Colorado State Capitol Building in Denver. / Shutterstock
Denver, Colo., Nov 8, 2022 / 12:35 pm (CNA).
A new study has shown that the number of abortions in Colorado has spiked, in part because more women come from out of state seeking to procu… […]
A roll of I Voted stickers. / PhilipR / Shutterstock
St. Louis, Mo., Nov 8, 2022 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Catholics are heading to the polls Tuesday along with the rest of the electorate to decide who will fill all 435 U.S. House seats and 34 of the 1… […]
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ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 8, 2022 / 09:24 am (CNA).
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference defended the presence of Christian symbols on public property in light of a case coming before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation in w… […]
Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Bündgens in November, 2022 / Screenshot / YouTube / BistumAachen
CNA Newsroom, Nov 8, 2022 / 04:34 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of a German bishop … […]
Pope Francis prays on St. Peter’s Square, Oct. 5, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 8, 2022 / 04:12 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has sent a message to victims of a plane crash in Tanzania. He said he is praying for those who have died and their families.
The airline confirmed Nov. 7 that 19 people died after a commercial airplane crash-landed in Lake Victoria on its way to the town of Bukoba in north Tanzania on Sunday. Another 24 people have survived.
“Pope Francis sends condolences and offers the assurance of his spiritual closeness to all those affected by this tragedy, especially the families of the victims,” a Vatican telegram said.
The message, sent Monday night, was signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.
Pope Francis “prays in particular for the eternal repose of the deceased, the healing of the injured and strength for those involved in the rescue and recovery efforts,” the message said. “Upon all, His Holiness invokes the consolation and peace of Almighty God.”
The Precision Air flight left Tanzania’s commercial capital of Dar es Salaam on the morning of Nov. 6, before being caught in bad weather and crashing in Lake Victoria, one of the African Great Lakes, according to media reports.
The plane was carrying 39 passengers and four crew members. The two flight attendants survived, while the two pilots, who initially survived the crash, died before they could be rescued, Albert Chalamila, the chief administrator of Tanzania’s Kagera Region, told Reuters.
The African continent’s largest lake by area, Lake Victoria, spans northern Tanzania and southern Uganda and reaches partly into Kenya. The town of Bukoba, the flight’s destination, is on the lake’s southwestern shore.
The Catholic bishops of Tanzania extended their condolences to victims of the plane crash in a message Monday.
They said the country’s bishops’ conference “wishes the family members and all Tanzanians strength during this difficult time.”
“Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen,” the bishops wrote.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appoints judges to Miami’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, March 27, 2019. / Hunter Crenian/Shutterstock.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 8, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
An ad released by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign is being mocked for its religious content, which some have criticized as “blasphemous.”
The black-and-white ad, tweeted out by DeSantis’ wife, Casey DeSantis, shows a series of images from the governor’s public and private life narrated by a man who invokes God 10 times in the minute-and-a-half-long video.
“On the eighth day,” the narrator opens, “God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.”
Critics mocked the ad for being the “gospel of the Ron DeSantis re-election campaign.”
I love you, Ron.
On behalf of millions of people, never stop fighting for freedom. pic.twitter.com/5wcopo041U
— Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) November 4, 2022
A day before the election, DeSantis is enjoying a comfortable lead over his opponent, Democrat Charlie Crist. RealClearPolitics shows him with a12% lead, based on the average of recent polls.
The new ad, some speculate, may be intended for a possible run for the White House in 2024.
Former President Donald Trump, too, seemed to see DeSantis as a potential rival. At a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday, Trump named him as a possible candidate for president.
Declaring himself the front-runner, Trump said: “There it is, Trump at 71 [percent], Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent.”
Former RNC chairman Michael Steele issued a scathing condemnation of the ad on MSNBC’s Morning Show, calling it “ass-backwards blasphemy.”
“I don’t need Ron DeSantis to be Christ. I just need him to be governor, and that’s the problem,” Steele said.
Steele, who in 2020 joined the The Lincoln Project PAC, a group of Republicans who sought to defeat Trump, also endorsed Joe Biden for president the same year.
An MSNBC op-ed slamming the ad said: “Even if it is just a tease, like many far-right and authoritarian ‘jokes,’ DeSantis is not kidding around. The ad is dangerous and anti-democratic, and was meant that way.”
As Axios first reported, the ad is a spinoff from the popular and beloved “So God Made a Farmer” speech delivered in 1978 by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey to Future Farmers of America in Kansas City, Missouri.
Harvey’s ad began: “God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So God made a farmer.’”
By contrast, DeSantis’ ad says: “God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people. To save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness. So God made a fighter.”
In addition to mentioning God 10 times, the ad describes DeSantis as someone who will “advocate truth in the midst of hysteria” and “isn’t afraid to defend what he knows to be right and just.”
“God said: I need somebody who will take the arrows, stand firm in the face of unrelenting attacks, look a mother in the eyes and tell her that her child will be in school,” the ad continues — referring to the governor’s leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic when most state lockdown restrictions sent children home from school for the long term.
The ad continues to focus on the anonymous mother living during the pandemic.
“She can keep her job, go to church, eat dinner with friends, and hold the hand of an aging parent taking their breath for the last time,” the narrator says, referring to hospital rules that prevented families from being near their loved ones’ sides while they died.
Joshua Hren is the co-founder, with James Matthew Wilson, of the Catholic MFA program at the University of St. Thomas, as well as the founder of Wiseblood Books. He is the author of numerous works […]
It’s time for hostage negotiations. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Democrats, led by ostensible Catholics Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, have made imposing a radical pro-abortion regime the center of their appeal to […]
Members of the National Police prepare before going out to patrol the streets of Duran, city neighbouring Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Nov. 5, 2022. Special police forces continued on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022 to transfer imprisoned criminal gang leaders who have unleashed terror in Guayaquil as part of the government’s “open war” against drug trafficking. / Photo by RODRIGO BUENDIA/AFP via Getty Images
CNA Newsroom, Nov 7, 2022 / 16:15 pm (CNA).
Drug trafficking gangs in Ecuador have reacted to the government’s efforts to retake control of the prisons by launching a series of attacks — including the use of car bombs — that have left several dead, including five police officers.
In an effort to quell the violence, on Nov. 4 the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, extended to the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas the state of emergency that has been in effect in the provinces of Las Guayas and Esmeraldas since Nov. 1.
The state of emergency suspends for 45 days the rights to freedom of association and assembly, the inviolability of the home, and personal correspondence. The decrees of Nov. 1 and 4 also establish a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
In a Nov. 5 statement, the Ecuadorian bishops called on the crime gangs to stop the violence and to take the path to conversion.
“The power, the money that you now have from so many dirty businesses, from so many mafia-style crimes, is blood money… Convert; there is still time to not end up in hell. This is what awaits you if they continue down this path,” they warned, citing the words of Pope Francis.
They also called on politicians and social actors to seek the welfare of the people and not partisan interests. “It depends largely on political and social action for the mafias to not fill their ranks with the poor,” the bishops said.
After expressing their solidarity with the families of the victims, the prelates said that “each one of us will have to render an account not only to history but to God himself for our actions.”
“It’s time for national unity, to rebuild the social compact that unites us and fight that common enemy which is organized crime … that seeks to destroy the most valuable treasure we have, our children and young people, and that finds fertile ground in a society in which, unfortunately, poverty and inequality seem to have no end,” the bishops said.
The Ecuadorian bishops announced Sunday, Nov. 6, as a day of prayer in all parishes, chapels, and oratories to ask God for peace and the end of violence in the country.
The bishops asked that the following prayer be offered that day:
“Almighty and merciful God, Lord of the universe and of human history. Everything you have created is good, and your compassion for man, who abandons you again and again, is inexhaustible.
“We come today to implore you to protect Ecuador and its inhabitants with peace, taking far away from it the destructive waves of violence, restoring friendship, and pouring into the hearts of your creatures the gift of trust and readiness to forgive.
“Giver of life, we also pray to you for all those who have died, victims of brutal criminal acts. Grant them recompense and eternal joy. May they intercede for Ecuador, shaken by anguish and misfortune.
“Jesus, Prince of Peace, we pray for those injured in attacks by crime gangs: children and young people, women and men, the elderly, innocent people and those who have been randomly attacked. Heal their bodies and hearts; may they feel strengthened by your consolation. Keep away hatred and the desire for revenge from them.
“Holy Spirit the Comforter, visit the families that mourn the loss of their relatives, innocent victims of violence and drug trafficking. Cover them with the mantle of your Divine Mercy. May they find in you the strength and courage to continue being brothers and sisters to others, bearing witness to your love with their lives.
“Move the hearts of the violent so that they recognize the evil of their actions and return to the path of peace and goodness, respect for life and the dignity of every human being.
“God, Eternal Father, compassionately listen to this prayer that rises toward you amid the din and desperation of Ecuador. Full of trust in your infinite mercy, trusting in the intercession of your Most Holy Mother, we turn to you with great hope, imploring the gift of peace and asking you to remove from us scourge of violence away. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Rochester, New York / DanielPenfield via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Boston, Mass., Nov 7, 2022 / 15:15 pm (CNA).
The Diocese of Rochester, New York, is hoping to finalize a plan that would pay $55 million to 475 vic… […]
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