Catholic News 2

Full Article

Aleppo, Syria, Apr 6, 2017 / 02:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The attitude of Christians in Aleppo seems to have improved since Syrian government forces re-took the city, and they believe the prayers of Christians abroad have helped them, one religious sister reports.

Sister Maria Sponsa Iusti Ioseph, a native of Peru, told CNA that the Christians in Aleppo have received with love the words of Pope Francis.

When government forces took the city from rebels in December, the sisters told the faithful “that the Holy Father is praying for us and a lot of people in the world are too.”

“They really appreciate that and they feel protected by the prayers of Christians,” Sister Maria Sponsa said. “At the same time they feel very happy because they know that their suffering is not in vain, but it helps the people in the West. If they know that there are conversions because of that offering, that gives them a lot of strength to go on.”

The sister is a religious of the Institute of the Incarnate Word who lives in the city of Aleppo, which was taken from rebels in December 2016. She recounted how Christians have lived in the last four months.

The Christians in Aleppo attend Mass frequently. Before Mass, they pray a Rosary for peace.

“Once a month a Eucharist is celebrated for the deceased in the Cathedral of the Child Jesus,” Sister Maria Sponsa said. “Now thanks be to God, the Christian cemetery has been recovered—it was controlled by the rebels. Christians can visit their dead again and bring over bodies interred elsewhere for burial there.”

Sister María Sponsa said that the people’s attitude has improved since the government's capture of the city. This change was noticeable during Christmas.

“We saw that people were walking happily down the street. Their faces were completely changed,” she said. “Even though they are usually very cheerful, you could notice another kind of joy. It was like a respite.”

“Some of the window lights were lit up and the churches had also decorated their domes with lights. They even set up a Christmas tree in the street.”

During previous Christmases since the civil war began, “there were no lights in the windows, nor were there churches decorated with lights, nor was there any Christmas atmosphere.”

“When we visited the people we would ask them if they had set up a manger scene, but they didn't want to have one because it brought back memories for them,” Sister Maria Sponsa reported. “Before the war they lived so happily, they shared the holidays with their families. And so it was depressing for them to put out those things that represented those memories in the midst of a difficult situation.”

However, for the 2016 holidays some people put out their decorations again.

The religious sister also stressed that the suffering caused by shortages in the city, such as water, food and shelter, has resulted in Christian and Muslim neighbors working together to survive.

“Today we all share the same lot. Everyone is suffering because of this situation. They help each other out. The people of Aleppo are very respectful and very open, thanks be to God,” she said. “That makes it easier for good relationships among everyone.”

Sister María Sponsa said that the home of the Incarnate Word sisters in Aleppo is open to anyone who wants to visit them.

“People like to come to the house. And so we have little get-togethers, have a little coffee,” she said. “We even have coffee with the people after Sunday Mass. They enjoy it. They talk with us and get a little relief from the situation they're going through.”

For Sister Maria Sponsa, Syrians “express affection very differently from Latinos.”

“It seems to me they're much warmer,” she said. “For example after five minutes they say ‘I miss you.’ When they know you well they call you and ask how you're doing.”

“There, you hardly come into a house and they don’t ask you if you’re going to have coffee. They say, ‘with or without sugar?’  They talk with you for five minutes and then they give you the coffee,” she commented.

The Franciscans and the Salesians usually prepare the Christian children, youths and adults to receive the sacraments for the first time.

The religious  sister said that every Thursday the sisters get together with the young college students they welcome into their home.

“We talk, we give them a little doctrine, sometimes we watch movies and play board games,” she said. “For them it’s a time of fun and distraction. They’re always waiting for it to be Thursday so we can get together.”

They also organize a co-ed gathering once a month, since the men live with the priests of the same institute.

“When we can take a little walk, we go to the park, although it's not that safe. We watch movies with them or we invite them.”

The Syrian civil war began in March 2011 with demonstrations against the nation's president, Bashar al-Assad. The war has claimed the lives of more than 320,000 people, and forced 4.8 million to become refugees. Another 8 million Syrians are believed to have been internally displaced by the violence.

Full Article

Dublin, Ireland, Apr 6, 2017 / 03:53 pm (CNA).- Facing legal scrutiny over foreign funding of efforts to fight Ireland’s anti-abortion law, a pro-abortion group has returned a $25,000 grant to billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

But Cora Sherlock, spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign, fears the grant to the Ireland-based Abortion Rights Campaign was only “the tip of the iceberg.”

“There is no question this was politically motivated funding,” she told CNA April 5. “I think it is a good thing that the money was returned but there are still outstanding questions that have not be answered.”

In August 2016, CNA broke the news of documents that had been reportedly hacked from Open Society Foundations and posted to the site DCLeaks.com.

These documents showed a strategy proposal for the foundations’ Women’s Rights Program to fund the Abortion Rights Campaign, Amnesty International Ireland, and the Irish Family Planning Association “to work collectively on a campaign to repeal Ireland’s constitutional amendment granting equal rights to an implanted embryo as the pregnant woman (referred to as ‘fetal personhood’).”

That same month, the Republic of Ireland’s Standards in Public Office began to examine whether the funding violated Irish law, according to the newspaper The Irish Catholic, which cited documents released under a freedom of information act request.

Irish law forbids campaign groups accepting more than 100 Euro in donations from foreign sources that could be used for domestic political purposes.

Irish officials repeatedly sought copies of correspondence between the Abortion Rights Campaign and the Open Society Foundations, including its funding application.

The Abortion Rights Campaign was reluctant to hand over these documents.

It initially claimed all funding for political purposes had been revealed, The Irish Catholic reported. After another request, it invoked European Convention on Human Rights protections and maintained the grant was not for political purposes. The group claimed that providing the grant application and other correspondence would violate the European human rights convention and raise questions about confidentiality.

By November 2016, the Standards in Public Office threatened to report the campaign to Ireland’s national police if it did not turn over the relevant documents. The Abortion Rights Campaign then agreed to provide the documents while protesting the way the law was being applied.

The documents suggested that the campaign’s own grant application to the Open Society Foundations was conscious of political purpose.

According to the application, the purpose of is project was “to engage, energize, mobilize and provide self-education opportunities on issues of sexual health, reproductive rights and abortion in Ireland with a strategic goal of garnering support for repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, reducing abortion stigma, and increasing grass roots engagement.”

The Abortion Rights Campaign agreed to return the grant, but it reiterated its disagreement with the officials’ interpretation of the law.

Sherlock said there are “numerous” international pro-abortion rights groups and foundations besides the Open Society Foundations that have funded, or wish to fund, the movement against Ireland’s abortion law.

“A concern I would have is that international pro-abortion foundations have already contributed vast sums of money to ‘Repeal the Eighth’ groups in Ireland and it just so happens that some of the Soros funding has come to light under the DC Leaks exposé,” she said. “The sums of money given by the Open Society Foundations alone to Amnesty Ireland and the Irish Family Planning Association are far from insignificant. Hundreds of thousands of Euro have been transferred to these groups and I would fear this is the tip of the iceberg.”

Sherlock said she found it “very hard” to believe the other groups did not receive politically motivated funding. In her view, the DC Leaks documents “clearly showed that the funding from the Soros Foundation to these groups was intended to influence the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment.”

In response to The Irish Catholic report in March 2017, the Abortion Rights Campaign said that the grant was intended “to fund educational and stigma-busting projects.”

“Our focus remains on advocating for reproductive rights while striving to lift the stigma surrounding abortion in Ireland,” said the group’s spokesperson Linda Kavanagh.

The Republic of Ireland’s Eighth Amendment, passed by voters in 1983, acknowledges “the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

The Open Society Foundations documents suggested that the foundations saw any pro-abortion rights success in Ireland as a model to change pro-life laws in other Catholic countries in Europe, such as Poland. It also noted support for pro-abortion efforts in Mexico, Zambia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, and other parts of Latin America and Europe.

The strategy document said the foundations’ actions from 2016-2019 would aim to generate “a robust set of organizations advancing and defending sexual and reproductive rights and injecting new thinking/strategy into the field.”

Other documents on the DCLeaks.com website showed the Open Society Foundations collaborating with Planned Parenthood, the Hewlett Foundation and the Democracy Alliance in a multi-million dollar campaign to respond to videos that appeared to expose the abortion performer’s involvement in the illegal sale of fetal tissue and unborn baby parts for profit.

 

Full Article

Washington D.C., Apr 6, 2017 / 04:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious freedom advocates at the United States capitol on Thursday sent a message of solidarity to all those imprisoned or tortured for their religious beliefs.

“You are not alone. We are here with you, and we together will fight for your freedom,” Kristina Arriaga, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated April 6 to two prisoners she sponsored as part of a forthcoming project on “prisoners of conscience.”

Under the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, signed into law in December by President Barack Obama, the commission was directed to make a list of persons throughout the world who have been tortured, killed, imprisoned, have disappeared, or were placed under house arrest because of their religious beliefs or advocacy.

The commission monitors religious freedom around the world and makes policy recommendations to the State Department.

On Thursday members announced that a “prisoners of conscience” list is being created, and that they will seek public input from non-government organizations on information about persons who could be included on the list. There will be forms provided for organizations to complete, Fr. Thomas Reese, chair of the commission, announced.

The list will be used for advocacy for the release of prisoners by foreign governments or non-state actors, Fr. Reese explained. “Public inattention can often lead to more persecution,” he said. Pictures of the prisoners and personal information can also help “put a face” to persecution around the world, he added.

“USCIRF strongly believes that it is essential to highlight the very personal dimensions and cruel costs of violations of freedom of religion or belief. These are human beings. We want to put a human face on these violations of religious freedom.”

Included on the list are members of the “Baha’i Seven,” leaders of the Baha’i religious minority in Iran who have been imprisoned since 2008, and Maryam Naghash Zargaran, a Christian convert from Islam who worked at an orphanage in Iran and was convicted of “propagating against the Islamic regime and collusion intended to harm national security,” according to USCIRF.

Commissioners brought attention to various prisoners they themselves have sponsored. Fr. Reese sponsored Abune Antonios, Patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, who has been detained since 2007.

He chose to sponsor the patriarch for ecumenical reasons, he explained, but also to draw attention to a little-known country with a poor human rights record.

“We’re hoping that this gives it a face, this gives it more attention, so that it’s simply not ignored by the media or by government officials or by anybody who can put the spotlight on the problems in Eritrea,” he explained. “For Christians, these are our brothers and sisters in Africa who are suffering because of their faith.”

Patriarch Antonios was elected patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church in 2003, but was forcibly removed by the government in 2007 after “he called for the release of Christian prisoners and refused to excommunicate 3,000 of his parishioners who opposed the government,” Fr. Reese explained.

The patriarch is “reportedly being denied medical care despite his suffering from severe diabetes,” he added.

“Eritrea is known as the North Korea of Africa,” he explained to CNA. The government imprisons thousands for their religious beliefs or advocacy and “uses torture and forced labor” to exert control.

“Arresting the Patriarch, that’s like arresting the Pope! And deposing him – Napoleon did that,” Fr. Reese said. “This is the level of abuse of freedom of religion in this country. And it’s not only him [the patriarch], it’s the other clergy that are being harassed and persecuted.”

Kristina Arriaga sponsored two members of the “Bahá’í Seven,” a group who were “tending to the spiritual and the social needs of the Bahá’í” before they were arrested by the Iranian government in 2008, labeled as heretics, convicted for “espionage and spreading propaganda against the regime”, and sentenced to at least 20 years in prison.

There have been over 200 Bahá’í leaders killed since the 1979 Iranian revolution, she said.

Arriaga sponsored two women of the seven – Mahwash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi. They shared a cell in a Tehran prison. One, Fariba, wrote a “whole book of poetry” smuggled out through “scraps of paper,” Arriaga said.

“Their name may sound foreign to all of us, but they want the same things we do, to live according to their deeply held convictions, to be with their families through the good times and the bad times, to be there for births and celebrations and weddings and deaths and funerals, but they can’t,” she said.

“Fariba and Mahvash, Your voice was indeed taken away. Until you are freed, we – all of us here – will lend you ours,” she added.

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article