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Jerusalem, Jan 20, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The 50 year-long of occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza by Israel must be at the attention of every Christian and demands resolution, the chair of the Holy Land Coordination said Thursday.

“Our Coordination has called for justice and peace every year since 1998, yet the suffering continues. So this call must get louder. As Bishops we implore Christians in our home countries to recognize our own responsibility for prayer, awareness and action,” Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton, chair of the Holy Land Coordination, wrote in a Jan. 19 statement. The statement was signed by another 11 bishops, including Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces.

The communique marked the conclusion of an annual week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land by the group, made up of bishops from Europe, North America, and South Africa. The Holy Land Coordination is encouraged in its work by the Holy See as it supports the local Church in Palestine and Israel.

“For fifty years the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza have languished under occupation, violating the human dignity of both Palestinians and Israelis,” Bishop Lang said. “This is a scandal to which we must never become accustomed”

“So many people in the Holy Land have spent their entire lives under occupation, with its polarising social segregation, yet still profess hope and strive for reconciliation,” Bishop Lang wrote. “Now, more than ever, they deserve our solidarity.”

The bishop also stated that we have a responsibility to oppose the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are home to some 600,000 Israelis. Under international law, the settlements are considered illegal, though Israel disputes this.

The settlers' “de facto annexation of land not only undermines the rights of Palestinians in areas such as Hebron and East Jerusalem but, as the UN recently recognised, also imperils the chance of peace,” Bishop Lang stated.

Turning to the situation of the Gaza Strip, he said Gazans, “who continue to live amid a man-made humanitarian catastrophe,” need assistance. “They have now spent a decade under blockade, compounded by a political impasse caused by ill-will on all sides.”

He continued to say apathy can never be a response to the scandal, and it is the job of every Christian to help the local Church, as well as its agencies, volunteers, and non-governmental organizations.

“We all have a responsibility to encourage non-violent resistance. This is particularly necessary in the face of injustices such as the continued construction of the separation wall on Palestinian land including the Cremisan Valley.”

The proposed Israeli security barrier route effectively confiscates Palestinian land, and compromises the ministry of Christian institutions and the rights of Christian landowners.

Bishop Lang added that “we all have a responsibility to promote a two-state solution,” noting that the Holy See has said, “if Israel and Palestine do not agree to exist side-by-side, reconciled and sovereign within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders, peace will remain a distant dream and security an illusion.”

Bishop Lang ended the communiqué with a biblical quote about the Jubilee, the ancient practice of the Kingdom of Israel of liberating slaves and forgiving debts every 50 years: “You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the country’s inhabitants,” he said, quoting Leviticus 25:10.

“During this fiftieth year of occupation we must pray for the liberty of everyone in the Holy Land and practically support all those working to build a just peace,” he concluded.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis is praying for the victims of a deadly avalanche in central Italy that struck a mountain hotel hosting some thirty people.

The first victims have been pulled from the snow and rubble, and rescue teams are battling the elements as they continue their search for the missing, which include children.

Listen to our report:

The avalanche struck on Wednesday evening after multiple earthquakes in the region.

Archbishop Nunzio Galantino, General Secretary of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, told Vatican Radio that Pope Francis has asked to be constantly informed about the situation. 

Archbishop Galantino said, “The Pope is being kept up to date constantly. Every once in a while he calls one of the affected bishops.”

He said the Holy Father not only invites all to pray, but is also calling on everyone in the Episcopal Conference to do all they can to make people feel the closeness of the Church.  

Archbishop Galantino went on to say that the situation is truly dramatic, with a perfect storm of earthquakes, snow, and terrible meteorological conditions. 

He concluded that these factors have caused a deep seated psychological distress in all the inhabitants of the area.

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Vatican Weekend for January 21st, 2017 features an interview on the theme of healing and hope with the director of a Centre in northern England for those recovering from addictions plus a reflection from Dominican preacher Father Paul Murray on Christian hope.

Listen to this programme produced and presented by Susy Hodges: 

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Washington D.C., Jan 20, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A reported drop in the United States abortion rate by the Guttmacher Institute is good news to pro-life leaders, who nevertheless acknowledge that optimism should be tempered.

“The news that there may be fewer abortions taking place in the United States is a great start to the New Year, though we have to take the abortion industry’s claims with a grain of salt,” the acting president of Americans United for Life, Clarke Forsythe, stated.

The accuracy of the numbers could have been affected by the lack of a “national reporting requirement” for clinics, he said.

Charles Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University, echoed that claim, saying the numbers were “good news” but cautioning that “a confluence of factors” was behind them.

Abortion rates in the U.S. fell to their lowest recorded level since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, the Guttmacher Institute, which provides research and analysis to “advance sexual and reproductive health and rights,” said in a report released Jan. 17.

The rate of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in the U.S. fell by 14 percent from 2011 to 2014, Guttmacher reported, with the current rate at 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. There were 926,200 recorded abortions in 2014 overall, they said.

And the number of pregnancies ending in abortion, excluding miscarriages, also fell by 11 percent since 2011, the report noted.

This continued a marked decline in the abortion rate, which had already dropped by 13 percent between 2008 and 2011. The overall abortion rate has seen a steady decline since 1980-81 when it was at its peak of 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women, NPR reported.

Pro-life leaders have welcomed the overall finding of a smaller abortion rate, although they raised some questions about the accuracy of the report.

“That’s the core question,” Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute told CNA of the accuracy of the numbers. For instance, he noted that California has no reporting of abortion numbers from its state health agency. The report itself states that “we obtained responses from only 58% of facilities that we believed provided abortions in 2014.”

This points to a “crying need” for better reporting of abortion numbers on a state and national level, Donovan said.

Nevertheless, among all the sources that are reporting abortions, they show a sharp decline in the abortion rate, he emphasized, from state reports to Guttmacher’s report to reports by the Centers for Disease Control.

The biggest cause driving the decline, Guttmacher suggested, could have been the use of contraceptives.

Dr. Rachel Jones, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, told CNA, “we think the most important contributing factor is improvements in contraceptive use … That couples are using contraception more effectively, and in particular, there are indicators that more women are using long-acting methods such as IUD.”

There was increased utilization of certain contraceptive devices such as intra-uterine devices (IUDs) and long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs). The “reliance” on those two devices had increased by 130 percent between 2007 and 2009 and “continued, albeit at a slightly slower pace, through 2012,” the Guttmacher Institute said.

Jones added that “fewer women were getting pregnant in 2014 than in 2011…we think this is because the best available evidence suggests that more women are using highly-effective methods and therefore there [are] fewer unintended pregnancies. So that means more of the pregnancies that do occur are intended. And so, by default, these women chose to get pregnant and they choose to have a baby.”

Other, smaller causes for the decline in the abortion rate could have been state laws restricting abortions or regulating abortion clinics, Guttmacher said.

“Improved contraceptive use in recent years has led to a decline in the U.S. unintended pregnancy rate, suggesting that women are increasingly able to plan their pregnancies and therefore have a decreased need for abortions,” they stated.

“However, the wave of abortion restrictions passed at the state level over the last five years could also have contributed to the decline by making it more difficult for women to access needed services in highly restrictive states.”

19 states have passed “pain-capable” bills, or 20-week abortion bans, since 2010. Regulations of abortion clinics have also been passed by several states in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell incident, in which the Philadelphia abortionist was convicted in 2013 on three counts of first-degree murder of babies and prosecutors described his clinic as a “house of horrors” full of serious health violations.

There are a “whole host of factors” that could be behind the abortion rate decline, Donovan said. “We think there’s an awful lot going on.”

He pointed to surveys showing young people trending more pro-life, due to an increase in the use and quality of ultrasounds that show a baby in the womb. The violence of abortion would also be a turn-off to many young people, he said. A higher percentage of unintended pregnancies are being carried to term, he added.

Teenage sexual activity has overall decreased, Donovan said, pointing to numbers from the Resource Center for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention showing the percentage of high school students who had ever had sex declined from 54 percent in 1991 to 47 percent in 2013.

There have also been “changing understandings of abortion,” Camosy said. The unborn child was formerly referred to as a “clump of cells,” but the rise of technology such as 3D ultrasounds have enabled people to see a living, moving child in the womb.

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards attributed the decline to contraceptives, NPR reported. "It shows that we're finally doing a better job of helping women get access to birth control that's affordable and that's high-quality,” Richards said.

In the Guttmacher report, there was a 14 percent increase in “early medication abortions” that were “in non-hospital facilities,” like the use of the RU-486 pill in the first eight weeks after gestation. Donovan admitted this is a “worrisome number.”

It is also a “clarion call” for better tracking of the number of abortion injuries, he insisted, as the RU-486 pill can be taken by a mother at home and the complications or injuries arising from it are “outside of the clinic.”

And only just over half of states require reporting of abortion complications, he said.

Overall, the numbers reflect progress, Donovan said, pointing to factors like more resources for pregnant women as driving more women to carry their children to term.

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