Indonesian bishop declines cardinal appointment to ‘grow in priestly life’

Rome Newsroom, Nov 13, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Chinese government’s latest five-year plan proposal contains a birth policy with an emphasis on eugenics, a China scholar said this week.

China, known for its decades-long one-child policy, is n… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 26, 2020 / 10:01 am (CNA).- Following Pope Francis’ mention in passing of the Uyghurs as persecuted in a new book, the Chinese foreign ministry said the claim is groundless.

“I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi — what ISIS did to them was truly cruel — or Christians in Egypt and Pakistan killed by bombs that went off while they prayed in church,” Pope Francis is quoted as saying in the book, “Let Us Dream,” according to the AP.

An estimated 1 million Uyghurs, members of a Muslim ethnoreligious group, have been detained in re-education camps in China’s Xinjiang region. 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.

Neither Pope Francis nor the Holy See has publicly commented in an official capacity on the situation.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to Pope Francis’ mention of the Uyghurs by saying that there was “no factual basis at all” to the pope’s comment.

“People of all ethnic groups enjoy the full rights of survival, development, and freedom of religious belief,” Zhao said at a daily briefing, according to AP.

Researchers at an Australian think tank found recently that re-education camps in Xinjiang have expanded in the past year, despite reassurances from the government that a majority of detainees had been released.

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

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a resolution in October to declare China’s actions against the Uyghur population as a genocide. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who co-sponsored the resolution, emphasized the importance of human rights. 

“For far too long, the Chinese government has carried out a despicable campaign of genocide against millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” said Cornyn. “This resolution recognizes these crimes for what they are and is the first step toward holding China accountable for their monstrous actions.”

“Stopping a genocide is consistent with our national security and our values, and it starts by standing up and speaking the truth,” said Menendez.

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Seoul, South Korea, Mar 9, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The first Bishop of Pyongyang, an American born-bishop, and numerous priests and laity are among the 213 who could be beatified and advanced on the process to sainthood under a process begun in South Korea.

Bishop Lazarus You Heung-sik of Daejon predicted it will take at least ten years before any beatification or canonization, “but for our people, these people are already holy.”

The bishop heads the Korean bishops’ committee considering the beatifications. He told Asia News that important parts of the path to beatification are the Catholic faithful’s prayer and “desire to follow the spirit of the martyrs.”

One group under consideration for beatification includes Servant of God Bishop Francis Borgia Hong Yong-ho and 80 companions. This broad group ranges from the martyrs of the 1901 Jeju massacre, in which about 300 Catholics were killed, to the victims of persecution following the division of Korea following the Second World War.

Bishop Hong, born in 1906, was ordained a priest in 1933 under Japanese occupation. He was named the first native Bishop of Pyongyang in 1944. He was an apostolic vicar to a region considered mission territory by the Church. With the rise of communism, he was imprisoned in 1949. His fate is unknown, but he is believed to have died in a concentration camp in North Korea.

Until 2013, when he would have been 107, the Vatican considered him missing. Acknowledgment of his death opened the path to possible beatification.

Bishop Patrick James Byrne, a native of Washington, D.C., is also among the group. The Maryknoll missionary was born in 1888. He was ordained a priest in 1915, then served in Korea and Japan before the Second World War. In April 1949 he was named the first apostolic delegate to Korea, and ordained a bishop at the age of 60 in 1949.

In July 1950 he was arrested by communists and put on trial. He and other priests were put on forced marches. During a four-month-long forced march, suffering from bad weather and a lack of food and shelter, he died Nov. 25, 1950.

Altogether, the group associated with Bishop Hong includes two bishops, 48 priests, three seminarians, seven religious sisters, and 21 lay people.

The second group, Servant of God John Baptist Yi Byeok and his 132 companions, were all lay people killed for their faith between 1785 and 1879. Yi was from a family of court dignitaries who under the Joseon dynasty converted to Catholicism and helped evangelize Korea. He was martyred at the age of 33.

One of their number, Alexius Hwang Sa-yeong, died by martyrdom when his arms and legs were tied to four animals which were then driven away in opposite directions, dismembering him.

Another in the group died in exile and his martyrdom must be verified.

The Korean bishops’ conference has set up a special committee for the causes of saints with a Vatican mandate to consider martyrs who belong to different dioceses.

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