The Archbishop of Port-au-Prince warned of “a real danger of civil war breaking out” in Haiti, amid violence which has prevented him from visiting his cathedral for two years.
Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor told Aid to the Church in Need that “daily life consists of suffering violence, gunfights, poverty and deprivation” as gangs acting “like an organised army” attack government buildings and infrastructure. “As soon as you leave Port-au-Prince you are in danger,” Archbishop Mésidor said. “I cannot visit two-thirds of my diocese because the roads are blocked.”
Pope Francis offered prayers for Haiti at his Angelus address on 10 March, “that every sort of violence may cease, and that everyone may offer their contribution to the growth of peace and reconciliation in the country”.
Female prisoners, including some political prisoners, have been subjected to inhumane treatment after praying the Rosary out loud at Nicaragua’s La Esperanza prison near Managua, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Reports suggest the women have been denied time outdoors since mid-January, while some have also reportedly been beaten during interrogations, leaving bruising on their arms and legs. The Nicaraguan regime does not allow political prisoners to have a Bible or any writing materials, in violation of the “Nelson Mandela Rules” (the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners).
Christian Solidarity Worldwide said that “many of these women should not be in prison in the first place” and called punishment for exercising their beliefs “unconscionable”.
Two months of heavy rainfall in much of Bolivia, particularly the Cochabamba region, forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes after a dam was breached. The charity Save the Children said that more than 50 people had been killed in floods and landslide, while many children were unable to attend school.
Local parish buildings are sheltering displaced people, with Caritas services distributing food and other supplies. Last weekend the Bolivian government declared a state of emergency in the city of La Paz after overflowing rivers caused by severe weather led to flooding which destroyed homes and infrastructure. Red hydrological alerts were issued on Monday for rising river levels in parts of La Paz, and orange warnings put in place for many other rivers across the country.
The Vatican has opened an investigation into abuse allegations against Cardinal John Dew, the former Archbishop of Wellington and president of the New Zealand bishops’ conference, after a police investigation closed without charges.
Dew turned 75 on 5 May last year and submitted his resignation to Pope Francis as required by canon law, but immediately ceased all public ministry the next day when he was informed of the allegations against him, which date from the 1970s.
In a statement on 7 March, following widespread speculation, he denied “any instances of improper of abusive behaviour in my 48 years of priesthood” and said the police had seen evidence which “prove[d] that these allegations could never have happened”. He insisted that he abided by his episcopal motto “Peace through integrity”.
A Church investigation began the same day under the terms of the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi. “Inquiries by the Church are not run concurrently to those being undertaken by police,” said the current Archbishop of Wellington, Paul Martin SM, in a letter to New Zealand Catholics, explaining that Dew would continue to refrain from public activity while this continued.
The Diocese of Pasig in the Philippines has opened the beatification process of a lay female catechist. Laureana “Ka Luring” Franco left a secure job as an accounts clerk for the Philippine Air force to become a volunteer catechist for St Anne’s parish in the south-eastern Manila suburb of Taguig.
Bishop Mylo Vergara of Pasig said Franco had “never tired of serving the parish, especially the poor. She did this not in an extraordinary way but in simple ways, such as teaching faith to children.” Franco died at the age of 75 in 2011.
Indonesian police on the island of Flores have arrested a 27-year-old seminarian alleged to have abused a 13-year-old boy.
Engelbertus Lowa Sada is accused of abusing the boy on two occasions in 2022, while teaching a one-year course at St Johanes Berchmans Mataloko Minor Seminary in Flores. Sada had completed four of his six years’ formation course to become a Capuchin. According to a Church source, he was ejected from the formation programme after his arrest.
A police spokesman said Sada had been evading arrest since November 2023, when the parents of the abused boy filed a criminal case against him. He added that Sada had been accused of abusing six other boys at the seminary but their parents were reluctant to file a complaint from fear this would disturb their children’s schooling and psychological welfare. If convicted, Sada faces up to 20 years in prison.
Myanmar’s ruling junta has subjected 8.2 million people to martial law, extending it to 61 municipalities last week. Martial law, with curfews and traffic restrictions, now spans the Yangon, Mandalay, Sagaing, Magwe, Bago and Tanintharyi regions, affecting citizens from the Shan, Chin, Mon, Karen and Karenni, Bamar ethnic groups.
The junta’s spokesman General Zaw Min Tun insisted “Myanmar’s sovereignty remains intact”, but reports said the army had lost control of many regions where it had imposed its rule.
Fr Joseph Thang Nen Zo Mung, who leads social communications for the Diocese of Kalay, said that in Sagaing “fighting continues and people have no choice but to flee, increasing the number of internally displaced people”.
Four monks of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church were killed in an attack on their monastery. Reports said that militants linked to an insurgency against the government in the Oromia region attacked the Zuqualla Monastery, 50km from the capital Addis Ababa, on 26 February. A statement from the Church said that “armed militants” were responsible for the attack.
Russian Catholics asked the wider Church to condemn human rights violations by the Putin regime and to hold memorial services for Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader buried in Moscow on 1 March.
“Navalny was convicted and declared an extremist, so people inside Russia cannot speak in his defence unless they’re ready to be imprisoned themselves,” said a lay Catholic lecturer who works with Caritas in the Russian capital. “But Christians abroad must show how his premature death lies on the conscience of those who made his life unbearable,” she said, after joining mourners at Navalny’s funeral.
Russia’s six-member Catholic bishops’ conference made no reference to Navalny in a communique after its recent plenary, which urged Catholics to “remember their civic duty, guided entirely by their conscience” in the run-up to Russia’s presidential election on 15-17 March, which will give Putin another six-year term.
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Romania and Malta joined an appeal from over 130 civil society organisations for the EU to maintain support for Ukrainian refugees after temporary protections granted them expire in March 2025. They warned that millions of refugees could lose access to essential services in Europe.
The JRS has served more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees over the past two years of war, in coordination with the Xavier Network. Alberto Ares Mateos SJ, JRS Europe regional director, said last week that “since day one, we have been accompanying refugees fleeing the war with a coordinated holistic response in Ukraine, neighbouring countries, and across Europe…and we are committed to provide long-term support.”
Pope Francis seemed to say he had asked the Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk to conduct a study of gender theory, which he denounced last week as an “ugly ideology [that] cancels differences” between men and women”.
The Pope was speaking in Italian to participants at a two-day Vatican conference entitled “Man-Woman Image of God: For an Anthropology of Vocations”. He has criticised the theory of fluid sexual identities several times in the past, but this is the first time he has asked for closer study. “To cancel the difference is to cancel humanity,” he said.
According to reporters, he continued: “I asked the cardinal of Nijmegen to study this seriously – he is a doctor and also knows how to study these things.” A Vatican statement omitted these words, possibly because Eijk – a trained doctor and the Netherlands’ only living cardinal – is Archbishop of Utrecht. Nijmegen is in the neighbouring diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch.
In 2022, Eijk asked the Pope to issue an encyclical on gender theory.
Annual cases of euthanasia in Belgium jumped by 15 per cent last year, making up 3.1 per cent of all deaths, as support grew for the procedure first legalised in 2002.
About 70 per cent of euthanasia deaths were among patients over 70 years old, and only one per cent among those under 40. One minor, a rare case of a 16-year-old girl with fatal brain cancer, was among them. Euthanasia due to psychiatric problems remains controversial following some widely-reported instances, but amounted to only 1.4 percent of cases, official figures show.
“Awareness has increased among both patients and doctors, but support in the population has also increased significantly,” a surgeon explained.
About 70 per cent of euthanasia reports were written in Flemish and 30 per cent in French, roughly reflecting different attitudes to the procedure across Belgium. Officials also noted 110 patients with foreign addresses, mostly in France where euthanasia is still banned.
The official unveiling of the main posters for the Paris Summer Olympics turned sour when critics noticed that they included the church of Saint Louis des Invalides but not the cross on the top of its golden dome.
The posters appeared on billboards across the French capital, showing a Where’s Wally-style view of its attractions, with the Eiffel Tower emerging from the Stade de France and the Seine’s bridges crammed with spectators. Conservative politicians preparing for June’s European Parliament elections, claimed it belittled the religious character of Invalides, a cathedral for France’s military bishop.
Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally, said it amounted to “the cancellation of our Christian heritage”, while François-Xavier Bellamy of the centre-right Republicans asked: “How can you claim to love a country when you do everything to destroy its roots?”
The organisers insisted that the poster – with a pink Eiffel Tower pink and Metro trains running under the Arc de Triomphe – was deliberately fantastical. Parisian illustrator Ugo Gattoni denied any grand scheme behind his depictions of the buildings. “I evoke them as they appear to me, without ulterior motives,” he said.
An Italian bishop decreed that alleged apparitions which drew pilgrims to a small Italian town are “non-supernatural”.
Bishop Marco Salvi of Civita Castellana had already directed Catholics last April not to attend the gatherings held by Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, known as Gisella Cardia, in Trevignano Romano.
She claimed that in 2016 she began to hear messages through an image of Our Lady of Peace bought in Medjugorje, drawing crowds of hundreds to see her experience the supposed apparitions on the third day of each month. She also founded a charity which received large sums in donations but last year became the subject of a fraud investigation.
Last week, Bishop Salvi said “a commission of experts, made up of a Mariologist, a theologian, a canonist, a psychologist, and with the outside advice of some specialists” had concluded the events were not supernatural. He barred clergy from promoting the apparitions and said “the title of ‘Madonna di Trevignano’ has no ecclesial value”.
The Spanish bishops’ conference elected Archbishop Luis Argüello of Valladolid its new president last week, with Cardinal José Cobo Cano of Madrid as vice-president. Ahead of the vote, they were considered the two most likely candidates for the presidency. Their predecessors, Cardinal Juan José Omella of Barcelona, 77, and Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra, the former Archbishop of Madrid, 78, retired from the posts on age grounds.
A priest narrowly escaped attack by an intruder in the Grotto Monastery in Portland, Oregon on 28 February.
Servite Fr Leo Hambur said the intruder used a stick to pry open the door to his room. “I thought it was a gun,” the priest said, describing how the intruder “looked at me, and he said, ‘Who are you?’” before going through another door to grab a pair of scissors. Fr Hambur fled the monastery.
The Grotto Monastery is the National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, operated by the Order of Friar Servants of Mary and spread over 54 acres.The intruder vandalised several rooms at the monastery, including the chapel. Police were able to arrest the man who was identified as 57-year-old Paul Joseph Yauger, who might have been experiencing a mental health crisis. He is charged with five crimes including burglary and unlawful use of a weapon.
The North Dakota District Court ruled that religious employers and health care providers cannot be compelled to perform or pay for “gender transition” procedures that violate their beliefs. The ruling is the latest in a series of victories for expansive understandings of religious liberty in the application of federal programmes.
Most healthcare in the US is funded by private insurance, but the federal government mandates certain basic coverage and also sets requirements for health care providers such as hospitals. In the North Dakota case, the Christian Employers Association, representing business owners who are Chritians, brought the suit.
In a statement issued on 4 March, the association’s president Dhannon Royce said: “We are overjoyed our members will not have to choose between the biblically-based employee benefits and quality health care they provide, and the threat of federal enforcement and massive costs for practising their faith.”
Pope Francis has appointed two Nobel laureates and an artificial intelligence researcher to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Andrea Mia Ghez, who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles, is credited with discovering “the best evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes” through her research on the orbits of stars in the Milky Way, and is one of only four women to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Didier Queloz, the founding director of the Centre for the Origin and Prevalence of Life at the research university ETH in Zurich, won the Noble Prize for his role in the discovery of the first planet outside the solar system orbiting a sun-like star.
The third appointee, Demis Hassabis, is a UK national and co-founder of Google DeepMind.
Speaking ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Pope Francis called for recognition of the ongoing struggles faced by women worldwide, including violence, inequality and injustice and emphasises the necessity of the advancement of women’s rights and dignity. He described the Church as a woman, “a daughter, a bride, and a mother”.
He was addressing an international conference in Rome titled “Women in the Church: Builders of Humanity”.
The Women’s Leadership, Equality and Participation Committee of Caritas International published a booklet on the promotion of women’s leadership. It says that “women suffer a poverty of participation in leadership and decision-making” and that this is largely the result of a lack of education and healthcare resources, which creates a culture that “excludes women”.
Loading ...
