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Archbishop Thumma Bala of Hyderabad diocese has called on the clergy, religious and the faithful to participate in the spiritual activities to make reparation for the desecration of the Church committed last week in Telangana state.  

Our Lady of Fatima Church in Keesara, Medchal district of Telangana State,  was inaugurated on May 13, on the hundredth anniversary of the Apparition of our Lady at Fatima to three shepherd children.  On May 21, about 100 people instigated by some religious fundamentalists and anti-social elements vandalized the newly built Church. 

In his appeal, Bishop Thumma Bala has urged the local Catholics to respond with prayers to the damage done.  In response to this appeal a Eucharistic worship will be held in St. Mary’s High School secunderabad on May 30, followed by Mass which will be presided over by the archbishop,  following Friday Eucharistic adoration of two hours in all the parishes of the diocese and the recitation of the Rosary the following day.    

On 9 June, all Catholics – clergy, religious and laity – are called to observe a day of fast and prayer. On the same day a group of Catholics will travel to the church hall to celebrate a ritual of purification.

Archbishop Bala in his statement has noted that Mr U. George Reddy, a Catholic  "donated 500 sq. yards and the archdiocese purchased from him about 700 sq yards (altogether 1,200 sq yards). Mr Reddy obtained a permit to build a multipurpose hall. Three months earlier, “the parish priest had applied to the Collector for permission to build a church, which is in the process” of being finalised.

In signing off the statement, the archbishop says, "I wish you all the best, the special blessings of the Risen Lord and the loving care and maternal protection of our Blessed Mother, Fatima Mata." (AsiaNews)

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(Vatican Radio)  The United Nations has named a three-member team headed by an Indian woman lawyer to probe alleged atrocities by Myanmar’s security forces against Rohingya Muslims, a move that has been long opposed by the government. 

The President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli of El Salvador, on Tuesday appointed India’s Supreme Court lawyer, Indira Jaising to head the team that includes Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy and Australian rights consultant Christopher Dominic Sidoti.

The Council decided on 24 March to urgently dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission to “establish facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and security forces, and abuses, in Myanmar, in particular in Rakhine State”. 

Crimes against humanity

Some 75,000 Rohingya fled northwestern Rakhine state to Bangladesh after the Myanmar army carried out a security operation last October in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents on border posts in which nine police officers were killed.  A U.N. report from February, based on interviews with some of the Rohingya refugees, said Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya in a campaign that "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has opposed UN probe

Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar's civilian government and also its foreign minister, has said she would only accept recommendations from a separate advisory commission led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan. Any other input would "divide" communities, she has said.

Myanmar diplomats have rejected the move as "not acceptable" and "not in harmony with the situation on the ground and our national circumstances". They asked for time for its national investigation to conclude its findings.

The fact-finding mission is scheduled to present an oral update to the Human Rights Council at its ‎thirty-sixth session in September this year and a full report at its thirty-seventh session in March 2018.‎  The members of the Mission are expected to meet in Geneva in the coming weeks to plan their agenda ‎and work for the months ahead.‎

Jaising, 76, who in 1981 co-founded the “Lawyers Collective”, an NGO fighting for human rights especially ‎women’s rights, had drafted India's first domestic violence act, allowing women to bring civil and criminal suits against attackers for the first time.  She was India’s first woman to be designated a Senior Advocate by ‎the High Court of Bombay in 1986, and first female Additional Solicitor General of the country from ‎‎2009 until 2014.

Coomaraswamy, a civil society member of the Constitutional Council, is a former chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission and director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. She has worked as the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and as Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

Sidoti is an international human rights consultant, specializing in the international human rights system and in national human rights institutions who, since 2000, has provided consultancy services on human rights law and practices to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNDP, UNICEF, the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions and several national human rights institutions.

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Secretary General of the Catholic Diocese of Yei in South Sudan has urged politicians in that country to seek to become holy politicians. 

Fr Emmanuel Lodongo Sebit told parishioners of Christ the King Cathedral in Yei that, “It is not a sin to be a politician, but acts that do not help build the nation are the things that God dislikes,” South Sudan’s Radio Easter reported.

Fr Lodongo Sebit said a Christian vision of politics should not be limited to acquiring and struggling for power. 

He urged politicians to emulate former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere whom the Church declared Servant of God in 2005. This was the first step indicating the start of the process that could lead to Nyerere’s possible beatification and eventual canonisation as a saint. 

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI on an Apostolic Visit to Benin said Africa needs holy politicians. Pope Benedict said Africa also needs good governance which comes about as result of respect for Constitutions, free elections, independent judicial and penitential systems, and a transparent bureaucracy free from the temptation of corruption. The Pope’s message for Africa was contained in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, “Africae munus.” The Exhortation was the result of the Second African Synod of Bishops.

Pope Benedict described saints as people reconciled with God and neighbour, who are exemplary heralds of justice and are apostles of peace. 

(Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va)

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"Let us reflect together on the ‘mission heart of the Christian faith’ in light of the Apostolic Missionary Exhortation of Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium. Let us have the courage of conversion, discernment, and authentic reform of each of us and of the institutions we serve, that is to say, the Pontifical Mission Societies." This is how Archbishop Protase Rugambwa, Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and President of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS), officially opened the General Assembly of the PMS taking place in Rome this week.

Greeting and thanking all those who "work on behalf and in favor of the Pontifical Mission Societies," Archbishop Rugambwa emphasised: "In full communion with the Holy Father, Pope Francis, let us not stop animating each other so that without fear and with great joy, may the announcement of the Risen Christ make the Church a community of reconciled, open to welcome everyone, always ready to bring and communicate to everyone the efficacy of salvation. No one is excluded, all at the heart of evangelization, so that Churches rediscover at the centre of their Christian faith the only mission assigned to them by the Lord Jesus Christ."

Archbishop Rugambwa then announced the Holy Father's approval of the proposal to convene an Extraordinary Missionary Month, in October 2019 to commemorate the centenary of the enactment of the encyclical, “Maximum illud” of Pope Benedict XV issued in 1919.

The Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019 will also promote the missionary commitment of the Church in line with the document, Evangelii Gaudium of Pope Francis. The General Assembly taking place this week will dedicate some of its work to elaborating proposals for the Missionary month of October 2019.

 (Agenzia Fides)

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(Vatican Radio) ‘Walking together on the way’ is the title of a new document to be published by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, whose members met this month in Erfurt, Germany.

Despite some “difficult conversations” and “hard questions” over the past year, the Anglican and Catholic theologians who make up ARCIC III managed, at the May 14th to 20th meeting, to conclude the first part of their mandate, finding agreement on ways in which the two Churches are structured at local, regional and universal levels.

The new statement opens the way for the Commission to tackle the second part of its mandate on how the Churches, at local and universal level, are able “to discern right ethical teaching”.

But what does the new ecumenical text contain? And how will it affect ordinary Catholics and Anglicans in the pews? To find answers to those questions, Philippa Hitchen spoke to the Catholic co-secretary of ARCIC III, Fr Anthony Currer of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

Listen: 

Fr Tony notes that the city of Erfurt was chosen for this 7th annual encounter because it was the place where Martin Luther found his vocation and entered the Augustinian order. In this year marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, he says, members of the group also knew they had to make some important decisions on what the document could say “about ecclesiology, about the Church as communion and […] about how our structures work within that communion”.

Asking hard questions

Fr Tony says participants “asked hard questions of one another” and agreement was by no means “a foregone conclusion”, yet the encounter also produced some “very positive conversations”. By reflecting on what the Anglicans call ‘instruments of communion’ the group explored decision making at local, regional and universal level, within both traditions.

Receptive ecumenism

Using what’s called the ‘receptive ecumenism’ model, Fr Tony explains that “each of us on our pilgrim way, trying to walk in fidelity to the Lord,” is called to examine how we “are wounded in some way”. By speaking honestly to our dialogue partners about our difficulties and shortcomings, he says, “we can learn from one another”.

Synodal structures, open discussions

Asked about what Catholics can learn from their Anglican counterparts, Fr Tony points to the “processes of synodal life” including parish councils, diocesan administrations and other regional structures. Noting the way Pope Francis is calling for “a more synodal Church”, he says these are questions where “we can look to the Anglican Communion” whose structures are “a bit more developed than our own”. He also notes the “very frank and open culture of discussion about real difficult issues in the Anglican Communion”, saying “that's something we could look to gain from”.

Reflecting on obstacles to unity, such as the ordination of women, Fr Tony says the new document looks at the broader questions of “ where authority lies,” adding that decisions taken at regional level are under “a lot of pressure to move in line” with the prevailing culture of the country.

Growing in communion

Looking at the impact this new document can have on people in the pews, Fr Tony says “this is an exercise which can be carried on at all levels of our Church and we invite lay Christians, clergy and local bishops to come together in conversation, [….] to be honest with each other about what they’re struggling with” and in this way learn to grow in communion, “recognizing one another as fellow travelers along the way.”

Please find below the full communiqué from the meeting of ARCIC III

The Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) held the seventh meeting of its current phase (ARCIC III) in Erfurt, Germany, 14–20 May, 2017. The Commission met at the St Ursula Educational and Catechetical Centre of the Diocese of Erfurt. The Centre is on a site which has been home to communities of consecrated life for over 800 years. A community of Ursuline sisters occupy part of the site and continue this tradition. The Commission is grateful to the director of the house Frau Carla Riechel, the guesthouse team, and the Ursuline sisters for making its stay so comfortable and for the context of prayer and spirituality in which it was able to conduct its work. The Commission also thanks Professor Myriam Wijlens for making so many of the arrangements for its time in Erfurt.

The Erfurt meeting marks a considerable step forward. In response to the first part of its mandate, to examine “the Church as Communion, local and universal” the Commission completed an agreed statement, the first of its current phase, entitled, Walking Together on the Way: Learning to be Church- Local, Regional, Universal. That the text was agreed owed much to an extensive process of redrafting over twelve months.

Walking Together on the Way employs the method of Receptive Ecumenism to examine the structures by which Catholics and Anglicans order and maintain communion at the local, regional and universal level. It examines common theological principles that Anglicans and Catholics share, and the differentiated structures, based on these principles, by which they make decisions. This method invites both traditions to repentance and conversion, by looking at what is underdeveloped or wounded in themselves. It is also predicated on the belief that in our dialogue partner we meet a community in which the Holy Spirit is alive and active. We can therefore ask firstly, where our communities are in need of reform, and, secondly, what we can learn from the our dialogue partner to help us in this growth. The Commission described this process as “receptive learning”.

The text prepares the way for the next ARCIC statement on the second part of its mandate, “how in communion the local and universal Church comes to discern right ethical teaching.” The Commission took time to review its work to date on this theme and proposed a schema to be approved at the Informal Talks in October. Building on the ecclesiological text, the schema will guide the next phase of the work of ARCIC III.

The Commission had decided to meet in Erfurt to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Erfurt is a significant city in the life of Martin Luther. It was here that he studied, decided to enter the Augustinian order, made his vows and was ordained. On Wednesday 17 May the Commission visited the Augustinerkloster where we were guided by the minister, the Revd Dr Irene Mildenberger. Afterwards the Commission was given a guided tour of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Mary’s by Dr Markus Schnauß. On Thursday 18 May, the Commission was privileged to meet the Catholic Bishop of Erfurt, the Most Revd Ulrich Neymeyr, who spoke about the pastoral challenges faced by Christians in his diocese.

ARCIC III was particularly glad to complete its first agreed statement, and the first ARCIC statement since 2005, in this significant location and in this auspicious year. It hopes that Walking Together on the Way: Learning to be Church- Local, Regional, Universal will also be known as “The Erfurt Document”. The published text is expected to be available in 2018.

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Vatican City, May 30, 2017 / 06:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Vatican spokesman Greg Burke confirmed that while Pope Francis had voiced his desire to travel to South Sudan for an ecumenical visit alongside Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby, it won’t be happening this year.

The trip is still being considered, just “not this year,” Burke told journalists May 30. He did not elaborate on when the visit, which had been tentatively planned for October, might take place.

Francis had hoped to travel to the war-torn country to promote peace, after making a similar effort during his 2015 visit to the Central African Republic.

Although Burke didn’t cite specific reasons for the postponement of the Pope’s visit to South Sudan, various Italian media outlets have reported that the decision was made due to security concerns.

The Pope previously voiced his intention to visit South Sudan alongside Anglican Primate and Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. The trip would have marked the first time Catholic and Anglican leaders made such a trip together.

The idea was likely the fruit of a meeting the Pope had with ecumenical leaders from South Sudan last fall, when Archbishop Paulino Luduku Loro of Juba traveled to Rome together with Rev. Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan, and Rev. Peter Gai Lual Marrow, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan.

The three of them met with Pope Francis Oct. 27, 2016, to discuss the desperate situation of the country with Pope Francis. During the visit, they not only highlighted their joint collaboration in seeking to alleviate the effects of the crisis, but they also invited the Pope for a formal visit.

Arranged by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Vatican’s dicastery for Integral Human Development, the meeting focused largely on current tensions dividing Sudanese people, and the collaboration of different Christian denominations in promoting reconciliation and the common good.

Sudan has been the scene of nearly continuous civil war since it gained independence in 1956. Many of the initial problems were caused by corruption in the government, which led to the political, economic, and religious marginalization of the country’s peripheries.

South Sudan became an independent country in 2011, but has been torn by a civil war since December 2013, between the state forces – the Sudan People’s Liberation Army – and opposition forces, as well as sectarian conflict.

A peace agreement was eventually signed, but was broken by violence in the summer of 2016, prompting the South Sudan Council of Churches to publicly condemn the violence and pray for peace. A ceasefire was then ordered by President Kiir and then-Vice President Machar in July.

Machar, the former rebel leader, ended up fleeing the country. However, despite this, violent fighting in the country has continued.

In comments to CNA after their meeting with the Pope in 2016, Archbishop Loro emphasized the joint ecumenical effort of Christian Churches in South Sudan, saying “all are Christian religions and we are perfectly together.”

Different Christian communities have always spoken about the situation of the country together, and because of this it was “perfectly in place” that the three of them would come to the Vatican together to voice concerns surrounding the state of their country.

“We are together and we are really speaking one voice and one language” to raise awareness of the humanitarian, political and social crisis of the country both locally and internationally, the archbishop said.

Should Francis ever go to South Sudan, Loro said the Pope would visit as “a religious leader” whose presence “would have a great impact and would be very welcome by us and by civil society, and it would be a great help for us.”

As far as international visits go, the only other confirmed trip on the Pope’s calendar is his Sept. 6-11 visit to Colombia. Pope Francis has also spoken about a possible trip to India and Bangladesh toward the end of 2017, however, it has not yet been confirmed.

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