US President Donald Trump last month predicted “packed churches” on Easter Sunday despite a raging coronavirus death toll. His prediction has proved horribly wrong and highlights the inconsistencies populist leaders who have exploited religion now face.

Easter, Passover and the start of Ramadan all fall in April this year, a coincidence that, in normal times, would see millions of followers of the  world’s major monotheist religions come together in congregational prayers or family gatherings.

But the coronavirus pandemic has physically atomised the faithful, with lockdown measures sparking unprecedented scenes of clergymen conducting Holy Week services in empty churches and cathedrals across the world.

Inside the fire-ravaged Notre Dame cathedral, Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit joined a small group of priests for a Good Friday service minus a congregation commemorating one of Christianity’s holiest days as well as the first anniversary of the inferno that ravaged the Gothic landmark. In a haunting sight inside the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, a handful of Franciscan friars in dark robes and face masks walked through deserted streets under the pelting rain along the Via Dolorosa, believed to be the path Jesus took to his crucifixion.

Saudi Arabia has already suspended the year-round umrah pilgrimage and has asked Muslims to delay their travel bookings to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina for the annual Haj in July and August amid questions over whether the world’s largest religious gathering can go ahead on schedule.

There’s no doubt however that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins around April 23, will be very different this year with the faithful unable to gather together for the iftar evening meal ending the day’s fasting.

Earlier this week, Jews across the world celebrated Passover with Zoom Seders instead of the traditional family gathering of generations around tables. Israeli authorities tightened the existing lockdown measures with a special nighttime curfew on Wednesday to dissuade visits and gatherings. Joining “grandma and grandpa” for a Seder, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett warned in a stark pre-Passover message, “could kill them”.

The deadly Covid-19 virus has killed more than 100,000 people across the world and it’s attacking what French sociologist Emile Durkheim identified as the fundamental purpose of religion: the social phenomenon of drawing communities together in rites and ritual observances. It is also exposing the fault lines between religious faith and science as well as tensions between spiritual and secular powers. The infectiousness of the disease has undermined the congregational nature of religious practices while the failures by some religious groups to follow social distancing has exacerbated the targeting and stereotyping of religious followers.

For populist leaders who have exploited religion to rise to power or maintain their political positions, the crisis “could threaten the foundations of their religious support base as well as their discriminatory policies towards religious or ethnic minorities”, noted James Dorsey, senior fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. This could play out in countries with “segments of ultraconservative religious communities that have different concepts of medicine or a blind faith in God to solve the problem”, explained Dorsey in a phone interview with FRANCE 24.

The health minister who put his faith in the Messiah

Tensions between the temple and laboratory were on stark display in Israel, where Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, a member of the ultra orthodox Ger Hasidic community, told Israeli media last month that he was “sure the messiah would come and save us”.

Litzman and his wife later tested positive for coronavirus, forcing several senior Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of the Mossad intelligence service – into quarantine since they had been in contact with the health minister who put his faith in the messiah.

Critics have called for Litzman’s resignation and dubbed him “Typhoid Miriam” after “Typhoid Mary”, the New York cook who infected dozens at the turn of the 20^th century. Despite his cabinet position, Litzman’s “primary loyalty” was to the rabbinical leaders of his religious sect, Yehoshua Pfeffer, an ultra-Orthodox expert, told AFP. The health minister, Pfeffer noted, had failed to prevent members of his ultra-orthodox sect from conducting religious gatherings while the country had already imposed travel restrictions and banned mass events.

Netanyahu, who relies on the ultra-orthodox support base which makes up about 10 percent of the population, has struggled to enforce the closure of synagogues and yeshivas in places such as Bnei Brak, one of the country’s poorest, most congested cities and centre of the ultra-orthodox community. Members who live in self-imposed segregation have been particularly affected by the pandemic, with health authorities estimating that at least 38 percent of Beni Brak residents may be carrying the coronavirus.

The crisis has threatened Netanyahu’s coalition and its impact could stretch even deeper. The ultra-orthodox community’s disproportionate political influence and exemption from the country’s mandatory military service is a longstanding source of tension, with critics calling for the integration of the Haredim, as the community is called, into modern Israeli life.

The coronavirus crisis, Dorsey suggests, could also threaten the community from within. “In Israel, the ultra-orthodox live in their own world, they don’t listen to the media, they listen to the rabbi’s advice. The pandemic could undermine rabbinical authority on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, when rabbis advised members not to leave Europe and people paid a heavy price for that advice,” noted Dorsey.

Cow urine and #CoronaJihad in India

Political leaders who “seek religious legitimacy, cater to a religious support base or initially discarded scientific advice for expedient political reasons may have met their match in the coronavirus. Science has knocked religion and traditional healing methods out of the ring in the battle between rival approaches towards getting the coronavirus pandemic under control”, Dorsey noted in an April 7 blog, “Stopping COVID-19 in its tracks: Science gets the upper hand”.

In the first two weeks of March, while Italy was already under a nationwide lockdown, supporters of India’s Hindu right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi were hosting “gaumutra parties” across the country, where crowds, urged by saffron-robed religious leaders, gulped cups of cow urine which, they were told, was a miracle cure against the coronavirus.

Although some of the events were held by senior members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian prime minister — who relies on a vast vote base of Hindutva [or “Hinduness”] supporters to win elections — kept silent on the issue.

As the number of coronavirus cases in India mounted, Modi finally took to the airwaves towards the end of March to call on his countrymen to unite in the fight against coronavirus. In a widely hailed address devoid of Hindu supremacist bluster or anti-elitist or anti-Muslim rhetoric, Modi called for solidarity in the face of the deadly pandemic.

But weeks later, as the number of coronavirus cases in India mounted, national unity calls appeared to fall on deaf ears as hate crimes against Muslims spiked following a coronavirus contagion spread from a religious event organised by the Islamic missionary group, Tablighi Jamat.

As #CoronaJihad and #CoronaTerrorism trended on Twitter, with government spokesmen devoting more time to lambasting the Muslim religious gathering than measures to tackle the humanitarian fallout of a hastily-imposed nationwide lockdown, fake news reports began to swell on WhatsApp and other platforms. They, in turn, sparked anti-Muslim attacks across the country with at least one person killed in the eastern state of Jharkhand, according to Indian media reports.

Muslim missionary movement under scrutiny

The Tablighi Jamat movement has come under scrutiny in a number of countries for its role in spreading the coronavirus in Asia.

A missionary movement that originated in India in the 1920s, the Tablighi Jamat has branches across the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe and the US. Given the loose nature of participation and membership, follower estimates are hard to gauge, with the Pew Research Center noting they range from 12 to 80 million across roughly 150 countries.

An apolitical group focused on proselytizing and worship, the Tablighi Jamat is known for its khuruj – or proselytizing tours which see devotees, dressed in simple clothing, traveling for days, sometimes months, while sleeping in mosques and other religious sites. The group’s country branches also hold annual ijtema events, which can gather millions in countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

A February 27 to March 1 ijtema in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, which was attented by more than 16,000 people, including 1,500 foreigners, triggered the epidemic in Malaysia as well as in Brunei, with cases traced to Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. It was followed by a mid-March ijtema near the Pakistani city of Lahore, which resulted in the spread of coronavirus as far afield as Gaza. It was cut short by Pakistani authorities last month.

In India, a gathering at the groups global spiritual centre, or markaz, in the Nizamuddin area of the Indian capital, New Delhi, was shut down on March 22, days before a nationwide lockdown went into effect at midnight, March 25.

While the religious group’s irresponsibility has been widely slammed, experts have noted that in India, a number of mass religious gatherings took place in the same period. These include a Sikh gathering in Punjab — where a single “super spreader” preacher who died of the virus sparked a quarantine of 40,000 people —  and a Hindu temple festival in the southern state of Kerala. None of them sparked the level of public anger faced by the Tablighi Jamat.

Meanwhile, a more controversial breach of Modi’s strict nationwide lockdown occurred in Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanand, the Hindu firebrand chief minister of India’s most populous state, led a ceremony to install a religious icon on a disputed religious site the morning after the lockdown was called. While the Uttar Pradesh police allowed the ceremony to go ahead, a criminal complaint was filed by the state’s police against the editor of the news site, The Wire, for covering the event, sparking condemnations from international press freedom groups.

Adityanath was allowed to perform the ritual with a select gathering of officials and religious supporters, sparking criticisms of elitism and hypocrisy that have also dogged Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan’s VIP prayers and Trump’s Easter prediction  

On March 27, as Turkish Muslims were being urged to pray at home, Erdogan held a select Friday prayer service on the presidential palace grounds that has since been dubbed, “the VIP prayer”.

Photographs of the event was posted on Twitter by Diyanet, the country’s Religious Affairs Directorate that coordinates Turkey’s religious activities and has increasingly turned into a tool of Erdogan’s bid for leadership of the Sunni Muslim world.

Over the past few weeks, Turkey’s Diyanet has come under intense criticism for its failure to stem the spread of the epidemic. Some opposition politicians claim pilgrims returning home were given medication to conceal rising fever readings and allowed to return to their villages, spreading the epidemic to Turkey’s rural areas.

Religion and politics have a long, complicated history with each needing the other at different times in different ways in different places to survive. Blasting the role of the Evangelical movement in US politics in a New York Times column, author Katherine Stewart noted that “Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise.

“In the current crisis,” Stewart wrote, “we are all reaping what that movement has sown.”

Not all religious groups or leaders have been in opposition to science or public health directives. The vast majority of priests, imams and clergymen and women of different faiths across the world have seen no inconsistency in emphasising the importance of saving human life over the need for ritual gatherings.

But that depends on their acceptance of scientific principles and the primacy of the world of facts over issues of faith. The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the dangers of rejecting science for a blind acceptance of faith.

Last month, Trump was optimistic that the US would be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter”. The prospect of “packed churches all over our country”, Trump said, would make it “a beautiful time”. But as residents in his home city, New York, wake up to headlines of mass graves in the heart of the metropolis, Trump’s brash forecast of a beautiful Easter with packed churches is unlikely to be forgotten in some quarters, or forgiven in the spirit of the teachings of the risen Christ.

Culled from France 24

Australia’s highest court on Tuesday overturned former Vatican treasurer George Pell’s conviction for sexually assaulting two teenaged choirboys in the 1990s, allowing the 78-year-old cardinal to walk free from jail.

In a unanimous ruling, the High Court found that the jury in Cardinal Pell’s trial “ought to have entertained a doubt” as to his guilt.

The court’s seven judges ordered the convictions be quashed and verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place.

Pell, who has maintained his innocence throughout the lengthy court process, cannot be retried on the charges, ending the most high profile case globally of alleged sexual abuse by priests to have rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

Pell, a polarising figure in Australia for his conservative views, was the highest ranked Catholic official worldwide to have been jailed for child sex offences when he began serving a six-year sentence a year ago.

The cardinal was charged in 2017 with one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four charges of an indecent act with a child under 16, which the plaintiff said took place when Pell was archbishop of the city of Melbourne.

The judgment was delivered during Holy Week, the period leading up to Easter which is the most important day in the Christian calendar, following two days of hearings a month ago.

The decision was delivered to a largely empty courtroom in Brisbane because of national restrictions on travel and public gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Pell’s first trial ended in a hung jury, before the jury in a second trial unanimously found him guilty in 2018. Pell did not take the stand at either trial.

Under Australia’s court system, his first appeal went to a court in Victoria, where a majority of two judges against one upheld his conviction.

Pell’s lawyers then took the case to the High Court, arguing that the Victoria appeals court had erred in shifting the onus of proof to the defense and in finding that it was open to the jury to find Pell guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

The High Court said the lower court of appeal had “failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have bene a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.”

The cardinal was appointed by Pope Francis in 2014 to overhaul the Vatican’s vast finances but lost his role last year after being jailed. Pope Francis has said he would only comment on the case after Pell exhausted all avenues of appeal.

He has remained a cardinal despite pressure on the church from victims of sexual abuse and their advocates to dismiss him.

(REUTERS)

He had always loved those who were his in the world, but now he showed how perfectly his love was” (John 13:1)

 Dear Holy People of God,

 God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good!

 This Sunday, we celebrate what our Christian tradition calls Palm Sunday, which is the start of Holy Week. St Paul writes to us in his Letter to the Romans: “But what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Having died to make us righteous, is it likely that he would now fail to save us from God’s anger?” (Romans 5:8-9). Given the times that we are living in, it might be difficult for many to believe in the love of God. Even for the believer, it can be very tempting, a great trail of faith. But Holy Week has something to say, even to the perilous and precarious situation of a world plagued by COVID 19. Holy Week tells us that though we can humanly be paralyzed by fear, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the present and the future, the fear of death, as disciples in mission to the world, we have a message to the world of the Coronavirus. There is no denying that uncertainties leave us profoundly disturbed, especially the uncertainty of contracting a deadly virus. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) wrote these words that I find meaningful to us today, perhaps more so than when they were first written. Permit me make an extensive citation from the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes:

 “Nevertheless, in the face of the modern development of the world, the number constantly swells of the people who raise the most basic questions or recognize them with a new sharpness: what is the human being? What is this sense of sorrow, of evil, of death, which continues to exist despite so much progress? What purpose have these victories purchased at so high a cost? What can men and women offer to society, what can they expect from it? What follows this earthly life?

 The Church firmly believes that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through His Spirit offer man and woman the light and the strength to measure up to their supreme destiny. Nor has any other name under the heaven been given to man and woman by which it is fitting for them to be saved. She likewise holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history. The Church also maintains that beneath all changes there are many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.

 It is in the face of death that the riddle a human existence grows most acute. Not only is man tormented by pain and by the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction. He rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the utter ruin and total disappearance of his own person. He rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to sheer matter. All the endeavors of technology, though useful in the extreme, cannot calm his anxiety; for prolongation of biological life is unable to satisfy that desire for higher life which is inescapably lodged in his breast. Although the mystery of death utterly beggars the imagination, the Church has been taught by divine revelation and firmly teaches that man has been created by God for a blissful purpose beyond the reach of earthly misery.

In addition, that bodily death from which man and woman would have been immune had they not sinned, will be vanquished, according to the Christian faith, when man and woman who was ruined by his own doing is restored to wholeness by an almighty and merciful Saviour. For God has called man and woman and still calls them so that with their entire being they might be joined to Him in an endless sharing of a divine life beyond all corruption. Christ won this victory when He rose to life, for by His death He freed man and woman from death. Hence to every thoughtful man and woman a solidly established faith provides the answer to his anxiety about what the future holds for him. At the same time faith gives the human being the power to be united in Christ with his loved ones who have already been snatched away by death; faith arouses the hope that they have found true life with God. The root reason for human dignity lies in man and woman’s call to communion with God. (Gaudium et Spes, #10, 18, 19).

Dear Holy People of God, as we continue to live with hope during these uncertain times, let us remember that the Christian’s ultimate hope and meaning in life resides in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again from death, opening the possibility of eternal bliss with God for all humanity. Yes, it is human to fear death. But it is Christian to know that in Christ, the dead do not enter into nothingness, into extinction, but enter into what Gaudium et Spes calls the “blissful purpose beyond the reach of earthly misery.” And Holy Week teaches us that it takes a certain kind of people, a certain kind of life, to be able to enter into this blissful mystery at the end of our biological life here on earth.

St John gives us what that kind of life is: “It was before the festival of the Passover, and Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father. He had always loved those who were his in the world, but now he showed how perfectly his love was” (John 13:1)! That is the message we Christians have for a frightened world, a world, perhaps, in need of a new soul, a new direction: That in spite of the global pandemic of Coronavirus, in spite of all the uncertainties marking life in the present, God loves the world (John 3:16), God has not abandoned the world, God will never abandon the world. In Jesus Christ, one of the human race, of us, a truly human being (Council of Chalcedon), has definitely responded to God’s love for the love, a love that binds God forever to the human condition. In Jesus, a human being has definitely committed humanity in a resounding YES to the God’s offer of love for the world. And because of this irrevocable commitment of a human being to the irremovable offer of love to the world by God, the believer, in Christ, with Christ and to Christ (Augustine of Hippo), brings this Divine love to the world. The believer offers the world the GPS of Love that reflects itself in love for other and prepares us for eternal bliss with God. Only a heart that loves can enter into the mysteries of Holy Week, the Week of God’s Total Love that changed the trajectory of world history from the human tendency to absolutize economics, politics, science, power, et cetera, to a civilization of mutual love.

 Fr Maurice Agbaw-Ebai

Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo of Burkina Faso has tested positive for the coronavirus, his archdiocese announced Tuesday. He is the second cardinal known to have tested positive for the virus, which is now a global pandemic.

Ouédraogo, 75, has been admitted to a medical clinic in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou.  He is “in good condition and his close collaborators are reported to be self-isolating,” a spokesman for Burkina Faso’s bishops’ conference, Fr. Paul Dah, told ACI Africa on March 31.

The cardinal is president of the African continental bishops’ conference, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM). He was elected to the post in July 2019. He has been Archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso for ten years, and was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014.

Ouédraogo is the second bishop from Burkina Faso known to have contracted COVID-19, as countries across Africa implement lockdowns and restrictions to slow the spread of the virus across the continent.

Another Burkina Faso bishop, Archbishop Emeritus Séraphin François Rouamba of Koupela, tested positive for COVID-19 after being admitted to Our Lady of Peace clinic for urgent treatment on March 19.

The 78-year-old archbishop has since been transferred to another hospital and is reportedly in stable condition, according to a March 25 statement from Bishop Laurent Birfuore Dabire of Dori, Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso has the largest documented coronavirus outbreak in West Africa, with 249 documented cases as of March 31, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

The coronavirus has spread throughout the African continent to 47 countries, according to the Africa Center for Disease Control. In North Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco each have more than 500 documented cases, and the South African government has reported more than 1,300.

Three Nigerian states began two-week mandatory lockdown this week to combat the spread of the virus, including Lagos, Africa’s most populous city with more than 20 million people.

Zimbabwe and Mauritius have also implemented national shut-downs, and the bishops in South Sudan and Zimbabwe have suspended public Masses.

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, tested positive for coronavirus on March 30.

Other bishops in Italy, France, China, and the United States have also tested positive for COVID-19, and Bishop Angelo Moreschi, 67, died in the Italian city of Brescia on March 25 after contracting the coronavirus.

Source: Catholic News Agency

Pope Francis’ Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Monday after testing positive for Covid-19.

The Cardinal is running a fever, but his general condition is currently good, and he has begun antiviral therapy. Cardinal De Donatis, following procedures in place to halt the spread of the coronavirus, has had fewer meetings with his staff at the Lateran Palace recently. As a precaution, his closest collaborators are in isolation. The Cardinal noted that he has not been to the Vatican in recent days, and has been in contact with the Pope only by phone.

Sharing in the suffering of others

“I am also experiencing this trial, I am at peace and confident”, Cardinal De Donatis said. “I entrust myself to the Lord, and to the prayers of all you, dear faithful of Rome!”

He added, “I live this moment as an opportunity that Providence has given me to share in the sufferings of so many brothers and sisters. I am offering my prayer for them, for the whole diocesan community, and for the people of the City of Rome”.

Entrusting ourselves to the hands of God

Since 11 March, Cardinal De Donatis has been celebrating a Mass every evening at the Sanctuary of Divine Love in Rome. The Mass is broadcast on the Bishops’ Conference television channel, TV2000, and is live-streamed on the Diocese of Rome’s Facebook page.

During the first Mass from the Sanctuary, on the occasion of the Pope’s act of entrustment to Mary, the Cardinal said that “the antidote, the therapy for the suffering of the present moment, is to entrust oneself to the hands of God. We are in His hands, and no one can tear us away from Him”.

Priests and Bishops on the frontlines

Catholic clergy have been particularly affected by Covid-19. Dozens of priests already succumbing to the disease in Italy alone. Last week, Salesian Bishop Angelo Moreschi, the Apostolic Vicar of Ethiopia’s Gambella Vicariate, became the first Bishop in the world to die of the disease. 

Flags at half-mast

Meanwhile, the Holy See, in solidarity with Italy, will be flying flags at half-mast on Tuesday, as a sign of mourning. The gesture is an expression of the Church’s closeness to the victims of Covid-19 in Italy and around the world, as well as to their families and to those who are generously fighting to end the pandemic.

Culled from Vatican News

They preside over funerals, comfort the sick, and are often themselves elderly: in the coronavirus crisis in Italy, priests are paying a heavy price.

“A priest is always close to the people. For good or bad, it’s his raison d’etre,” said Monsignor Giulio Dellavite, secretary-general of the diocese of Bergamo, which is currently the hardest hit area in Italy’s north.

Over 7,000 people have been infected by COVID-19 in the city and province of Bergamo, and priests have not been spared.

Of the 67 Italian priests who have died of the virus, more than 20 have come from Bergamo, including a bishop, according to the Catholic newspaper Avvenire.

However, the grim toll does not deter many.

Giuseppe Locatelli, the priest of the parish in Albino, also in the province of Bergamo, says he has no plans to renounce his ministry.

“Priests are on the second line. Doctors and nurses are on the front line with the risks they take every day. We take fewer risks,” Locatelli told AFP.

He recently blessed a man on his death bed, he said, “because it was a special circumstance,” with only the ailing man’s wife and handicapped son at home.

“They were alone,” Locatelli said.

Like doctors and nurses, priests need to protect themselves, Dellavite said.

“Our priests are dying because they’re not calculating” the risks, he said.

One of them was Giuseppe Berardelli, a priest from Casnigo, near Bergamo, who died in hospital this month at the age of 72.

“Not knowing that the virus was so dangerous, he continued to work, going into homes to perform funeral rites. And when he got infected, he didn’t stop right away,” said Gianbattista Guarini, a local merchant in Casnigo.

Source: AFP