Religion

7, April 2019

Pope Francis blames US, Europe for deaths of people in war zones ⁰

Pope Francis says arms sales by the United States and Europe are to blame for the deaths of people, including children, in such places as Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan.

“The rich Europe and America sell weapons… used to kill children and kill people,” said the pontiff, in unprecedented remarks made while addressing students and teachers at Milan’s San Carlo Institute on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

He said violence-scarred countries like Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan would not be witnessing wars if it was not for the arms.

“A country that produces and sells weapons has on its conscience the death of every child and the destruction of each family,” the Pope said.

The US and major European countries, such as Britain and France, have been selling loads of weapons to Saudi Arabia and its allies, which invaded Yemen in March 2015.

US-Saudi arms deals

In March, the London-headquartered child rights advocacy group Save the Children reported that as many as 37 Yemeni children are being killed or injured by foreign bombs every month.

Violence engulfed Syria in 2011. The US and its European and regional allies began funding and offering other kinds of support to various militant and terrorist outfits in the Arab country attempting unsuccessfully to topple the Syrian government. Last December, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said more than 21,000 children had died since the country plunged into conflict.

Under the banner of “war on terror,” the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Thousands of civilians have been killed each year since then.

Slamming walls

The Pope also spoke about the need for countries to welcome migrants, rejecting any association between migrant integration and increase in crime rates.

Foreigners are not the source of most crimes, the Pope said, adding “we also have lots of them (asylum seekers)” in Italy.

“The Mafia has not been invented by Nigerians. Mafia is ours,” he said. “All of us have the possibility of being criminal. Migrants bring us wealth because Europe has been made by migrants.”

The remarks were clear jabs at US President Donald Trump, who has banned travelers from several Muslim countries, blamed Mexican migrants for an alleged rise in crime in America, and been attempting to have incoming asylum seekers stopped at the US’s southern border through the building of physical barriers.

“Builders of walls — be they made of razor wire or bricks — will end up becoming prisoners of the walls they build,” Pope Francis said last Sunday.
Presstv

29, March 2019

The Holy Father sends message of peace ahead of visit to Morocco ⁰

Pope Francis on Thursday sent a message of peace ahead of his 2 day visit to Morocco. The head of the Vatican is the first pope to visit the north African nation in 35 years.

“ As Christians and Muslims, we believe in God the Creator and Merciful One, who has created men and women and lives on the earth so that they may live together as brothers and sisters, respecting each other’s diversity and helping each other in their need. He has entrusted the earth, our common home to them, to care for it and to preserve it for future generations “, he said.

God the Creator and Merciful One, who has created men and women and lives on the earth so that they may live together as brothers and sisters, respecting each other’s diversity.

The pope added he will “encourage the Progress of the Christian community and to meet the migrants who represent a call to build a world of greater justice and solidarity’‘.

Pope Francis will be welcomed by some 30,000 Roman Catholics in Morocco, who are mostly sub-Saharan African students or migrants heading for Europe.

He will hold a mass in Rabat on Sunday and 10,000 faithfuls are expected to attend.

Ahead of the Pope’s visit, the Christian Moroccan Coordination said ‘’ we dream of a free Moroccan morality, hoping for a “historic occasion” for Morocco to “move forward in this direction”.

AFP

23, March 2019

Roman Catholic priest assassinated in French Cameroun ⁰

Fr Toussaint Zoumalde, Superior of the Capuchins in Chad and the Central African Republic, died a few days ago after being stabbed at Ngaoundere in the Francophone part of neighbouring Cameroon. He was travelling from Bouar in the Central African Republic where he had conducted a training course, back to his community in Chad.

Fr Zoumalde, who was originally from Bouar, spent the night of 19 March in diocesan premises and was found in a pool of blood nearby the next day. It is suspected that Fr Zoumalde was killed by an anti-government rebel group but it is hard to pin responsibility for such incidents.

Fr. Toussaint (born in 1971) had worked extensively as a journalist for Radio Siriri, of the diocese of Bouar, and composed several religious songs.

In the last two days a number of incidents took place in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon: a football coach was kidnapped and released in Bamenda, a former government minister was kidnapped nearby, a football team of 15 was kidnapped at Buea University and 80 people travelling by bus from Buea to Kumba were detained in their bus from 9 am to 5 pm. These are assumed to be actions by separatists.

The news has thrown into despair all the religious communities of Central Africa and all the people who have known him. Internally, in Cameroon, there are tensions over the two mainly English-speaking south-western provinces. A secessionist movement emerged in the 1990s, and turned into an insurgency in 2016.

Source: Independent Catholic News

23, March 2019

Battle for Ambazonia: Anglophone Catholic bishops call for peace ⁰

Catholic leaders in the English-speaking parts of Cameroon have called on all parties to respect human life, as the ongoing Anglophone crisis continues to wreck the region.

In a lengthy Lenten message, the Archbishop of the Bamenda, Cornelius Fontem Esua, and his auxiliary, Bishop Michael Miabesue Bibi said all life is sacred, even in times of conflict.

About 80 percent of Cameroon is French-speaking. However, the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon are majority English-speaking, a legacy of the colonial history of the country: Cameroon was originally German, but after World War I the defeated country transferred it to the Allies, and it was divided between France and Britain.

At independence, the two parts were reunited, and currently about 20 percent of the country’s nearly 25 million people is Anglophone. The Catholic Church is the largest religious group in the country, representing about 40 percent of all Cameroonians.

In October 2016, strikes by lawyers and teachers over perceived attempts by the Francophone administration to assimilate the legal and educational systems practiced in the two English-speaking regions turned violent, and morphed into rising demands by Anglophone Cameroonians for independence.

The government has been accused of razing entire villages and extrajudicial killings in their hunt for separatists, who are calling on the English-speaking areas to form a new country, called ‘Ambazonia.’

The United Nations estimates nearly 500,000 refugees and internally displaced persons have fled their homes in the region due to the conflict.

“Since the beginning of the crisis of the Anglophone Problem which escalated on November 21, 2016, there has been increasing and rampant profanation and disrespect of human life and the dignity of the human person,” the bishops wrote.

“This has taken unimaginable and alarming proportions. Violence has become common place because of the frequent confrontations between the military and the secessionists. Nearly every day we hear gunshots which are now jokingly referred to as ‘popcorn’ from various corners of our towns and villages. There is indiscriminate killing of innocent people with impunity. It seems that human life has lost its value and sacredness and the dignity of the human being is rubbed in mud,” the statement continued.

The prelates said they couldn’t understand why hospitals and health facilities are “vandalized,” and condemned the continued violation of human rights “with impunity in such a way that some wounded persons are denied medical care and are taken away from hospitals and health centers for summary extra judicial execution.”

They blasted the protagonists in the conflict for engaging in “cold-blooded killings,” and for celebrating such violence.

“In fact, people are quick to kill those they suspect or consider as their enemies. The breaking into houses, the burning of houses, leaving hundreds of people homeless, and the looting and burning of property no longer make news. Some men and women, students and teachers, parents and children, religious men and women are not only molested but kidnapped for ransom. Life seems to be valueless and meaningless,“ the bishops said.

They also expressed concern about the “frightening disrespect for the dead.”

“The corpses of some of those who have been killed are thrown into streams and rivers or dumped near others’ compounds to make them suspects. Some of those killed are burnt to ashes. We have seen dead bodies with heads, legs or other parts of their bodies chopped off. It has now become normal to hear an announcement over radio that there are unidentified corpses in the Bamenda Regional Hospital Mortuary. It is now not unusual to see fresh or decomposing dead bodies on the public highway. A lot of disrespectful things have been and are being done on dead bodies. Many people have been prevented from taking and burying their loved ones. All this is against the sacredness and dignity of the human person. This is unheard of in our African tradition where the dead are venerated,” wrote the bishops.

The way forward

Esua and Bibi said only an inclusive dialogue can put an end to the mayhem in the country’s English-speaking regions. For that to happen there is need for the parties to “put down their arms, stop this senseless fratricidal and suicidal war and have the courage to enter into dialogue with one another.”

They blasted the government’s approach to resolving the crisis, noting that “violence and the approach of ‘neutralizing’ the secessionists is not the right solution because violence only begets violence.”

The two prelates appealed “to the competent authorities that the military should desist from the wanton killing of innocent civilians and the burning down of houses which is the basic cause of the displacement of the populations.”

They pleaded that “there may be no more delay in addressing effectively the real causes of the present crisis.”

The bishops called on the separatists and “other armed groups which are exploiting the situation to refrain from the use of violence and stop shedding the blood of their brothers and sisters which like the blood of Abel is crying out to God from the ground.”

Esua and Bibi also expressed concern about the fact that children are being deprived of their fundamental right: The right to education.

The separatists have called for a boycott of all schools in the region and enforced it with violence.

Emphasizing the importance of education as “the indispensable instrument of the liberation and development of the human person,” the bishops insisted that the best way of preparing a better future cannot be by “stopping our children from going to school.”

Source: Crux

4, March 2019

A Vatican meeting programmed for failure ⁰

Brace yourself. Tomorrow the Vatican begins a public-relations offensive in response to the sex-abuse scandal. Unless I am much mistaken, unfortunately, a public-relations effort is all that we can expect.

If the long-awaited meeting on The Protection of Minors in the Church adheres to the agenda set by the Vatican organizing committee, the event will not restore public confidence in the Catholic hierarchy. On the contrary it is very likely to do further damage to the bishops’ credibility.

The meeting, which draws together the leaders of all the world’s national bishops’ conferences, will last three days. Beyond that, not much can be predicted with any degree of certainty. Some ranking Church officials (including Pope Francis) have cautioned that we cannot expect too much from this meeting; others (including Cardinal Blase Cupich) have predicted that it could be a watershed moment.

In all likelihood the meeting will conclude with a strong statement—one more in a long line of strong statements—that the Church will not tolerate the abuse of the innocent. But the Vatican’s preparations for the meeting, with the careful delineation of subjects that will and will not be discussed, virtually guarantee that the meeting will not address the key elements of the scandal, unless some bishops deliberately break away from the carefully orchestrated program and demand a more substantive conversation. Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller plead for that sort of bold action in their last-minute appeal to the bishops who will participate in the Vatican conference.

Particularly in the United States, where the scandals of last summer outraged loyal Catholics, the results of another failed Vatican initiative could be disastrous. Bear in mind that the American bishops were poised to take action last November, to hold themselves accountable for negligence and to investigate the sources of the scandal, until their initiatives were tabled by a directive from Rome. Yet nothing on the set agenda for this 3-day meeting addresses the initiatives that the American bishops had planned to adopt.

In fact there are clear indications that the Vatican public-relations team wants to downplay American concerns. An article on the official Vatican News site, previewing the meeting, lists the stages in the universal Church’s response to the scandal without even mentioning the American bishops’ debates in 2002 or their adoption of the Dallas Charter. If any American Catholics hope that the meeting will help Vatican officials to learn from the American experience, those hopes will be dashed by a look at the prepared agenda.

Conspicuously missing from the program is any major address by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the chairman of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. It was shocking that Cardinal O’Malley was not included in the preparatory commission for the event; it is still more astonishing that he is not listed among the featured speakers.

But there is an odd sort of consistency here. Look through the web site created for this week’s meeting , and search for any mention of the commission that Cardinal O’Malley chairs. The organizers barely acknowledge the existence of this papal commission, and make no mention of the commission’s recommendations.

During the first day of the meeting, the topics for the two major presentations by ranking prelates are “Smell of the sheep” and “Church as field hospital.” Both of those titles are phrases made popular by Pope Francis; neither is particularly related to the sex-abuse scandal. On the second day, cardinals will speak on “collegiality” and “synodality.” Again, the topics are dear to the Pope, but there is no clear connection to the sex-abuse scandal.

Far more important, however, are the topics that are not on the agenda. Barring a change in plans, there will not be any discussion of:

homosexual influence within the clergy;
why the Vatican has eased penalties on abusive priests;
why the Pope himself has promoted bishops accused of covering up—and in some cases actively engaging in—sexual abuse;
canonical structures to hold bishops accountable for negligence;
how Theodore McCarrick rose to ecclesiastical influence, and who protected him.

In short, if the Vatican organizers have their way, the meeting will not discuss the issues that must be resolved if the Church is finally to resolve the scandal. The Vatican speaks of transparency, but on the eve of the meeting, organizers refused to answer direct questions about the status of a Vatican official who has been credibly accused of abuse. The organizers speak of accountability, but will not agree to look into the actions of Vatican officials who covered up for McCarrick.

Understand this: The purpose of the meeting that opens at the Vatican tomorrow is not to begin a serious inquiry into the causes of the sex-abuse scandal. It is to prevent a serious inquiry into the causes of the scandal. Now the question is: Will it succeed?

Source: Catholic Culture.Org

1, March 2019

Cameroon soldiers ‘invade’ Catholic hospital in search for separatists ⁰

Cameroonian soldiers ‘invaded’ a medical facility as they hunted Anglophone separatists in the country’s troubled northwest region.

The attack took place on Feb. 17, in the Diocese of Kumbo, which has been plagued by the fighting between the army and rebels.

The Shisong Cardiac Center at St. Elizabeth Catholic General hospital is the only facility where heart diseases are treated in Central Africa. The soldiers stormed the building searching for separatist fighters.

“It is giving us a very bad name,” said Bishop George Nkuo.

“The army can come in to the hospital where there are cardiac patients and move around in search of whomever. It is not done; but that was done. And they shoot around even with people who are cardiac patients. That is the most irresponsible act to do. Most unprofessional I would say at the least,” he told Crux.

A local Catholic radio station in the area, Radio Evangelum gave details on how the military assault was conducted.

“About 11 a.m. that Sunday, defense forces of Cameroon got into the premises of Saint Elizabeth Catholic General Hospital and Cardiac Centre, Shisong. It is alleged that they were in search of wounded separatist fighters who might have been admitted in the hospital,” the station reported.

“Five military men, carrying arms, entered the hospital through the gate leading into the Farewell Home. They moved into the Cardiac Centre section of the hospital next to the Farewell Home. The soldiers, reports say, went into the wards in that section, and took out a boy who was taking care of his grandmother admitted in the hospital. They proceeded to the inner sections of the hospital, went to the Surgical Unit, and moved into one of the wards. The soldiers are said to have fired some gunshots inside the hospital premises,” the report continued.

The station said the Tertiary Sisters of Saint Francis who run the hospital were on a day of recollection that Sunday, but some of the sisters immediately came to the hospital where they met the soldiers.

The nuns told the soldiers to stop their disruptive actions and to leave. The soldiers complied, and released one young man they had detained.

“The likelihood of trauma on patients and health workers is high. The effect of the incident on patients in the Cardiac Center section could be disastrous and long lasting. The administration of the hospital was uncomfortable with the incident,” said Sister Mary Aldrine Kinyuy, the director of the hospital.

The incident happened just a day after separatists kidnapped over 100 students from a Catholic school in the diocese. They were released the next day.

Nkuo said Kumbo has recently become a theater for conflict, with people being killed, homes burnt and property destroyed.

At independence, the two parts were reunited, and currently about 20 percent of the country’s nearly 25 million people is anglophone. The Catholic Church is the largest religious group in the country, representing about 40 percent of all Cameroonians.

Separatists have also been accused of atrocities, and have attacked Cameroonian security forces, and kidnapped opponents for ransom.

“There is shooting and random killing,” the bishop said. He said much of the killing is carried out by government soldiers, whom he accuses of acting unprofessionally.

“I have seen houses burnt and I am even told that there are a number of people being killed… And the people who have been killed are innocent people, innocent civilians. I am very sad indeed,” Nkuo said.

“I can tell you that people are living in great fear. I have had the chance to go round the diocese, to go on pastoral visits, in fact today (Feb. 17), I was in one of the parishes and three-quarters of the people have left. They are not there. They have left. I can even say that some of them have threatened they would never come back,“ the bishop added.

The bishop admitted that he himself wasn’t safe, but he can’t abandon those “who have no way else to go.”

“The bishop cannot leave them. I am there with them because somebody must be there to reassure them that there is hope, that there is a future and that God is in control. That is why I am still in Kumbo,” he said.

Recently, a picture of the bishop went viral after it showed him carrying a box on his head while visiting a remote village in November.

“I don’t know why it went viral. I am sorry about that,” he said, before noting that he was just doing what he ought to do as a pastor in the circumstance.

“If I have to go and meet the people and the road is blocked, what should I do? Should I stay back? No! This is what the missionary does and this is what we should do. We must go to meet the people even when we meet obstacles, we must be humble enough, we must show a sense of mission that we can overcome the obstacles and go to where the people are,” Nkuo said.

He acknowledged the fact that he has not been able to reach all his parishes, but insisted that wherever possible, he would go.

“God, the Church expects us to do that and we do it joyfully and happily because we know that the people of God need us and we must go there and attend to them,“ the bishop explained.

Source: Crux

25, February 2019

Pope compares sexual abuse of children to ‘human sacrifice’ ⁰

Pope Francis on Sunday compared the sexual abuse of children to human sacrifice as he addressed the Catholic Church’s top bishops at the end of a landmark summit to tackle paedophilia.

“Our work has made us realise once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies,” he said.

Calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime he called abominable, the pontiff said the crime reminded him of “the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” he stated.

Francis was speaking after a four-day meeting which he had opened by calling for “concrete measures” on tackling priests and handing 114 senior bishops a roadmap to shape the debate on how to stop a global scandal.

Widespread abuse

“If in the Church there should emerge even a single case of abuse – which already in itself represents an atrocity – that case will be faced with the utmost seriousness”.

The ongoing scandals have hit countries around the world, with recent cases affecting Australia, Chile, Germany and the US.

Francis said those who priests who pray on children are “tools of Satan”.

“No explanations suffice for these abuses involving children,” the Argentine pontiff said.

“The echo of the silent cry of the little ones who, instead of finding in them fathers and spiritual guides encountered tormentors, will shake hearts dulled by hypocrisy and by power.

“It is our duty to pay close heed to this silent, choked cry,” he added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

16, February 2019

Southern Cameroons War: Church is on front line of attacks ⁰

Attacks on clergy are increasing in the anglophone areas of Cameroon, as tensions rise between English-speaking separatists and the French-speaking government. Bishop Michael Bibi of Bamenda in anglophone south-west Cameroon told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that the spiralling conflict between separatist groups and the francophone central government is putting Church workers at risk.

He said: “The Church is on the front line. A priest and a seminarian have both been murdered in the anglophone region. In the case of the latter it was a deliberate execution, staged in front of his church in the presence of the parishioners.”

Nineteen-year-old seminarian Akiata Gerard Anjiangwe was killed by soldiers on 4 October 2018 outside St Therese’s Church in Bamessing village, near Ndop, northwest Cameroon.

The bishop added: “Sadly, these two are not simply isolated cases. I receive alarming news from many priests and religious who have been shot at, or kidnapped and ransomed. I myself have been arrested, but they let me go again after a few hours.”

Bishop Bibi told ACN that, despite renewing its efforts to promote dialogue between separatists and the government, the Church is accused by both parties of taking sides.

He said: “We tell the young people to stay in school and not join the militias, that it will lead to nothing – and so the militias accuse us of playing the government’s game for them.

“But we also denounce the actions of the government army and call for the region to be demilitarised – and so all of a sudden we are accused by the authorities of siding with the rebels.

“The truth we speak is not welcome in the midst of this fratricidal conflict. The truth is that both sides are involved in the killing and are only adding violence to violence.”

He added: “Thanks be to God, the Cameroonian people have a strong faith… What is needed now is for our political leaders to be likewise illuminated by this faith.”

Requesting support for the country, Bishop Bibi said: “We need the prayers of ACN and we also need practical help for the victims of the conflict in the anglophone region, in line with the words of Jesus: ‘I was hungry, and you fed me, naked, and you clothed me.'”

Independent Catholic News

25, January 2019

Kidnapped Southern Cameroons Bishop visits UK ⁰

Bishop Michael Bibi, Auxiliary Bishop of Bamenda, Cameroon, visited Portsmouth and celebrated Mass on Sunday 20 January at St John’s Cathedral in a break during a visit to Rome.

Portsmouth and Bamenda dioceses have been twinned since 1974. Ten Portsmouth priests have served in Cameroon; four priests from Bamenda are currently working in the Portsmouth diocese. Financial help to Bamenda has helped a Pastoral Centre for training cathechists and running spiritual courses; social welfare projects have helped with water supply and provided material enabling people to earn a living; a motorbike was supplied for a rural health worker.

Catholic schools in Portsmouth diocese are encouraged to twin with schools in Cameroon. Bamenda is a major centre in the English speaking region of Cameroon whose schools and legal system have been disadvantaged by the government dominated by French speakers tending to impose the use of French. A majority of the region’s population support a separatist movement which has engaged in acts of violence including recently the deaths of two priests and a seminarian. Some counter terrorist activity by security forces has led to civilian deaths.

There have been kidnappings of school children, not just Catholics but also from a Presbyterian school. Bishop Bibi himself was kidnapped and released on two consecutive days in early December while driving from town to town on church business. The President of Cameroon Paul Biya, aged 85, has been in power since 1982 and shows no sign of standing down.

The country suffers from terrorism by Boko Haram, a group connected with Al Qaeda, the need to back the government’s efforts to combat which seems a priority for help from the UK although some assistance is given to displaced people.

Bishop Michael said the atmosphere in Bamenda alternates between normality and tension. Sometimes there are road blocks. Mondays in the English speaking region are the days for “ghost towns” when many people observe a general strike; more extreme separatists threaten violence against those who do not take part. Some homes have been burnt down.

To help those in need the Bamenda archdiocese has encouraged parishes to set up Ad Hoc Committees. The Bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan urges all to help by contributing to the Diocese of Portsmouth Bamenda Commission.

Source: Independent Catholic News

25, January 2019

Catholics save lives in Cameroon as fighting intensifies ⁰

An ambulance dispatched by a Catholic Church-run hospital in Cameroon continued saving lives this month amid fresh outbreaks of violence between the military and armed groups.

Elengu Noella, 27, told voanews.com that the vehicle whisked her and four other women to safety during a firefight between security personnel and separatists but two of her three children were killed in the heavy fighting near the town of Buea.

Cameroon said this week it is mobilizing troops along its northern border with Nigeria as Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State in West Africa, step up their attacks.

In January alone, the military has recorded five incursions by insurgents near the border and in the Lake Chad basin, with three people killed last week, the media reports.

Meanwhile, Cameroon, which is also fighting separatists in its English-speaking western regions, is believed to have sent thousands of refugees back to Nigeria.

Filippo Grande, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has repeatedly urged the Cameroon government in the capital Yaounde to “refrain from further forced returns and to ensure protection to those fleeing insecurity and persecution in Nigeria.”

The situation worsened in Nigeria in 2018, capped by a brutal massacre in November when a Boko Haram strike on a military base killed up to 100 soldiers.

Now Cameroon seems bent on sealing off the border as the terrorist group continues to recruit fighters from within its territory.

Defense Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Rene Claude Meka has vowed to fight fire with fire, saying this year will see Cameroon fight for national unity and territorial integrity.

“2019 will not be a bed of roses,” Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said on Jan. 21.

“We shall continue with various operations in the far north, northwest and southwest regions, and reactivate special operations in the Adamawa region where criminal groups specialized in kidnapping are wreaking havoc.”

Source: La Croix International