Top Pope aide Cardinal George Pell could face two separate trials as he fights to clear his name over historic sexual offence allegations, an Australian court heard Wednesday.

A Melbourne judge on Tuesday ordered the Vatican finance chief, 76, to stand trial on multiple charges, making him the highest-ranked Catholic to face such allegations.

Pell pleaded not guilty, and half of the charges initially filed against him were thrown out.

The exact details and nature of the alleged offenses remain confidential, other than they involve “multiple charges and multiple complainants,” dating from the 1970s and 1990s.

Some of the alleged offences were at a swimming pool in the town of Ballarat in Victoria state where Pell was a priest in the 1970s, and a second set of alleged actions were at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.

At Wednesday’s brief directions hearing in the Victoria County Court, Pell’s barrister Robert Richter argued that because the charges related to different locations and were 20 years apart, they should be split and heard in two trials.

Another court hearing was set for May 16 when final decisions and trial dates are expected to be set.

Pell, who entered the court surrounded by a police cordon, is on bail and has had his passport confiscated.

The former Sydney and Melbourne archbishop has been on leave from the Vatican, returning to Australia to fight the allegations, the most serious of which have been dismissed due to inconsistencies in the evidence.

Pell was one of the Pope Francis’ most trusted aides, handpicked by him in 2014 to make the Church’s finances more transparent.

It cemented a meteoric rise by the Australian, who was Archbishop of Melbourne and then Sydney before being named to the Vatican’s powerful College of Cardinals at the behest of Pope John Paul II in 2003.

In a brief statement Tuesday, the Vatican said it had “taken note of the decision issued by judicial authorities in Australia” and that Pell would remain on the leave of absence granted by the pope to defend himself.

(Source: AFP)

At least nine people, including a priest, have been killed in an attack on a church in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.

Pastor Moses Aliou said on Tuesday that dozens had also been wounded in the attack, which was carried out during the morning service in the Notre Dame de Fatima church.

Witnesses said assailants attacked the church, shooting and using grenades. The church-goers were trapped inside the compound. Police later opened a hole in a wall of the church building to allow people to escape, witnesses said.

“Filled with panic, some Christians began to flee until bullets and grenades begin to fall in the parish grounds, trapping those who remained in the compound,” said Aliou.

The wounded were taken to Bangui’s Community Hospital but it was not clear how many people died in the hospital and how many in the church attack itself.

Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Bangui Walter Brad Mazangue said the priest killed in the attack died as a result of shooting in the church. The priest was identified as Albert Toungoumale Baba. Thousands of Christians gathered near the church to protest the attack when Baba’s body was being carried to the presidential palace.

The attack came near the site of clashes between United Nations peacekeepers and security forces of the Central African Republic on one side and criminal gangs on the other in the PK 5 neighborhood. A total of 21 people were killed during the fighting which came after UN and local forces tried to disarm the gangs.

The Central African Republic has experienced rounds of inter-faith violence in the past, especially in 2013 when “anti-balaka” Christian militants killed many from the Muslim Seleka after a Seleka uprising led to the ouster of President Francois Bozize.

Source: Presstv

The Roman Catholic church should mediate in the crisis in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, where separatists and security forces are embroiled in a dangerous conflict, a thinktank urged Thursday.

“The Catholic Church could help break this dangerous stalemate,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.

“Other than the Catholic clergy, there are few prospective peacemakers,” it said. “If no-one fills that role, the separatist sentiment already voiced by many anglophones will continue to grow, fuelling further violence and exacerbating the ongoing insurgency in the anglophone regions, with elections in late 2018 a flashpoint.”

The crisis began in 2016, when activists in Cameroon’s anglophone minority stepped up a campaign for greater autonomy.

Their demands were rejected by President Paul Biya, prompting radicals to make a full-blown declaration of independence last October.

Since then, 31 members of the security forces have been killed by separatists, according to an AFP toll based on official figures. The number of armed separatists or civilians killed by police and troops is unknown.

At the same time, humanitarian needs in the anglophone regions have grown. According to UN estimates, tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting.

The ICG said the church could help by stating “its impartiality” on the big question facing anglophone regions — federalism versus decentralisation.

“A clergy able to project a position of neutrality could work with other trusted actors to mediate between anglophone leaders and the state and stem a dangerous and growing crisis,” it said.

The church is one of Cameroon’s strongest institutions, as it is present in all of the country’s 10 regions and nearly a third of the population is Catholic, the report said.

It cautioned though that the church also had to overcome its own divisions between French- and English-speaking clergy.

Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions are home to most of the country’s anglophones — a minority of about 20 percent in the predominantly French-speaking country of 23.4 million.

Within the minority, a perception of injustice has grown that anglophones suffer discrimination in the economy, education and the judicial system at the hands of the francophone majority.

The anglophone presence is a legacy of the colonial period in Africa.

France and Britain divided up the former German colony under League of Nations mandates after World War I.

A year after the French-ruled territory became independent in 1961, the southern part of British Cameroons was integrated into a federal system.

Federalism was then scrapped 11 years later for a “united republic” — a centralised system that 85-year-old Biya, in power for more than 35 years, has said will not be changed.

The ICG warned last October that “murderous repression” by the authorities would only feed secessionism — a warning that the government lashed as an attempt to destabilise the country.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

On Sunday, Pope Francis ordained 16 men to the priesthood, reminding them to be like Jesus the Good Shepherd in the way they serve the members of their spiritual flock and minister to those who are lost and searching for God.

“Always have before your eyes the example of the Good Shepherd, who did not come to be served, but to serve and to seek and save what was lost,” the pope said in a homily before the ordination of 16 priests during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica April 22.

“Conscious of having been chosen among men and elected in their favor to attend to the things of God, exercise in gladness and sincere charity the priestly work of Christ,” he continued, “solely intent on pleasing God and not yourselves or human beings, [or] other interests.”

The priestly ordination coincided with “Good Shepherd Sunday” and the 55th World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

The new priests, who have been studying for the priesthood at different seminaries in the diocese of Rome, come from countries around the world, including Madagascar, Vietnam, Myanmar, Colombia, and El Salvador.

As in the past, for his homily Francis used the “ritual homily” from the Italian edition of the “Pontificale Romano,” the Catholic liturgical book containing rites performed by bishops, including the ordination of priests, adding a few of his own thoughts to the text.

Reflecting on the Sacrament of Penance in particular, Francis urged the men about to be ordained to “not get tired of being merciful. Think of your sins, your miseries that Jesus forgives. Be merciful.”

It is “through your ministry the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect,” he noted, “because it is joined to the sacrifice of Christ, which for your hands, in the name of the whole Church, is offered bloodlessly on the altar in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries.”

He pointed out to the 16 men that in their priestly ministries they will be participants “in the mission of Christ, the only Master,” and advised them to read and meditate tirelessly on the Word of God “to teach what you have learned in faith, to live what you have taught.”

“[May] your teaching, joy and support to the faithful of Christ be the fragrance of your life,” he continued, “that with word and example you can build the House of God which is the Church.”

Following Mass, Pope Francis led pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square in praying the Regina Coeli, the traditional prayer for Easter.

Francis reflected briefly on the day’s Gospel, where Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep,” stating that the words of Jesus in this passage cannot be reduced to an emotional suggestion.

Noting that Jesus also says, “I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me,” the pope said shows us that Jesus desires a personal relationship with each person, one which reflects “the same intimate relationship of love between Him and the Father.”

“He is attentive to each of us, knows our heart deeply: He knows our strengths and our faults, the projects we have achieved and the hopes that have been disappointed. But he accepts us as we are, he leads us with love,” he said, and in turn, “we are called to know Jesus.”

Culled from Crux

Pope Francis, in his traditional Easter message, has lamented the killing of well over a dozen “defenseless” Palestinian protesters by Israeli troopers’ live fire near the Israeli-Gaza border, pleading for peace in the Holy Land.

The Pontiff, 81, on Sunday made the comments and appeal in his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the City and the World) message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to tens of thousands of people in the flower-bedecked square below where he earlier celebrated a Mass.

In an apparent reference to the massacre in the besieged Gaza Strip on Friday, when Israeli soldiers and snipers shot dead 17 Palestinian demonstrators, the head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics also called for “a reconciliation for the Holy Land”, which “also experiencing in these days the wounds of ongoing conflict that do not spare the defenseless”.

During Friday’s bloody protest, around 30,000 Gazans marched on the fence with the occupied territories at the start of a six-week protest, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” demanding the right to return to their homeland.

The rallies coincided with the 42nd anniversary of Land Day, which commemorates the murder of six Palestinians by Israeli forces in 1976.

The demonstrations turned violent after Israeli forces used tear gas and live fire to force back demonstrators who had approached within a few hundred meters of the heavily-fortified fence, further wounding more than 1,400 other Palestinians.

Multiple Muslim nations around the world voiced their outrage over the Israeli military’s response to the mass demonstration in Gaza.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared Saturday a national day of mourning and urged a general strike in honor of the victims. He also said that Israel was “fully responsible” for the tragic killings of peaceful Palestinian protesters. The strike, which affected universities, schools, government organizations, was called for in the occupied West Bank in solidarity with Gaza.

Israeli military forces have shot and killed 16 Palestinians during massive anti-Israeli rallies staged by thousands along Gaza-Israel borders.

While the Muslim nations were outraged by the carnage, the deadliest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2014 Gaza War, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the troops via his official Twitter account late on Saturday for their actions which he claimed were aimed at guarding Israel.

On Friday, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting over the situation in Gaza, but the US blocked a draft statement which urged restraint and called for an “independent and transparent investigation” into Friday’s violence.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also called for “an independent and transparent investigation” into the incident.

Culled from Presstv

The Vatican bowed to pressure Saturday and released the complete letter by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI about Pope Francis after coming under blistering criticism for selectively citing it in a press release and digitally manipulating a photograph of it.

The previously hidden part of the letter provides the real explanation why Benedict refused to provide commentary on a new Vatican-published compilation of books about Francis’s theological and philosophical background that was released to mark his fifth anniversary as pope.

Benedict noted that one of the authors involved in the project had launched “virulent,” ”anti-papist” attacks against his papacy and teaching. He said he was “surprised” the Vatican had chosen the theologian to be included in the 11-volume “The Theology of Pope Francis.”

The Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications said Saturday it was releasing the full text of the letter due to the controversy over the “presumed manipulation” of information when the volume was launched Monday, on the eve of Francis’s anniversary.

It said its decision to withhold part of the letter at the time was based on its desire for reserve “not because of any desire to censure.”

The so-called “Lettergate” scandal has embarrassed the Vatican for the past week and fueled the growing chasm between supporters of Francis’s pastoral-focused papacy and conservatives who long for the doctrine-minded papacy of Benedict.

A Twitter hashtag #releasetheletter went viral among Catholic conservatives as the scandal widened.

The Secretariat for Communication, in particular, was accused of spreading “fake news” for having omitted key parts of Benedict’s letter and – as The Associated Press reported – digitally blurring a photograph of the document where Benedict begins to explain why he won’t comment on the book.

The scandal began when the prefect of the office, Monsignor Dario Vigano, read part of Benedict’s letter aloud at the book presentation Monday. In the parts Vigano chose to read, Benedict confirmed that Francis has a solid theological and philosophical training and he praised the book initiative for showing the “interior continuity” between the two papacies.

But Benedict’s full caveat was never made public in the press release or the photo, leaving the impression that the 91-year-old retired pope had read the volume and fully endorsed it, when in fact he hadn’t.

Source: Cruxnow

A 26-year-old man from Cameroon has been arrested in connection with the crime

Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin paid tribute to Fr Alain-Florent Gandoulou, the head of the archdiocese’s French-speaking ministry, who was murdered in his office.

Archbishop Koch said Fr Gandoulou, born in the Republic of Congo, “applied himself with great engagement to his community, whose members come from every French-speaking country in the world.”

“His musical talent that he brought to Masses and presentations deeply affected the community,” said Archbishop Koch. “Fr Gandoulou was like a father to believers (and he) was also approachable in social matters.”

The archbishop said Fr Gandoulou was a dynamic catechist who promoted teaching and faith-building for people of all ages. In addition to his parish duties, since 2011, he worked as a counsellor at Berlin’s Sacred Heart Parish.

The archbishop said he would celebrate a special Mass on March 2 to pray for the priest and for his murderer. Afterwards, Fr Gandoulou’s remains will be returned to his hometown in the Archdiocese of Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, for burial.

Late on February 22, police responded to a call from witnesses reporting a loud argument. Police say Fr Gandoulou sustained fatal injuries from being beaten with objects and was stabbed in the head with an umbrella tip, according to Bild newspaper.

A 26-year-old man from Cameroon was arrested in connection with the crime. The suspect has since been detained in a psychiatric ward. Police have not released the suspect’s name, and no motive has been established.

Source: Catholic Herald