Catholic News

• Vatican newspaper headline: 'Washington: Democracy Wounded' (L'Osservatore Romano)
  “Politics cannot ignore individual responsibility, especially on the part of the person who is in power and is able—through a polarizing narrative—to mobilize thousands of people,” the Vatican newspaper’s assistant director, Giuseppe Fiorentino, wrote in an op-ed. “He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind, and at this point it is easy to tie the events in Washington to the accusations of fraud launched by Trump after the voting Nov. 3, accusations that never found objective confirmation.”
• Pope sends Christmas greetings to Eastern Christians, praises Poland's Three Kings parades (Vatican News)
  Following his January 6 Angelus address, Pope Francis also said that “on today’s feast of Epiphany, the World Missionary Child Day is celebrated, which involves many children and boys and girls around the world. I thank each one of them and I encourage them to be joyful witnesses of Jesus, seeking to always bring fraternity among your peers.”
• Minnesota loosens Covid restrictions on public worship (Catholic Spirit)
  Minnesota’s bishops had petitioned Gov. Tim Walz to lift the 250-person limit on indoor worship, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis reported.
• Cardinal Dolan: The radicals who defaced St. Patrick's Cathedral are pure bigots (New York Post)
  New York’s cathedral has “been defaced with vile graffiti attacking both the Catholic faith and the men and women of the New York Police Department,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said. “A similar outrage occurred last summer amid the sad violence afflicting American cities. At that time, I let it go, figuring I needn’t stoke the embers of anger that were burning throughout our country. Not this time.”
• US bishops' president condemns violent protests, prays for public safety, restoration of order (USCCB)
  “I join people of good will in condemning the violence today at the United States Capitol,” Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles said on January 6. “This is not who we are as Americans. I am praying for members of Congress and Capitol staff and for the police and all those working to restore order and public safety.”
• Brazil's bishops urge faithful to receive Covid vaccine, promote vaccination as a right for all (Vatican News)
  “To eradicate Covid-19, everyone must walk together, no one excluded,” the bishops said in their Portuguese-language statement. The Fides news agency published extensive excerpts of the statement in English.
• London's mayor wants churches closed (Catholic Herald)
  London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has asked for emergency powers allowing him to close down places of worship, among other restrictions, in response to soaring case rates of Covid.
• Pope offers sympathy for Venezuelan suffering (Vatican News)
  Pope Francis has sent a message to Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Merida, expressing his sympathy for the people of Venezuela, who are suffering through a lengthy economic and social crisis as well as the Covid epidemic. The Pope has faced criticism for his reluctance to criticize the policies of the country’s authoritarian government, which has clashed repeatedly with Venezuela’s bishops.
• Editor of Italian bishops' newspaper: President Trump has 'poisoned the wells of democracy' (Avvenire (Italian))
  Andrea Lavazza spoke of “the heavy, negative heritage Donald Trump will leave behind. He has poisoned the wells of democracy, calling into doubt the results of an election that absolutely does not appear to have been compromised by fraud or conspiracies.”
• Pelosi cites Epiphany, St. Francis as House confirms Biden win (Catholic San Francisco)
  “Today, January 6, is the feast of the Epiphany,” the Speaker of the House said on the evening following the violence at the US Capitol. “On this day of revelation, let us pray that this instigation to violence will provide an epiphany for our country to heal. In that spirit of healing, I evoke the song of Saint Francis . .. St. Francis is the patron saint of my city of San Francisco, and song of St. Francis is our anthem.”
• Coptic leader: Christians not persecuted in Egypt (Fides)
  Coptic Ortodox Patriarch Tawadros II rejects the notion that Egypt’s Christians face persecution, despite occasional bouts of violence against Copts. To speak of persecution, he said, is to give “a distorted image of the situation in Egypt.” He explained that sometimes “there is a problem between the different communities in a village,” but “there is no persecution.”
• Retirement of Mexican bishop seen as 'end of an era' (CNS)
  The recent retirement of Bishop Raúl Vera López, once forbidden by a neighboring bishop from celebrating Mass in his diocese, “marks the end of an era in Mexico,” according to the report. “He was the last in a line of socially minded bishops, including Bishops Samuel Ruiz Garcia and Arturo Lona.” The Dominican prelate was bishop of Ciudad Altamirano (1988-95), Coadjutor Bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas (1995-99), and Bishop of Saltillo (1999-2020).
• Mainline Protestant, Southern Baptist, Jewish leaders deplore Capitol violence (World Council of Churches)
  The World Council of Churches, whose members include 350 Protestant and Orthodox communities, issued its own statement condemning the violence. Its interim general secretary—Father Joan Sauca, a Romanian Orthodox theologian—said that “the divisive populist politics of recent years have unleashed forces that threaten the foundations of democracy in the United States.”
• Pakistani pastor arrested on blasphemy charges (Fides)
  A Protestant pastor in Pakistan has been charged with blasphemy for a Facebook message that offended his Muslim neighbors. Raja Warris was arrested after a Muslim mob threatened to burn down the homes of Christians in the neighborhood; he faces a potential 10-year prison sentence. There are now 24 Christians in Pakistani jails on blasphemy charges.
• US toughens ban on 'abhorrent' female genital mutilation (Reuters)
  The US bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services tweeted that the new law “increases criminal penalties for performing female genital mutilation on minors & expands the scope of punishable offenses in the US.”
• Vatican charge: Italian financier pressed sale of misappropriated bonds (Pillar)
  Gianluigi Torzi, the Italian businessman who has been arrested by Vatican officials and charged with extortion, sought to persuade the Secretariat of State to cover the cost of bonds that he had illicitly sold. Ed Condon of Pillar delves into the charges.
• Swiss Cardinal Schwery dead at 88 (Vatican Press Office)
  Cardinal Henri Schwery, the former Bishop of Sion, Switzerland, died at home on January 7 at the age of 88. Ordained a priest in the Sion diocese in 1957, he was named Bishop of Sion in 1977 and remained in that post until his resignation in 1995. He received his red hat from Pope John Paul II in 1991. With the Swiss prelate’s death the College of Cardinals now has a total of 228 members, of whom 128 are under the age of 80 and eligible to take part in a papal conclave.
• Today the Church is triumphant, Russian Orthodox Patriarch says in Christmas message (Moscow Patriarchate)
  “Today, when the peoples of the earth are enduring the arduous trial of a new disease, when peoples’ hearts are overwhelmed by fear and anxiety for the future, it is especially important that we strengthen our collective and individual prayer and offer to the Lord the diligent labors of good works,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said in his Christmas message, issued January 6.
• Leading Australian prelate 'shaken and disbelieving' (@ArchbishopMark)
  “I didn’t realize just how much the integrity of and respect for the democratic institutions of the US matter to the rest of the world until this pandemonium erupted in DC,” said Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. “From the other side of the world, I find myself shaken and disbelieving.”
• Papal appeal for peace in Central African Republic (Vatican News)
  The nation of 6 million (map) is 39% Catholic, 36% Protestant, 13% Muslim, and 11% ethnic religionist. Pope Francis made an apostolic journey to the war-torn nation in 2015.
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