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Pretoria, South Africa, Apr 10, 2017 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of South Africa have called on the country's embattled president, Jacob Zuma, to consider stepping down as part of an effort to fight corruption.

Marches protesting Zuma have been held across cities in South Africa after he reshuffled his cabinet, replacing a respected finance minister at the end of March, which resulted in the country's credit rating being cut to junk status by S&P.

The sacked minister, Pravin Gordhan, is regarded as an opponent of government corruption.

“We respectfully remind President Zuma that he has been elected to serve all South Africans,” read the April 4 letter from the South African bishops' conference, signed by Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town.

“It appears that he has lost the confidence of many of his own closest colleagues, as well as that of numerous civil society organisations. He should earnestly reconsider his position, and not be afraid to act with courage and humility in the nation’s best interests.”

However, the bishops' letter also noted that while they “noted and respect” the calls for Zuma to resign, “such as step would not in itself be a complete solution, as corruption at every level must to be rooted out.”

Zuma has been South Africa's president since 2009, and his term of office is not due to end until 2019. He is also leader of the African National Congress, which has ruled the country since 1994.

Though some elements in the ANC, as well as several of its allied parties, are calling on Zuma to resign, the party's National Working Committee has reiterated its support for him.

In their April 4 statement, the bishops wrote that “the leadership of the ANC must make serious and strenuous efforts to end corruption and patronage at all levels of governance.”

“In the present state of anxiety and uncertainty it is of utmost importance that Parliament be reconvened urgently. There is an enormous obligation on our public representatives … to exercise their duty of holding the Executive arm of government to account.”

“We hope that Membersof Parliament will be guided by the welfare of our country and its people, and not by narrow loyalties or factional interests,” they added.

The bishops concluded by stating: “We have confidence in the leaders of the two noble institutions, Parliament and the ANC, and we trust that they will rise to the occasion and give decisive, fearless and honest leadership.”

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Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2017 / 11:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the murder of Christians in Egypt through two bombings during Palm Sunday liturgies, bishops around the world joined Pope Francis in prayer.

“We also pray for our Coptic Orthodox sisters and brothers who continue to be resilient in the face of ongoing and escalating attacks, and who resist the urge to react vengefully or reciprocally,” said Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom.

Two Egyptian Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria and Tanta, in the north of the country, were bombed during their Palm Sunday services. The attacks killed at least 44 and injured more than 100, Reuters reported. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombings.

In Tanta, an explosion rocked Mar Gerges Coptic Orthodox church during the Palm Sunday liturgy. A state investigation said it was a suicide bombing. A bomb had been found and disabled at the church a week before, a police official told Reuters.

Shortly afterward, a suicide bomber rushed the outside of the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Alexandria where Tawadros II, Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, was celebrating the liturgy, and detonated his explosives. Security details had reportedly been placed outside of both churches.

The attacks came only weeks before Pope Francis plans to visit Egypt to promote peace and dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the country. Pope Francis, after celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Square, decried the violence and asked God to “convert the hearts of those who sow fear, violence and death, and those who make and traffic arms.” He also expressed solidarity with Tawardos II.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared a state of emergency in Egypt following the attacks. Sunday’s atrocities follow a months-long spike in anti-Christian violence in Egypt, particularly in the country’s Sinai region.

In December, 29 died in a bombing of a chapel next to St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Cairo, where ISIS took credit for the attack.

Then several Christians were attacked and killed in their homes and villages by ISIS affiliates in the Sinai region in the following months. Hundreds fled their homes as a result of the violence. In total, 40 were reported killed in the bombing and in the ensuing three months.

The advocacy group In Defense of Christians voiced their “solidarity with Egypt, particularly Egypt’s Christian community,” and senior advisor Andrew Doran stated that “we call on Egypt's government to use all necessary means to make places of worship in Egypt safe, especially those systematically targeted by terrorists.”

Bishops in the U.S. also condemned the bombings and declared their solidarity with Christians in Egypt.

“They were at Church. They were praying. And in the midst of what should be peace, horrible violence yet again,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston-Galveston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Sunday.

“Our Holy Father has pointed out – and it’s something that the statisticians have pointed out in recent years – that there are more Christians dying for the faith today than ever happened under the Roman authorities at the time of the pagan empire,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. said at the end of Palm Sunday Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington.

Ultimately, the greatest thing Christians can do for their brothers and sisters in Egypt is pray, especially during Holy Week, the bishops said.

“May Our Lady, Queen of Peace, intercede for us as we pray for an end to all violence,” Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington reflected on Sunday.

“So I would ask you today, and during this Holy Week when you are lifting up your hearts in prayer, to remember them [the Coptic Christians],” Cardinal Wuerl emphasized.

“They have no voice. They have no one to speak for them. They have no one to stand up for them. But we can at least remember them as part of the Body of Christ being crucified in our day today. We pray for them.”

Cardinal DiNardo joined in Pope Francis’s prayers for the victims, the perpetrators, and those trafficking in weapons.

“I also pray for the nation of Egypt, that it may seek justice, find healing, and strengthen protection for Coptic Christians and other religious minorities who wish only to live in peace,” he said.

Bishop Angaelos viewed the suffering of Egypt’s Christians through the mysteries of Holy Week and Easter Sunday

“As we celebrate Palm Sunday today and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, we now also mark the entry of those who have passed today into the heavenly Jerusalem,” he said of the bombings. “As we continue into the Holy Week of our Savior, we share in the pain and heartbreak of their families and of all those affected by today’s incidents.”

“As we celebrate the Feast of the glorious Resurrection at the end of this week, we are reminded that our life here on earth is a journey often filled with pain, at the end of which is a promised glorious and eternal life void of such suffering and evil.”

 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Barbara Fraser

By Barbara J. Fraser

HUARAZ, Peru (CNS) -- A grim-faced Pontius Pilate stares straight ahead, while Jesus, bound with rope, stands beside him, head down. Jesus turns a tortured face heavenward as he falls for the first time under the weight of a stone cross.

Mary places a hand on Jesus' arm, as if beseeching, and he looks at her with compassion, but faces forward, one hand open toward whatever lies ahead. The journey toward Calvary continues, and finally a white tear glistens in Mary's eye as she holds her son's broken body.

Five young Peruvian stone carvers have spent the past year fashioning the life-size Stations of the Cross from six-foot-tall blocks of Italian marble for a parish in the United States.

The figures, which went on exhibit April 8 at the cathedral in this Andean city, will eventually be shipped to Las Vegas to become part of a prayer garden at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, the newest parish in the Las Vegas Diocese, which is expected to be completed in early 2018.

"When we first saw the (carving of) the body of Christ placed in (the) arms of Mary, his mother, it brought tears to our eyes," said Father William Kenny, pastor of Holy Spirit. "We were speechless. It was so powerful."

He, the church architect, a deacon and the two laymen's wives had traveled to Peru to meet the artists, who are also making the parish's altar, ambo and baptismal pool.

The stone carvers are members of Artesanos Don Bosco, a program of schools and cooperatives founded by Salesian Father Ugo de Censi in the 1970s in a village in the shadow of the snowcapped Cordillera Blanca in central Peru.

Father Kenny and his companions visited the program's workshops and boarding schools, living with the students and the mainly Italian volunteers who support the program.

"It's like a religious community," Father Kenny said. "Many (of the students and artisans) came from very poor situations, and they have strong spiritual lives."

For Antonio Tafur, 33, who designed all the figures and carved three of them, fashioning the Stations of the Cross has been a labor of skill and prayer.

"I like to think about what Jesus must have been like," he said, looking at the agonized, upturned face of the figure of the fallen Jesus. "There is passion, there is love, there is mercy."

As Jesus cries out to his father, there is also a sense of abandonment -- an emotion Tafur has also known. His parents separated when he was young, and he spent his early years living with his mother, who worked long hours to support her family.

By the time he was a teenager, he was on a dangerous path shared by many young people in rough, low-income neighborhoods in Lima, Peru's sprawling capital.

"In Lima, I did stupid things," he said. "Sometimes I skipped school. I partied."

When he was 13, his father took him to spend two months in his (father's) hometown of Chacas near Huaraz, where Tafur joined the Don Bosco "oratorio," a group of young people who met to pray, reflect and help others. Although they were poor, they learned to find joy in serving those needier than themselves, he said.

Instead of returning to Lima, he was invited to enter the Artesanos Don Bosco school, where he learned his craft along with mathematics, literature and other academic subjects.

On weekends, he and his classmates helped elderly villagers, cutting firewood, tending their fields or repairing their houses.

That is part of the rhythm of prayer, study, work and rest that marks life in the schools, which become like families for the students, said Dario Chiminelli, 43, an Italian volunteer who manages the school and workshops in a village just outside the town of Huaraz, in Peru's central Ancash region.

Each student chooses a specialty -- carpentry, stone carving, mosaics, glass working, weaving or painting -- and receives a set of professional tools at graduation. Some strike out on their own, while others, like Tafur, join one of the cooperatives operating in rural parts of Peru.

Father de Censi's vision for Artesanos Don Bosco was to enable young people to earn a living in their home villages, near their families, instead of migrating to Lima or other large cities to seek work, Chiminelli said.

In Italy, he and other volunteers did odd jobs and recycled discarded items to earn money for the program's outreach work in Peru and programs in Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. A similar group has formed in Baltimore.

Volunteers who choose to serve in South America receive room and board, but no stipend, and they pay their own travel expenses, he said. All the funds they collect go to help those most in need.

"Each place is like a hub," Father Kenny said of the workshops he visited, where poor local residents can also get meals and other assistance.

"It's a whole spiritual community," he said. "They seem very happy, and obviously they all have bright futures in their profession."

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