Saturday, August 1, 2020

San Francisco’s Archbishop Cordileone urges Friday fasting for an end to COVID

July 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1Print

CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 03:47 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is urging Catholics to fast every Friday for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

“In addition to adoration, we have to reclaim an authentic and serious spirit of fasting. Fasting has traditionally been understood to mean no more than one meal in the course of a day,” Cordileone said in a July 30 memo to the priests of the diocese.

“Let us storm heaven with prayer and fasting for a restoration of public worship unhindered, for a swift end to this pandemic, for health care workers and researchers, and for government officials who must make very complicated decisions for the overall well-being of our communities.”

The archbishop also urged prayers for the several seminarians of the archdiocese set to be ordained to the priesthood soon, as well as those men set to be ordained to the diaconate in the coming weeks.

Cordileone exhorted his priests to be as diligent as possible in bringing the sacraments to their people, including celebrating up to three outdoor Masses each Sunday, and providing Reconciliation in a safe manner as often as possible.

“Please regularly remind people to follow the safety practices necessary to curb the spread of the virus. This is real, it is dangerous, and it has to be taken seriously,” he added.

“The resurgence is due in no small part to people becoming lax once the shelter-in-place rules began to be lifted. Please urge these practices upon them; absolutely do not give them the impression that the coronavirus is not a serious threat to the physical health of our community.”

Cordileone said he detects “no unified sense of how the Church should proceed in these unprecedented times,” adding that they often have found the guidance and orders from the city confusing.

He said he and other archdiocesan officials have been working with local authorities to convince them that in-person worship services can be conducted in a safe and responsible manner. Despite their efforts to dialogue with local authorities, the city’s health orders have not changed.

Currently the City and County of San Francisco is limiting outdoor worship services to 12 people, with indoor worship services of any kind prohibited.

Cordileone pointed out that the city has allowed retail stores to operate at 50% capacity during the same time period that people of faith are prohibited from gathering in their churches, even with masks and social distancing in place.

“With regard to outdoor services, you are all well aware that pre-planned and scheduled street protests have been allowed to continue unhindered, while the limit of no more than 12 people still applies to everyone else, including us,” he continued.

“Yet here again, an outdoor worship service is a much safer event than a protest, since the people are stationary, social distance is respected, and the participants are wearing masks.”

San Francisco has seen numerous street protests in recent months, including one in late June that resulted in the destruction of a statue of St. Junípero Serra by a crowd of about 100 people.

The San Francisco archdiocese has recently been under renewed scrutiny from secular officials after the city says it received complaints from citizens about parishes holding Masses indoors.

Early this month, the archdiocese pledged to comply with the city and county public health orders barring indoor public Masses and limiting outdoor services, including funerals, to 12 people.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent a letter June 29 to the archdiocese’s lawyer, ordering the archdiocese to cease-and-desist indoor public Masses and giving it one day to comply.

“Upon reviewing the reports of multiple San Francisco parishes holding indoor Mass over the last few weeks, the Health Officer has concluded that the Archdiocese is putting not only its parishioners but the larger community at risk of serious illness and death,” the letter said.

The archdiocese told CNA today that it has made a good-faith effort to comply with the city’s public health guidelines, despite some occasional confusion and last-minute changes to the city’s public health orders.

“Our intention has always been to conform to what we understand to be the City orders and timelines,” the archdiocese said July 2, noting that the city’s orders have been constantly changing throughout the pandemic, sometimes on short notice.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has mandated that only outdoor and online services are permitted in counties that fall on a state monitoring list for rising COVID-19 infections.

The San Francisco archdiocese covers the city and county of San Francisco, as well as San Mateo and Marin counties, all of which are currently on the state’s list. The governor has said that the state’s list currently covers some 80% of all Californians.

In terms of school reopenings, in-person learning will not be allowed for public or private schools whose jurisdiction is on the state monitoring list.

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American on trial for blasphemy killed at court hearing in Pakistan

July 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1Print

CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 03:13 pm (CNA).- A U.S. citizen on trial for blasphemy in Pakistan was killed at a court hearing Wednesday, drawing strong objections to the country’s blasphemy laws from the U.S. State Department.

Tahir Ahmad Naseem was charged with claiming to be a prophet. He was being escorted by police in a courtroom in Peshawar, more than 100 miles west of Islamabad, when he was attacked and killed July 29.

Video shared on social media showed his body slumped over the seats in court, BBC News reports.

His attacker was arrested at the scene, and video shows him handcuffed and accusing Naseem of being “an enemy of Islam.”

Police are unsure how the attacker, named only as Khalid, acquired a gun in the courtroom. A police spokesman said he may have pulled the gun from a policeman’s holster, Agence France Prese reports.

The U.S. State Department said it was “shocked, saddened and outraged” by the killing.

“The U.S. government has been providing consular assistance to Mr. Naseem and his family since his detention in 2018 and has called the attention of senior Pakistani officials to his case to prevent the type of shameful tragedy that eventually occurred,” said State Department spokesman Cale Brown.

The State Department said he had been lured to Pakistan from Illinois.

Naseem was born into the Ahmadi sect, a marginalized group which faces persecution in Pakistan. However, an Ahmadi community spokesman said Naseem had left the sect and now describes himself as a prophet. The man in his YouTube videos claimed to be a messiah. The spokesman suggested he had been mentally ill, Agence France Presse reports.

In 2018 a Peshawar teenager named Awais Malik accused Naseem of blasphemy. Naseem, while living in the U.S., had begun speaking with him online.

Malik told BBC News he met Naseem in a shopping mall in Peshawar to discuss religion, and he then filed a case with police. Malik said he was not present at court and had no knowledge of the shooting.

The country’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.

The State Department urged Pakistan “to immediately reform its often abused blasphemy laws and its court system, which allow such abuses to occur.” It urged prosecution of the suspect in Naseem’s killing to the full extent of the law.

The Centre for Research and Security Studies reported that at least 65 people have been killed by anti-blasphemy vigilantes since 1990. According to the U.S. Commission on Interreligious Freedom, up to 80 people are imprisoned on blasphemy charges in Pakistan, and half of them face life in prison or the death penalty.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the blasphemy conviction of Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who was accused in 2009. Her initial conviction had also been upheld by the Lahore High Court.

The Ahmadi religious group self-identifies as Muslim, but many Muslims do not identify them as Muslim. The movement was founded in 1889 in British-ruled India. They consider their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad a “subordinate prophet.” Other Muslims see this as a violation of the tenet that Muhammad was the last prophet.

There are about 500,000 Ahmadis in Pakistan and up to 20 million adherents worldwide. Some observers estimate the Ahmadi population in Pakistan is higher, but persecution encourages Ahmadis to hide their identity.

Both government authorities and mobs have targeted their places of worship. In October 2019, police in Punjab partially demolished a 70-year-old Ahmadiyya mosque, according to the 2020 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In May Pakistan’s government declined to include the Ahmadi religious group in its National Commission for Minorities.

In January 2020, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia wrote to Pakistan’s prime minister on behalf of Philadelphia’s Pakistani Catholic community, encouraging him to shape a culture of religious freedom in the country.

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After AOC decries statue, Hawaiian Catholic says St Damien of Molokai ‘gave his life’ serving lepers

July 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 4Print

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:28 pm (CNA).- A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a “hero” to the Hawaiian people, after a prominent congresswoman claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and “patriarchy and white supremacist culture.”

St. Damien “gave his life” serving the isolated leper colony at Kalaupapa peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, said Dallas Carter, a native Hawaiian and a catechist for the diocese of Honolulu, in an interview with CNA.

“Any Hawaiian here who is aware of their history–which most Hawaiians are–would absolutely, Catholic or not, defend the legacy of Damien as a man who was embraced by the people, and who is a hero to us because of his love for the Hawaiian people,” Carter said.

“We did not judge him by the color of his skin. We judged him by the love that he had for our people,” Carter told CNA.

In an Instagram story on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) asked why there were not more statues honoring women historical figures, at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection. The collection includes statues honoring historical figures from all 50 states.

“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told – and virtually no one else,” Ocasio-Cortez posted, with a picture of Fr. Damien’s U.S. Capitol statue in the background.

In 1969, Hawaii chose to honor St. Damien alongside Kamehameha I in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US capitol.

Ocasio-Cortez noted on Thursday that Hawaii’s statue was of Fr. Damien and not of “Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii,” implying that it was an example of “colonizers” being honored instead of historical figures who are native to states.

“This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue,” she said, arguing that “patterns” among the “totality” of the statues in the Capitol reveal they honor “virtually all men, all white, and mostly both.”

“This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like!” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s office told CNA that "it’s the patterns that have emerged among all of the statues in the Capitol: virtually all white men. Each individual could be worthy, moral people. But the deliberate erasure of women and people of color from our history is a result of the influence of patriarchy and white supremacy."

St. Damien of Molokai was a religious priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who spent the last 16 years of his life caring for lepers in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

He was born Jozef De Veuster in Belgium in 1840, and he entered the Picpus Fathers in 1859, taking the name Damien. He was sent to the mission in Hawaii in 1864, and was ordained a priest that May.

Shortly after that, the Hawaiian government and King Kamehameha V passed a law mandating that lepers quarantine themselves in an isolated colony on the island of Molokai. The local bishop asked for volunteers to minister to the leper colony, and Fr. Damien presented himself, beginning his work there in 1873.

Carter noted that the Hawaiian government of the time “did not know how to deal with leprosy,” and that “no one wanted to deal with Kalaupapa [colony].”

Damien himself was afraid to go and minister to the lepers, Carter said, but “over a period of time—his journal is very clear, and the writings of the Hawaiian people in that town are very clear—that he fell in love with the people.”

Eventually, Damien was given an ultimatum by his religious superior to either leave the colony or remain there permanently. He chose to stay.

The priest served the colony for the rest of his life, attending to both spiritual and temporal needs of the lepers. By 1884 he had contracted leprosy, and he continued to minister until his death in 1889.

St. Damien is beloved by native Hawaiians, Carter said, and then-princess Lili’uokalani—who Cortez implied should be given a statue instead of Damien—made Fr. Damien a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalākaua in 1881, for his “efforts in alleviating the distresses and mitigating the sorrows of the unfortunate.”

Damien is also the only priest-saint in the Hawaiian martyrology “that spoke the native Hawaiian language,” Carter said. “He loved the Hawaiian people, he embraced our culture,” he said, and in turn “he was part of our kingdom. he was one of us.”

The priest was canonized Oct. 11, 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said that “his missionary activity, which gave him such joy, reached its peak in charity.”

On the occasion of the canonization, U.S. president Barack Obama expressed his “deep admiration for the life of Blessed Damien De Veuster.”

“Fr. Damien has also earned a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians. I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out,” Obama, who was born on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, said.

“Following in the steps of Jesus' ministry to the lepers, Fr. Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and, ultimately, sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many.”

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China offers rewards for reporting underground churches

July 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 2Print

CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- The Chinese Communist Party is offering monetary rewards to those who report the presence of home churches in their communities, the magazine Bitter Winter reported on Thursday.

The rewards appear to be an expansion of a program already in place in the province of Heilongjiang, reported earlier this year. In the city of Nenjiang, residents were offered a reward of 5,000 RMB (about $700 U.S.) if they reported suspected illegal religious activity to the authorities.

Now, per Bitter Winter, the “incentive” program has been replicated in other cities around the country, and rewards have swelled to up to 100,000 RMB, which is about $14,000 U.S.

Last month, in Hainan province, the Public Security Department posted a “Notice on Rewarding Those Who Report Clues on Xie Jiao Illegal and Criminal Activities.” “Xie Jiao” is a Chinese phrase that means “evil cult.” In practice, it refers to any religious activity that is not sanctioned by the government.

Hainan officials are offering up to 100,000 RMB, depending on how accurate and useful the “tip” is.

In Zouping City, in Shandong province, the identity of someone who is a member of The Church of Almighty God or a practitioner of Falun Gong is rewarded with up to 2,500 RMB, which is about $360 U.S.

Officials in the province of Guangdong are also offering a 100,000 RMB reward for information about members of “Xie Jiao.”

In addition to monetary rewards, Chinese officials are also posting anti-religion propaganda throughout the country. Posters reading “Don’t believe in any religion other than the Communist Party. It’s enough to believe in the Party and the People’s Government of China” were hung in parks in Yucheng county, which is located in the province of Heinan.

Despite a provisional agreement between the Vatican and China, signed in 2018, many Catholics in the country remain part of the underground Church. Bishops and priests have reported harassment, arrest and detention for refusing to make public acts of loyalty to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the Communist-controlled state Church.

Earlier this week, a congressional hearing on religious freedom in China highlighted the case of Bishop James Su Zhimin of the Diocese of Baoding, who was arrested in 1997 and has not been seen since 2003.

“President Xi Jinping: Where is Bishop Su, and what have you done to him?” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the commission, asked in his opening remarks of a July 30 hearing of the bipartisan Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

The news of monetary rewards for turning in religious practitioners also comes as anywhere from 900,000 to 1.8 million Uyghurs in the country’s northwestern province of Xinjiang are estimated to have been detained in a system of more than 1,300 camps.

Consistent accounts have emerged from the region, detailing anti-religious indoctrination, torture, forced sterilization, and other abuses committed against those in camps.

Many Uyghurs have reportedly been forced to work in factories or agriculture inside and outside of the detention camps, or have been moved by the authorities to other factories throughout China. Citizens of Xinjiang outside the camps are subject to a system of mass surveillance and predictive policing.