French lawmakers pass bill on Notre-Dame; new report says cathedral nearly collapsed during fire

Killorglin Parish, Co. Kerry, Biodiversity Garden, September 2022. / Photo credit : Jane Mellett

Dublin, Ireland, Aug 27, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).
On the Emerald Isle, which draws many tourists for its green, unspoiled landscapes, Catholic bishop… […]

Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, Apr 16, 2018 / 02:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christian leaders on the Channel Island of Guernsey have united to author an open letter opposing assisted suicide legislation which will be debated in the coming months.

Signed by 53 pastoral ministers and 41 churches, the letter spelled out the dangers of introducing physician assisted suicide in the bailiwick, calling the measure dangerous for the community.

“We believe the proposal to introduce a legal provision for assisted dying to be misplaced and indeed a danger for us as a community, particularly for the most vulnerable in our island,” read the letter.

“We believe the States of Guernsey should focus on the care of vulnerable people, support the Les Bourgs Hospice, increase mental health provision and care well for those with age-related dementia. As a community we need to celebrate and support all of life and not actively seek to terminate life.”

“Every life is a gift that is precious and worthy of defense. Living life in all its fullness will include darker times, pain and sorrow. This is part of the rich diversity and tapestry of life that also provides opportunities for care, generosity, kindness and selfless love,” the letter continued.

One of the letter’s signatories, John Guille, is chairman at Les Bourgs Hospice. Other signatories of the letter included officials of the Catholic Church, the Church of England, and Methodism.

Debate on the whether to approve in assisted suicide legislation in principle will take place May 16 in the territory’s legislature, the States of Guernsey. Guernsey is a Crown dependency for which the U.K. is responsible, located off the coast of Normandy.

Current laws in Guernsey do not make allowances for physician assisted suicide and the island’s prominent hospice center, Les Bourgs, adheres to the World Health Organization’s ethos of hospice and palliative care, which upholds that end-of-life care may “neither hasten or postpone death,” according to the Guernsey Press.

“We are taking the exceptional step of writing to the people of Guernsey as Church leaders across a wide community of Christian witness,” the Christian ministers wrote.

In the letter, the church leaders cautioned against the popular push for “choice” when it comes to end-of-life care, saying that it should not be “the primary argument for life and death issues.”

“Deeper ethical and moral considerations should have much greater weight in matters of island policy and law,” they said, also noting that “individual ‘choice’ is not an isolated event,” but rather something that effects other people and society as a whole.

“Our decisions can also be influenced by profound life-changing events,” they continued, noting that an illness or a grim diagnosis would have a profound effect on a person’s ultimate end of life care.

The leaders also highlighted mental health conditions, such as depression, which could push an individual to pursue assisted suicide, instead of looking into other options. They encouraged the “support of those who love us,” during these challenging times, instead of pushing death.

The States’ consideration of the assisted dying measure would also hold a great weight for the vulnerable on the island, the church ministers noted, saying that individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and others with sicknesses will see the measure as “a threat.”

They also noted that the legislation would dramatically affect the relationship between doctors and patients, “threatening the trust that issuing life-ending prescriptions will bring.” The assisted suicide legislation could additionally open the doors to other measures, the leaders wrote, reaching beyond the conditions of those nearing their lives.

“Of the few other jurisdictions that have introduced assisted dying most have, over time, seen the initial safeguards eroded and criteria broadened to include other conditions beyond terminally ill people,” the letter said.

“To assist in the death of another is essentially to assist in their suicide,” the letter continued.

Ultimately, the Christian leaders on Guernsey urged citizens to discern deeply the potential impact of introducing physician assisted suicide, particularly on the community’s most vulnerable citizens.

“Our hope and prayer is that the requete is rejected by the States,” the letter said. “This is a life and death issue so please contact your deputies with your views, doing so with the care and compassion that sustains our island community.”

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, the diocese which encompasses Guernsey, had spoken out against the assisted suicide proposal in a letter last month to the Parish of Our Lady and the Saints of Guernsey. He urged Catholics to “mobilize” and to “speak out against this proposal.”

“Someone near the end of life needs emotional support, comfort and care, good pain control, respect and loving communication – not suicide on prescription,” Egan said.

If the upcoming legislation passes, Guernsey would be the first territory among the British Isles to legalize assisted suicide.

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Paris, France, Jun 19, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics walked through Syria’s Wadi al-Nasara, or “Valley of the Christians,” this Pentecost, praying the rosary, alternating between the Arabic and French prayers for each decade.

Their two-day pilgrimage, inspired by the annual Notre Dame-Chartres walk in France, coincided with Pentecost pilgrimages in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt organized by the French humanitarian organization SOS Chretiens d’Orient as a gesture of prayer and solidarity.

“These few intense days of hiking and prayers will remain engraved in hearts as precious moments when Syrians and French were united by the same Spirit,” Madeleine, a French volunteer for SOS Chretiens d’Orient in Aleppo, Syria wrote on their blog.

“The pride of having traveled the kilometers with bravery, the long discussions shared, the services rendered together have been a reflection of the love that binds our two countries by the grace of God,” she said. “We were in communion with the pilgrimage of Notre Dame de Chretiente in Chartres.”

The Syrian pilgrims and volunteers came from Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo to walk the path along Mediterranean Sea toward the sanctuary of Saint Charbel in the village of Daher Safra.

Athar, a Syrian participant, reflected, “We shared with each other our life with the good times and the bad times. We prayed together. We walked together. It was great because we learned how to accept each other, how to help each other.”

In Iraq, the Pentecost pilgrimage through the Nineveh Plains led to the Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Alqosh, a Chaldean Catholic church founded in the 7th century.

Sistine, a French SOS Chretiens d’Orient volunteer in Iraq, described the experience:

“Arriving at the foot of the monastery, as night begins to fall, our songs to Mary resound magnificently in this calm and wild place. The whole group climbs the remaining few hundred steps in a final burst of energy to reach the small chapel. Finally, after so much effort, prayers, sweat and empty water bottles, we gather here to put all our intentions in Mary’s arms.”

We “gather together to express our prayer intentions, entrusting our lives, vocations, Christians of the East and Iraq to our Heavenly Mother,” she said.

The Notre Dame-Chartres walk, which inspired the pilgrimages in the Middle East, drew more than 14,000 participants this year.

Benjamin Blanchard, director of SOS Chretiens d’Orient, told CNA that each of the pilgrimages in the Middle East used the same book of prayers and hymns used in the Notre Dame-Chartres walk.

Blanchard has led a group of volunteers and staff from the Middle East in the French pilgrimage to Chartres for the past four years.

“We are here to pray and to work with all of the pilgrimage, but we especially pray for the Christians of the Middle East, for all of the volunteers and donors of the organization,” he said.

Johnny Dagaly, a Chaldean Catholic from Iraq, told CNA that walking the pilgrimage in France with 14,000 other Catholics gave him a strong sense of the “Body of Christ” that is the Church.

“It has been a very good experience to be here, and when I come back to Iraq, I will share that with all of my friends, my family, with everyone,” Dagaly said.

“I am praying for peace, for peace in all the world and in my country, in Iraq, because we have not had peace from 40 years ago until now,” he said, adding, “I also prayed for my mom.”

Majd Kassouha, a 26 year-old Syrian Melkite Catholic, told CNA that he walked the 62-mile French pilgrimage with prayers for his country to rebuild, not just the infrastructure lost in the war, but also the hearts of the Syrian people.

“The suffering in the heart and the mind is much more painful than the … physical suffering,”  Kassouha said. He and his family remained in Aleppo throughout the country’s civil war and said he witnessed the death of many of his friends and family.

“When we were attacked and I saw my friends dead … I started to think that without Jesus I can’t continue, so I prayed to Jesus to encourage me, to give me the force to continue,” he told CNA.

“Our country, a beautiful country, deserves a condition better than now. Rebuilding the people because we are all destroyed in our hearts. Everyone has lost a lot of dear people,” he said.

“I hope that Syrian people find peace in their hearts and in the country in general,” he said. “I hope to go back to my home and to see it in peace.”

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