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German bishops to Church in Africa: Initiate canonization of German martyrs

German martyrs who gave their lives in the service of the Gospel in Africa. Clockwise from top left to bottom right: Bishop Cassian (Franz Anton) Spiess, Father Karl Maria Weber, Brother Bernhard Ignatius Sarnes, Bishop Adolph Schmitt, Sister Magdala (Christa Elisabeth) Lewandowski, and Brother Heinz vom Kreuz (Heinz) Eberlein / Credit: ACI Africa/Martyrology of the German Bishops’ Conference

ACI Africa, Mar 16, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).

A representative of the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference has challenged Church leaders in Africa to initiate canonization processes for the German martyrs who were violently killed in various African countries. 

ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, asked Father Helmut Moll, who has compiled biographies of more than 30 German martyrs who were reportedly victims of violence in Africa, what was being done to ensure their cause for canonization is opened.  

“Your local Churches should ensure that these German martyrs are raised to the honor of the altars,” Moll replied, referring to the local ordinaries of the episcopal and metropolitan sees, as well as national bishops’ conferences, where the reported martyrdoms occurred. 

As a starting point, he said, there is a need to translate the biographies of the Germans, who paid the ultimate price for evangelization in Africa, into African languages. 

“Please translate the biographies of the African martyrs into your national language!” Moll urged during a March 7 interview, days after sharing the list of German martyrs killed in Africa. He said that currently these biographies “are being translated into Arabic, but there are difficulties with printing.”

Moll, a historian with prior experience serving in the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, started compiling biographies of the German evangelists at the request of the Catholic bishops in Germany.

The November 1994 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II on the preparation for the Jubilee of the Year 2000, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, reportedly inspired the compilation of these biographies.

In the apostolic letter, Pope John Paul II said: “At the end of the second millennium, the Church has once again become the Church of martyrs. In our century, martyrs have returned, often unknown, akin to ‘unknown soldiers’ of the great cause of God.”

The German martyrs in Africa whose profiles have been documented include Father Franz Jäger, a member of the Oblates who was killed in 1905 in South West Africa during the Herero Uprising. South West Africa was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1990 and became the present-day Namibia.

Others include three Dominican missionaries who lost their lives in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) in 1977: Sisters Magdala (Christa Elisabeth) Lewandowski from Kiel, Epiphany (Berta) Schneider from Munich, and Ceslaus (Anna) Stiegler from the Upper Palatinate.

Other German-born evangelists who lost their lives were Benedictine missionaries, St. Benedictus Missionary Sisters of St. Ottilien who were killed in Tanzania, as well as a Sacred Heart Missionary priest and two Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld, killed in Congo. 

Moll told ACI Africa that he had contacted various religious and missionary orders who passed along the information about their members who were killed in Africa.

The German priest expressed optimism that German evangelists killed throughout Africa will revitalize the Church in Germany, noting that having paid the ultimate price, they “show the missionary zeal that is so important for our country today.”

Meanwhile, Moll, who has vast expertise in martyrology, has encouraged Christians in various African countries who are experiencing persecution because of their faith to embrace martyrdom with humility.

“Learn from these biographies,” he said of his list of the German martyrs who died for their faith far from their home country. “Accept the martyrdom of your members and raise them high as an example.”

Moll went on to challenge the Church in Africa to work toward ensuring that the sacrifice of those who give their lives for the sake of their faith is not forgotten.

“The bishops’ conferences in Africa are called upon to compile their own martyrologies so that missionaries and Indigenous people may become better known throughout the Catholic world,” Moll said.  

This article was originally published by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, and has been adapted for CNA.

Head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church talks war, the pope, and same-sex blessings 

Sviatoslav Shevchuk is major archbishop of Kyiv–Galicia and primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. / Credit: Screenshot/EWTN News Nightly

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 16, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

In an exclusive interview with EWTN News, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, spoke of the continued need for humanitarian aid in his country and discussed Pope Francis’ peace efforts and the recent controversy over same-sex blessings.

The Ukrainian patriarch was in the U.S. for a week of meetings with public officials and Church leaders to foster renewed support for Ukraine. He spoke with EWTN at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in Washington, D.C. 

Shevchuk emphasized his gratitude to the American people for their support but voiced concern that the U.S. could be tiring of helping Ukraine. He pleaded: “Please don’t give up Ukraine.”

War in Ukraine

Though conveying a “message of gratitude” to the American people, Shevchuk voiced his worry that ordinary Ukrainian people are being forgotten as prolonged political debate over support for Ukraine has delayed action.

As the Ukraine-Russia war hits its two-year mark, there are currently 14.6 million Ukrainians in urgent humanitarian need, according to Shevchuk. 

“We cannot say, okay, I’ll eat on the next week,” he said, adding that the Ukrainian Catholic Church “is a main actor in this humanitarian action of assistance to the Ukrainian people, and I can testify that aid cannot be delayed.”

Instead of thinking of the war in political terms, Shevchuk urged the American people to think of Ukraine in terms of its “simple, suffering people.”

“Each day, probably 200 Ukrainians are killed and any delay of the capability to receive the help to protect those people is paid with their blood.”

Reflecting on his personal experience of the war, Shevchuk said that though “nobody is safe in Ukraine,” intelligence reports have indicated that he is one of Russia’s top 10 targets for elimination. 

“So, it is dangerous. But that is the mission of each bishop in that time to journey with his own flock,” he said. “From the very beginning, I completely entrusted myself, my life, into God’s hand. Lord, let your will be done. If you want me alive, it means that I have to serve your people. I am still alive, which means that I have a mission.”

“Jesus Christ today is crucified in the crucified body of Ukraine. And we venerate him in the wounds of the simple people,” he said.

Pope Francis

Shevchuk said there is a great desire among the people of Ukraine for Pope Francis to visit the country and that they “are praying” for him to come soon.

Despite this, Shevchuk admitted that the Vatican’s neutrality in the wake of the war “was not very well received in Ukraine in the beginning, because how can somebody be neutral when there is an aggressor who is killing us constantly each day?”  

He mentioned Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 2023 visit to the Vatican, saying that because of the president’s belief that his country “doesn’t need a mediator but allies,” it was “not an easy moment in the relationships between the official Kiev and the Vatican.”

Yet, Shevchuk praised the pope for using his neutrality to help gather humanitarian aid and to work toward peace between Russia and Ukraine. He said that when speaking to Ukrainians about the Vatican’s decision to remain neutral he makes the distinction between diplomatic and moral neutrality.

“The Holy Father is not neutral in the moral level. He is with us and he confirmed that many times,” he said.

“This neutrality was given as an instrument of searching to alleviate the suffering of the people, and probably in the future some sort of channels of communication for a possible peace agreement,” he added. “So, in a certain sense, we do have a good ally.”

Same-sex blessings

Shevchuk said the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has no plans to implement or further discuss the Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans, which allows “nonliturgical blessings” for homosexual couples.

The Ukrainian Church was the first Eastern church under Rome to declare that the document would not be implemented in its jurisdiction.

Shortly after the document’s release, Shevchuk issued a statement in which he said that because the document “does not address questions of Catholic faith or morality, does not refer to any prescriptions of the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, and does not mention Eastern Christians,” it “applies exclusively to the Latin Church and has no legal force for the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.”

“Each Vatican document has a special process of reception in our Church,” Shevchuk explained to EWTN.

“We have our own way to be open to everybody but also how to deliver church blessings,” he said. “In our tradition, we never can distinguish liturgical and nonliturgical blessings.”

“When I grew up, always the sacred space was not limited with the church building,” he went on. “We were taught that Christians are supposed to bring that liturgy of light outside of the church. So, for us, it is very difficult to distinguish nonliturgical blessings.”  

He noted that if approached by someone asking for a blessing, he would give it without asking if the person was in a state of sin or if he had been to confession.

“Of course, if somebody will approach me and ask for the blessing, I’ll give the blessing,” he said. “It’s not a moment to inquire in his personal condition as a Christian. But to distinguish so sharply between liturgical and nonliturgical blessing, for us, it’s quite difficult.”

How Irish Catholic slaves brought the faith to the Caribbean

On the island of Montserrat, St. Patrick’s week is a kind of homecoming for the Montserratian diaspora. Visitors get a shamrock stamped in their passports, and many Irish Americans take advantage of the inexpensive airfares to spend the March holiday in the Caribbean. / Credit: The Montserrat Tourism Division

National Catholic Register, Mar 16, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

When St. Patrick arrived in Ireland in the fifth century, he came first as a slave. He later returned as a missionary to plant the seeds of the Catholic faith. In a similar fashion, when the first Irish came to the island of Montserrat, they were slaves who planted the Catholic faith in this “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean.”

Much like Ireland, Montserrat is a lush, green, and mountainous island, where St. Patrick is venerated and shamrock symbols can be found everywhere as a sign of the Montserratians’ blended Irish heritage and ancestry. The British Caribbean territory is the one place in the world where St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated as a public holiday for an entire week, not just on March 17.

“The island is filled with Irish names. Everybody has an Irish name: Sweeney, Alan, Fergus, Osborne; and the names of places on the island are all Irish: Cork Hill, Kinsale, Fogerty Hill,” Carol Osborne, a Catholic resident of Montserrat, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, illustrating the impact of the Irish who first colonized the island after its founding in 1632.

Osborne explained that Montserrat’s St. Patrick’s week is a kind of homecoming for the Montserratian diaspora. Visitors get a shamrock stamped in their passports, and many Irish Americans take advantage of the inexpensive airfares to spend the March holiday in the Caribbean.

Last year marked the return of the St. Patrick’s Festival after being closed since 2020 due to the pandemic. Visitors come from all over the world and many Montserratians return home for 10 days of celebrations, culture, and traditional foods. 

“It really is a happy week,” Osborne said. Although the African cultural heritage is mostly at the forefront throughout the year, when St. Patrick’s week comes, “everybody is Irish in Montserrat.”

The British Caribbean territory is the one place in the world where St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated as a public holiday for an entire week, not just on March 17. Credit: The Montserrat Tourism Division
The British Caribbean territory is the one place in the world where St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated as a public holiday for an entire week, not just on March 17. Credit: The Montserrat Tourism Division

African and Irish Catholic ancestry

Montserrat’s island culture largely derives from its African and Irish Catholic ancestors, who were both in bondage and eventually intermarried — a number of Montserratians have dark skin, blue eyes, and red highlights in their hair.

Osborne explained that Montserrat’s traditional masquerade dances are a cross between Irish step dance and African dance. The island boasts a traditional dish known as “goat water,” which Osborne likened to a traditional Irish stew but fused with African flavor. Irish influence can even be seen in the island’s unique folk music, as exemplified by Montserrat’s Emerald Community Singers.

The St. Patrick’s week of festivities honors both the heritage of the island’s Irish-Catholic descendants and their enslaved African ancestors, who attempted their own failed rebellion on March 17, 1768, against those Irish who had, over the course of a century, moved from bonded laborers into the planter class. 

Irish Catholic origins

Since the early 17th century, the history of Ireland and the Caribbean islands has been entwined. The English rulers of Ireland, particularly under the dictatorship of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, forced indeterminate thousands of Irish Catholic men, women, and children to be sold into bonded slavery in the Caribbean. As involuntary “indentured servants,” their bodies could be lawfully bought, sold, used, and abused by their plantation masters for a set period of “servitude,” which could also be indefinitely extended. Many of them were brought to Montserrat.

African slaves transported to British Caribbean holdings later in the 17th century would experience even worse brutality at the hands of their masters, as perpetual or chattel slaves, until slavery was finally abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834.

While these Irish brought the Catholic faith to Montserrat, which at one point was dominated by Irish inhabitants more than the other British Caribbean islands, fewer than 12% of Montserratians identify themselves as Catholic — a consequence of the legal discrimination that the Church endured until the first half of the 19th century, which prevented them from sending priests to the island and building churches. Most of the islanders are Christian, but the two largest denominations are the Anglican and Pentecostal churches.

James Doan, a humanities professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, highlighted the challenges in a research paper for the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, stating: “Priests said Mass in secret, some being smuggled from nearby St. Kitts (60 miles away) disguised as sugar-cane workers.” Only in 1826, Doan pointed out, did a Catholic priest receive funds and permission from the authorities to build a church for his flock.

St. Patrick's Day extends to an entire week on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean where Irish culture and ancestry goes back generations. Credit: The Montserrat Tourism Division
St. Patrick's Day extends to an entire week on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean where Irish culture and ancestry goes back generations. Credit: The Montserrat Tourism Division

A hardy faith

Still, the Catholic faith has hardy roots in Montserrat. It has weathered and rebuilt after severe natural disasters, such as the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and the 1997 eruptions of the island’s volcano, which destroyed the previous capital city of Plymouth and rendered the island’s southern area uninhabitable. Approximately two-thirds of the island’s pre-disaster population emigrated, but a third remained to rebuild their future in the preserved north.

“Contrary to what some people thought, it actually strengthened their faith. They were very thankful that God protected their island,” Father George Agger, who was pastor on Montserrat from 2006 to 2015, told the Register. Despite the devastation, most people were successfully evacuated, and only 19 lives were lost.

The people of Montserrat have a “very strong faith” that treasures the blessings that they have, explained Agger, of the Divine Word Missionaries. Agger recounted that when he would visit the sick and dying on Montserrat and ask them how they were doing, they would say, “Thank God for life!”

Osborne pointed out that the Church established one of Montserrat’s first schools, St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic School, more than 140 years ago and rebuilt it after the Soufrière Hills volcano destroyed it. The island’s three Catholic churches were all named for saints the Montserratians identify with: St. Patrick (the slave who brought Christianity to his former captors); St. Martin de Porres (who also has mixed African-European ancestry); and Our Lady of Montserrat (who is known in Spain as the “Black Madonna,” due to the color of the statue). Only St. Patrick’s and St. Martin de Porres have been rebuilt in new locations, but Osborne said that a Florida family donated a beautiful statue of St. Patrick to Montserrat’s Catholic community.

Lasting Irish connection

Since the 1970s, Montserrat’s Catholic community has been served by Irish priests from the Divine Word Missionaries.

Agger said the first Irish priest to arrive in Montserrat from his order was Father Larry Finnegan, a local hero highly regarded for his self-sacrifice during the volcanic crisis.

“He stayed with people, he could have had nice accommodations, but he lived with the people in the evacuation centers … with 80 different people sharing two toilets, one shower and the same food,” Agger said. Finnegan, who died in 2015, also worked hard to make sure that St. Augustine’s school was rebuilt and reopened quickly for the school children. “He was my best friend, and it was great to work where he had worked.”

The Anglican community of Kinsale, Ireland, also fundraised to help rebuild St. Patrick Church in a new location, after their pastor learned from Agger that it had been destroyed in Kinsale, Montserrat, by the volcano. They sent a beautiful processional cross made of stainless steel that incorporated a sail, symbolizing the journey of St. Patrick overseas, and a new Book of the Gospels.

What connects the Irish and the Montserratians is the figure of St. Patrick that looms large in their identities. Religious leaders give the annual sermon that opens the St. Patrick’s week festivities.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, on March 17, 2016, and was updated March 14, 2024.

Satisfying the ‘hungry heart’: an interview with Bishop Barron 

In addition to the spiritual maladies of the times, Bishop Robert Barron says he also sees opportunities for both evangelization and renewal in the Church. / Credit: Screenshot/EWTN News in Depth

CNA Newsroom, Mar 16, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, provided both diagnoses of and prescriptions for the most pervasive spiritual maladies of our times in an interview with EWTN News Rome correspondent Colm Flynn.

One of the most popular bishops in the United States and founder of the Word on Fire evangelization ministry, Barron told Flynn the spiritual crisis of our age is stoked by “the immanentism, the materialism, the secularism that has taken hold of much of our culture.” 

“Nothing in this world can satisfy the hungry heart. You can deceive yourself for a while,” he explained. “But the heart knows otherwise and will rebel against that sort of immanentism.” 

Barron told Flynn he also sees hopeful signs and opportunities for the Church. 

He has observed that even “some of the most popular podcasts in the world” that were secularized 10 years ago are now using “spiritual language.”

“I’m aware of that, kind of in the zeitgeist, there’s this moment of new spiritual interest,” he said. “Let’s take advantage of it … the Church should move into that space to say boldly, but lovingly, we have the answers. You’ve now experienced the hunger. We got the bread of life, that will satisfy you.”

Barron said that within the Church itself, another hopeful sign is the renewed focus on the Eucharist, which in the United States will culminate this year in the National Eucharistic Congress that will take place July 17–21 in Indianapolis.

Asked what he hopes will be the fruit of the country’s Eucharistic Revival, the bishop answered: “A keener sense of the importance of Jesus Christ … so that I hope it awakens people’s faith.”

Christendom College women’s basketball wins national title

The Christendom College Women's Basketball team wins the 2024 USCAA DII National Championship. / Credit: Paul Aguilar

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).

The Christendom College women’s basketball team has made school history — bringing home the school’s first national title in women’s basketball. Christendom defeated Johnson & Wales Charlotte 76-65 in the USCAA DII National Championship in Petersburg, Virginia, on March 13. 

Christendom College is a Catholic liberal arts college founded in 1977 in Front Royal, Virginia.

According to the college’s press release, the team was ranked No. 7 going into the tournament and had major upsets against the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 seeds. 

After earning their first trip to the USCAA National Championship Tournament last season, the team had even higher expectations for themselves this season. They went 23-5 during the regular season, which was also a school record. 

Mary Pennefather, a freshman, and Catherine Thomas, a junior, led the USCAA in points per game with 24.6 and 27.3 points per game respectively, and total points scored, with 566 and 601. 

Christendom beat No. 2 Penn State Beaver and No. 3 Central Maine in the quarterfinals and semifinals — landing them their spot at the championship game against the No. 1 seed. Roughly 100 Christendom students made the trip to support and cheer their team to victory. 

The championship game was hard fought with Christendom losing the lead several times but pushing each time to gain it back, the release said. The women came out of the game strong in the second half and extended their lead to 56-40 to close the third quarter. With less than three minutes left in the game, they had gained a lead of 72-49. Johnson & Wales gave a strong last effort during those final minutes, but it wasn’t enough to beat the Crusaders.

Thomas was named tournament MVP for her outstanding performance over the course of four games, including setting tournament records in single-game points scored and three-pointers made in the quarterfinals. Pennefather, Regina Bonvissuto, and Miranda Keller were all named to the All-Tournament team as well.

Photos of the win can be found on the college’s web site.

Virginia diocese offers to assist with burial of unborn baby found in pond

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CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, this week announced that his diocese is willing to help with the burial of the body of an unborn baby discovered in a local pond. 

Police in Leesburg, Virginia, announced this week the “discovery of a deceased late-term fetus in a pond” about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.  

“The investigation is being treated with the utmost seriousness and sensitivity,” the police said, with Leesburg Police Chief Thea Pirnat calling the discovery “a deeply tragic situation.”

In a statement on the Diocese of Arlington’s website, Burbidge said it was “with great sorrow that I learned today of the unsettling discovery of the body of an unborn baby described by police as a ‘late-term fetus,’ found in a pond in Leesburg.” 

“The Diocese of Arlington has made it known that we are willing to assist with the proper burial and committal of the remains,” Burbidge said.

The bishop “urge[d] the faithful of the diocese and all people of goodwill to join me in prayer for the child’s mother and for anyone involved in this incident.”

Burbidge said the Diocese of Arlington “encourages all women who find themselves in unexpected or difficult pregnancies to seek assistance” through Catholic Charities or the Gabriel Project, a pregnancy support group. 

The Leesburg police department did not immediately respond to a query on Friday regarding the status of the investigation. 

Burbidge, who was installed as the bishop of Arlington in 2016, is also the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

This story was updated on Friday, March 15, at 6:30 p.m. to clarify that the Diocese of Arlington has offered to assist in the burial of the infant's body.

Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law won’t affect seal of confession, diocese says

Catholic pilgrims from Hong Kong came to see the pope at the welcome ceremony in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Sept. 2, 2023. / Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA

Rome Newsroom, Mar 15, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

The Diocese of Hong Kong on Friday issued a statement that the seal of confession would not be violated under the new National Security Law, legislation that grants greater latitude to prosecute crimes of treason and foreign political interference.

“With regard to the legislation of Article 23 on safeguarding national security, the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong recognizes that as a citizen, it has obligation to national security,” the March 15 statement said. 

In the brief statement, released on Friday, the Diocese of Hong Kong stated that the legislation will not alter the confidential nature of confession (the sacrament of reconciliation) of the Church. According to diocesan figures, the Catholic population of Hong Kong — a city of 7.5 million — is 392,000. 

The new 212-page homegrown National Security Law, also known as Article 23 of the Basic Law — the constitutional document guaranteeing Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy under Chinese rule — is the latest attempt to curtail civil liberty and crack down on crimes against national security, including treason, espionage, external interference, and disclosure of state secrets. 

The draft bill in the Special Administrative Region comes after Beijing imposed a sweeping National Security Law in June 2020, granting the government maximum latitude to interpret threats to national security and the unchecked authority to crack down on any form of perceived political dissidence and public protest.

Clergy could face 14 years in prison

The proposed legislation, unveiled on March 8, comes after a four-week-long consultation period, culminating in a 220-page summary report. The new legislation carries up to life imprisonment for treason, while failure to disclose treason committed by others carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. It includes a provision to protect attorneys from being charged with treason but does now allow clergy the same protection.

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok told journalists last week that it would be “very difficult to create exceptions” for people like clergy and social workers. 

U.S. weighs in

U.S. lawmakers have expressed fears that the new law would further erode fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong and be used to bring it further under the orbit of Beijing. 

“With Article 23 legislation, the Hong Kong government explicitly seeks to bring local laws in line with the PRC’s expansive concept of national security. This aligns with General Secretary Xi Jinping’s political agenda as codified in the 1025 PRC National Security Law,” a March 14 letter sent by the Congressional-Executive Committee on China to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated. 

“The Hong Kong government already routinely uses the pretext of ‘national security’ to gut the free press and quash any semblance of political opposition,” the statement continued. 

An attempt was first made to push through Article 23 in 2003 — following the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to Chinese rule in 1997— was shelved following popular backlash when more than 500,000 people took to the streets to protest. 

Peru’s Congress approves legislation protecting pregnant women and their babies

The Congress of the Republic of Perú in the nation’s capital of Lima. / Credit: Cris Bouroncle/AFP via Getty Images

Lima Newsroom, Mar 15, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

The Peruvian Congress passed by a wide margin a bill that establishes the obligation of the state to guarantee “the protection of the pregnancy, the pregnant mother, the unborn child, and their family environment.”

The measure, sponsored by Congresswoman Rosangela Barbarán of the Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party, was approved on March 13 by a vote of 87-18, with seven abstentions, and has been sent to the country’s president, Dina Boluarte.

In an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, the director of the Latin American Office of the Population Research Institute, Carlos Polo, said the legislation represents “true progress in the agenda for respecting the life of the conceived child.” 

Polo added that on March 25, the Day of the Unborn Child in Peru, a significant celebration will be held to commemorate the achievement that “Congress established by law that the state protects both lives.”

Article 2 of the legislation stipulates that both the state and society, especially health care professionals, are obliged to provide special protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. This protection extends across the board to all entities, both public and private.

One of the most relevant provisions of this law is the recognition of the right of babies to be born “in a healthy, decent, and safe environment.” In addition, the right of the father is also recognized in everything that benefits these important phases of the gestational process.

In practical terms, Polo pointed out, the new law promotes public policies that guarantee comprehensive health coverage for the mother and the unborn child, including prenatal check-ups, maternal nutrition, preparation for childbirth, prenatal stimulation, childbirth and postpartum care, postnatal rest, early stimulation, prevention and early diagnosis, early care and rehabilitation, family counseling and therapy, as well as health education and support for entrepreneurial families.

Polo added that, based on this law, no entity will be able to “use the penal code as an excuse to say that in Peru there is the right to ‘therapeutic abortion’ and that it’s legal.”

“Nor will they be able to continue citing the disastrous ruling of the Inter-American Court in the case of Artavia Murillo v. Costa Rica, which says that the life and health of the mother is more important than the life of the conceived child,” Polo explained.

Peru’s penal code states that abortion “is not punishable” when “it is the only means to save the life of the pregnant woman or to avoid serious and permanent harm to her health.” However, since early August last year, there have been cases of abortions performed on sexually abused minors justified as “therapeutic” abortion.

For Giuliana Caccia, director of the Origen Association, it is clear that the “majority of Peruvians want children to be born healthy and we want to work to make that happen.”

“For us, the solution to poverty or poor health is not to kill children but working to make progress so that the conditions improve for the most vulnerable,” Caccia posted on X.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pope Francis names U.S. police professional, Colombian bishop to minor protection commission

A Colombian psychologist bishop and a retired colonel from the Illinois State Police are the new secretaries of the Pontifical Commission for the Guardianship of Minors. / Credit: Holy See Press Office

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 15:25 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis on Friday appointed an American former law enforcement professional as adjunct secretary to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and a Colombian bishop as secretary of the independent body tasked since 2014 with advising the pope on how the Church can best protect minors and vulnerable adults. 

The Vatican announced March 15 that Teresa Morris Kettelkamp, a Chicago native and Illinois law enforcement professional, was named as the commission’s adjunct secretary. Auxiliary Bishop Luis Manuel Alí Herrera of Bogotá, Colombia, was named secretary of the commission, replacing Father Andrew Small, who had served as temporary secretary since 2021. Both appointees were already members of the currently 19-member commission. 

The commission, established by Pope Francis in March 2014, is headed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who turns 80 in June. O’Malley has defended the commission’s effectiveness, saying last March that “the protection of children and vulnerable persons remains at the heart of the Church’s mission.”

Kettelkamp formerly was appointed to lead the United States bishops’ Office for Child and Youth Protection in 2005, serving in that role until 2011. She was first appointed a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2018. She had previously worked on the drafting of the Guidelines for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Adults with the commission. 

A former colonel with the Illinois State Police (ISP), Kettelkamp retired after 29 years of service, during which time she headed the ISP’s crime labs and crime scene services. She also, according to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors website, headed the ISP’s Division of Internal Investigation, which was responsible for the investigation of allegations of misconduct within the ISP as well as in the agencies, boards, and commissions under the executive branch of the Illinois state government.

Alí Herrera, who is also a psychologist, was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, on May 2, 1967, and was ordained a priest in 1992. After graduating with a degree in theology from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá in 2003, he obtained a degree in psychology from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome (2007). He is a senior associate of the Colegio Colombiano de Psicólogos (Colombian School of Psychologists), Vatican News reported.

Pope Francis appointed him as a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014 and appointed him an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Bogotá the following year.

The work and operations of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has garnered scrutiny in recent years, in part because of questions Small, the commission’s former temporary secretary, has faced since May 2023 about his management of funds at the Pontifical Mission Societies U.S.A. In addition, a prominent founding member of the commission, Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, resigned his post roughly a year ago, citing “issues that need to be urgently addressed” related to a perceived lack of “responsibility, compliance, accountability, and transparency.”

Riley Gaines, other female athletes, sue NCAA for allowing transgender competitors

Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines is sworn in during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 14:45 pm (CNA).

Riley Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on Thursday alleging that allowing men to compete in women’s competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX. 

In a post on X, Gaines, a former swimmer with the University of Kentucky, announced the suit.

“It’s official. I’m suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, and roster spots to men posing as women. The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about it,” Gaines posted.

The athletes’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleges that “harm” is done to women due to “NCAA’s radical departure from Title IX’s original meaning.” This harm included “subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”

“Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read. 

Through the lawsuit, the athletes hope “to secure for future generations of women the promise of Title IX.”

The lawsuit comes in the wake of a controversy where Gaines made headlines for speaking out after being forced to compete against Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete. Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win a women’s national championship. 

“The secret of Thomas’ meteoric ascendance and dominance in NCAA women’s swimming was retained male advantage,” the complaint read.

The plaintiffs, 16 female athletes, accused the NCAA in the lawsuit of imposing a “radical anti-woman agenda” on college sports, defining women “as a testosterone level,” and “permitting men to compete on women’s teams.”  

Georgia Tech University, the University of Georgia, and the University of North Georgia were also named as defendants in the lawsuit. 

The athletes also accused the NCAA of “destroying female safe spaces in women’s lockers by authorizing naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non-consenting college women and creating situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly expose their naked or partially clad bodies to males, subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.” 

The lawsuit further alleges that the NCAA “has aligned with the most radical elements of the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda” on college campuses in order to increase its “campus approval ratings” and ultimately further what the lawsuit calls “the NCAA’s relentless drive to monetize collegiate sport, and diverting attention from the financial exploitation of college athletes.”

The athletes alleged that this happens “all at the expense of female student-athletes.”