8 camps that show signs of decommissioning, and it is possible they have been closed.”

An estimated 1 million Uyghurs, members of a Muslim ethnoreligious group, have been detained in re-education camps in Xinjiang. Inside the camps they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uyghurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.

The Chinese government has defended its policy of mass detention and re-education as an appropriate measure against terrorism.

The government at one time denied the camps even existed, but has since shifted to defending its actions as a reasonable response to a national security threat, and claiming they are vocational training centers.

Government officials from the region said in July 2019 that the area’s re-education camps for Muslims have been successful, with most of those held having been reintegrated into Chinese society.

Shohrat Zakir, chairman of Xinjiang, said at a July 30 press conference in Beijing that “most of the graduates from the vocational training centers have been reintegrated into society,” according to the AP. “More than 90% of the graduates have found satisfactory jobs with good incomes.”

Xinjiang vice chairman Alken Tuniaz said detainees were allowed to “request time off” and “regularly go home,” the AP reported.

While they are not permitted to practice their religion during their “period of study”, he said, they may do so at home.

Tuniaz also said that “the majority of personnel who received education and training have returned to society and gone back to their homes,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “The majority have successfully secured employment.”

Uyghurs can be arrested and detained under vague anti-terrorism laws. Violence in the region escalated in the 1990s and again in 2008.

A 2019 document from a Xinjiang county leaked to western media earlier this year gave violation of birth control policies as the most common reason for the “re-education” of some 3,000 Uyghurs, often alongside other reasons.

In June an AP investigation found a systematic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party of pregnancy checks and forced abortions, sterilizations, and implantations of IUDs on Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

The US House passed a bill Sept. 22 to ensure goods sold in the country are not made with forced labor from the internment camps, and earlier this year the Trump administration put travel and asset sanctions on several senior officials of the CCP. in Xinjiang for their role in the mass internment of Uyghurs.

The US Commerce Department in October 2019 added 28 Chinese organizations to a blacklist barring them from buying products from US companies, saying they cooperate in the detention and repression of the Uyghurs.

The repression of Uyghurs is part of a widespread effort by the Chinese government to “Sinicize” religion and culture across the country.

In 2018, the Holy See and Beijing signed a two-year deal to unify the underground Catholic Church in China with the communist-administered Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and to collaborate on the appointment of bishops in Chinese dioceses. That agreement is expected to be renewed. State officials in various regions of China have continued to remove crosses and demolish church buildings, and underground Catholics and clergy continue to report harassment and detention.

A Sept. 22 report by Adrian Zenz at the Jamestown Foundation said that in the Tibet Autonomous Region hundreds of thousands have been coerced into vocational training or labor camps.

And in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, beginning this month schools are transitioning from teaching three core subjects in Mongolian, to doing so in Mandarin.

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Hagatna, Guam, Mar 18, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The practices of the Neocatechumenal Way in Guam have drawn attention from the island’s coadjutor archbishop, who has said its members are to stop forming new communities for a year, in the interest of healing divisions in the archdiocese.

Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes of Agaña cited “a growing sense of distress about the multiplication of small communities in some parishes and about some of the differences in the way the Mass is celebrated among the small communities of the Neocatechumenal Way.”

The movement must celebrate Mass at a consecrated altar and members of the congregation who receive the Blessed Sacrament must consume it as soon as they receive it, the archbishop said in a March 15 pastoral letter to his flock on the northwestern Pacific island, a U.S. territory.

The Neocatechumenal Way is a new ecclesial movement that focuses on post-baptismal adult formation in small parish-based groups. It is estimated that the movement contains about 1 million members, in some 40,000 parish-based communities around the world.

Archbishop Byrnes was appointed as Coadjutor Archbishop of Agaña in October 2016 to replace Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who was relieved of his pastoral and administrative authority in June 2016 after allegations surfaced that he had sexually abused minors.

Archbishop Apuron is a member of the Neocatechumenal Way. He has also been accused of mishandling control over Guam’s seminary, reportedly using it as a Neocatechumenal seminary rather than a diocesan seminary, which led to the withdrawal of all Samoan students.

At his appointment, Archbishop Byrnes was given all the faculties, rights, and obligations of the Archbishop of Agaña.

“In the conversation with Pope Francis last October, he appealed to me in a particular way to do what I can to bring some healing to the divisions existing in the Archdiocese of Agaña,” he wrote in his pastoral letter.

“I realize that a number of factors have contributed toward the divisions. I cannot deal with them all at once hence what I outline below represents a beginning.”

He presented his decisions regarding the Neocatechumenal Way “in the context of the pastoral change entrusted to me by the Holy Father.”

Archbishop Byrnes will appoint a priest delegate to to review the Neocatechumenal Way’s catechetical directory and to ensure its catechists  are sufficiently formed.  

He is also regulating the liturgies of the Neocatechumenal Way in his local Church, to foster clarity and unity.

“The sooner we have unity and universal adherence as an archdiocese to the norms established by the Church in celebrating the body of Christ during the sacred celebration of the Mass, the sooner we shall be on the path to reconciling with one another and bring healing to our divided diocese,” Archbishop Byrnes said.

Since the Neocatechumenal Way says Mass on Saturday evenings, the coadjutor archbishop stipulated that all Masses on Saturday evenings be said at a consecrated altar. This norm will go into effect April 2.

He also directed that if the Neocatechumenal Way’s Mass is one of a parish’s regularly scheduled Masses, its special character be noted in the bulletin; if the Mass is in addition to a regularly scheduled Mass on Saturday evening, a portion of its collection should go to the parish; and that the pastor has the authority to direct how many additional Masses may be said.

Archbishop Byrnes also directed that, in accord with the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the celebrant of a Mass must consume the Body and Blood of Christ prior to distributing Communion, and that communicants are to consume the Body and Blood as soon as they receive the host or chalice, without any delay. These norms take effect March 26.

The archbishop recognized the good that the movement has brought to many people’s lives and he noted that it is recognized and approved by the Holy See.

However, it is imperative that it adhere to liturgical norms, he said, and this adherence “will only enrich the fruits of the Neocatechumenal movement.”

Fr. Paul A.M. Gofigan, rector of Dulce Nombre De Maria Cathedral-Basilica, told the Pacific Daily News that when the movement aims to start a new community, it offers testimonials at churches.

“Many have been very offended that the non-Neos have become a captive audience because these testimonials have been inserted into the Mass,” he said.

Since the Neocatechumenal Way was founded, the group has sometimes been cautioned by the Vatican for inserting various novel practices into the Masses it organizes. These include practices such as lay preaching, the reception of Holy Communion while sitting, and the passing of the Most Precious Blood from person to person.

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