15, May 2022
The Holy Father canonises hermit, martyr and journalist 0
Pope Francis on Sunday canonised a Frenchman murdered in the desert, a Dutch priest killed in a Nazi concentration camp and an Indian lay convert among 10 new saints officially proclaimed on Sunday.
Thousands of people from around the world crowded into St Peter’s Square in the Vatican for the canonisation mass, presided over by the 85-year-old pontiff and attended by delegations including France’s interior minister Gerald Darminin and Italian president Sergio Mattarella.
The pictures of the 10 new saints were hung on the facade of the world’s biggest basilica.
Unlike in recent days, Francis — who was surrounded by around 50 cardinals and 300 bishops and priests — did not appear in a wheelchair.
Under a sunny sky, groups of pilgrims had begun to converge on the square, some wearing shirts or scarves with the picture of one of the new saints.
Under the rules of the Catholic Church, all 10 have already been beatified, or named “blessed”, but had to then be attributed a miracle to take the final step to sainthood.
The new saints included Charles de Foucauld, a French soldier and explorer, who became a Catholic priest and lived among Trappist monks in Syria, in Palestine, and finally among the Tuaregs in the Algerian desert.
He was murdered by bandits on December 1, 1916, but his works outlasted him and he became one of France’s most celebrated men of faith.
Men of faith
Another who made the step to sainthood was Dutch Carmelite priest, theologian and journalist Titus Brandsma, who took a stand against the Nazis during World War II.
He spoke out against them before Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and afterward, encouraging Catholic Dutch newspapers to resist the occupiers’ propaganda.
Brandsma was arrested in January 1942 and ended up in the Dachau concentration camp, where he died on July 26 of that year, after being injected with carbolic acid.
He was beatified in 1985 after being declared a martyr, and was subsequently found to have enacted a miracle in healing a Carmelite priest.
Devasahayam Pillai, known as Lazarus, was the first Indian layman to become a saint, according to the Vatican.
A Hindu from what is now the southern state of Tamil Nadu, he converted to Catholicism in 1745 while working at the royal palace, where he met a captured Dutch commander who taught him about Christianity.
But his faith, and his preaching of equality of all peoples — a revolutionary view at the time — caused a stir and when he refused to renounce his new religion, he was arrested, according to the Vatican.
After almost three years of imprisonment and torture, during which he began to be visited by pilgrims, he was shot dead in a forest on the orders of the king on January 14, 1752.
He was declared a martyr and beatified in 2012, before being later attributed the miracle of resuscitating a foetus in the 20th week of pregnancy.
Source: AFP
6, June 2022
‘Evil and wicked’: More than 50 feared dead in Nigeria church attack 0
Gunmen with explosives stormed a Catholic church and opened fire in southwest Nigeria on Sunday, killing “many” worshippers and wounding others, the government and police said.
The violence at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo town in Ondo State erupted during the morning service in a rare attack in the southwest of Nigeria, where jihadists and criminal gangs operate in other regions.
Pope Francis said in a statement he had learned of the “death of dozens of faithful”, many children, during the celebration of the Christian holiday of the Pentecost.
“While the details of the incident are being clarified, Pope Francis prays for the victims and for the country,” he said.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The motives and the exact death toll were not immediately clear, but President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the “heinous killing of worshippers”.
State police spokeswoman Ibukun Odunlami said the gunmen also attacked the church with explosives, leaving an unknown number of worshippers dead.
“It’s still premature to say exactly how many people were killed. But many worshippers lost their lives while others were injured in the attack,” she told AFP.
A spokesman for the Ondo State governor’s office said they would not be giving an official casualty figure for the moment.
But a witness, who gave his name as Abayomi, told AFP at least 20 worshippers had died in the attack.
“I was passing through the area when I heard a loud explosion and gunshots inside the church,” he said.
He said he saw at least five gunmen on the church premises before he ran for safety.
‘Vile and satanic attack’
Attacks on religious sites are particularly sensitive in Nigeria where tensions sometimes flare between communities in a country with a mostly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north.
Gun and bomb attacks are rare in Ondo state, but Nigeria’s military is battling a 12-year-old jihadist insurgency in the northeast, gangs in the northwest and separatist agitation in the southeast.
Boko Haram jihadist group in the northeast targeted churches in the past as part of Nigeria’s conflict that has killed 40,000 and displaced 2 million more.
Kidnapping assaults are common in most parts of Nigeria but mass gun attacks like Sunday’s violence are rare in the country’s relatively peaceful southwest.
Ondo state governor Rotimi Akeredolu said Sunday’s attack was a “vile and satanic attack” and appealed to the security forces to track down the assailants.
The attack comes a day before the ruling APC party starts primaries for its candidate in the 2023 election to replace Buhari, a former army commander who steps down after two terms in office.
Security will be a major challenge for whoever wins the race to govern Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy.
Parts of northwest and north-central Nigeria in particular have been increasingly plagued by heavily armed gangs who raid villages and target communities and schools for mass kidnapping attacks.
Source: AFP