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Lima, Peru, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Under the theme “Don't Mess With My Children,” more than 1.5 million Peruvians demonstrated on Saturday against gender ideology in the nation’s schools.

Organizers said that total attendance surpassed 1.5 million, at demonstrations throughout the country.

Among those present were Congress members Julio Rosas, Carlos Tubino, Nelly Cuadros, Juan Carlos Gonzales, Marco Miyashiro, Roberto Vieira, Federico Pariona and Edwin Donayre.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Los organizadores de <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/conmishijosnotemetas?src=hash">#conmishijosnotemetas</a> anuncian que más de 1.5 millones marcharon en todo el Perú <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/4M?src=hash">#4M</a> ????<a href="https://twitter.com/Calderon_Martha">@Calderon_Martha</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/acamasca">@acamasca</a> <a href="https://t.co/351NDByffr">pic.twitter.com/351NDByffr</a></p>&mdash; ACI Prensa (@aciprensa) <a href="https://twitter.com/aciprensa/status/838175199686164480">March 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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“Don't Mess With My Children” is a campaign against recent attempts to promote a national curriculum of gender ideology, which teaches that one's 'gender'  is chosen and has no connection with one’s biological sex.

In January of this year, the Peruvian Bishop's Conference told the government that it “urges the removal from the new National Curriculum those notions coming from gender ideology.”

At 2 p.m. on March 4, massive crowds gathered to march toward San Martín Plaza in the center of Lima.

The demonstrators, bearing various signs and slogans, marched down the main districts of the Peruvian capital.

Other cities throughout the country, including Arequipa, Trujillo, Iquitos and Cusco, also saw heavily attended demonstrations.

Fr. Luis Gaspar, episcopal vicar of the Family and Life Commission for the Archdiocese of Lima, stressed that “education as the first right of parents concerning their children is not negotiable.”

“We are in a war over morals, a spiritual war, and the battlefield is the minds of their children, and we are going to defend it till the day we die.”

Fr. Gaspar also invited the demonstrators to participate in the March for Life which will be held March 25 in Lima.

 

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Geneva, Switzerland, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations reiterated the Vatican’s defense of all human life in a meeting with UN Human Rights Council on the death penalty.

“My Delegation reaffirms that life is sacred ‘from conception to natural death,’ and recalls          the words Pope Francis, that ‘even a criminal has the inviolable right to life,’” said Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic last Wednesday.

He cited the words of Pope Francis: “For a constitutional state the death penalty represents a failure, because it obliges a State to kill in the name of justice. But justice is never reached by killing a human being.”

The archbishop also expressed concern for possible failures in human justice which may bring about the death of the wrong person.

“In this regard, one should consider that human justice is fallible and that the death penalty per se is irreversible. We should take into account that capital punishment always includes the possibility of taking the life of an innocent person.”

He also said that there is “insufficient evidence that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime.”

Globally, recent years have seen a trend against the death penalty.

Recent studies have shown a decrease in popular opinion of capital punishment. Some 80 percent of the American population favored the death penalty for convicted murders in 1995, but a 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners found that support had dropped to 39 percent.

Fighting this trend is the Philippines, which is considering reinstating the death penalty, after it had been abolished in the country’s 1987 constitution.

Archbishop Jurkovic addressed the need for different avenues aimed at rehabilitation and society’s safety while also respecting life.

“My Delegation believes that more humane measures are available to address crime, ensuring the victim the right to justice and giving the criminal the chance to reform,” he said.

The archbishop reemphasized the goal of ending capital punishment and said that the Vatican supports “as an interim measure, the moratoria established by the 2014 General Assembly resolution.” He ended with an encouragement for better prison conditions and fair trials, regardless of criminal status.

 

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Juarez, Mexico, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Juarez, located in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, was considered from 2008 to 2010 to be one of the the most dangerous cities in the world, due to drug trafficking violence and the constant struggles for power and territory between the cartels.

However, the city of 1.3 million inhabitants dropped off this list thanks to a significant decrease in the number of homicides: from 3,766 in 2010 to 256 in 2015.

Although this drop can be credited to an improvement in the work of local authorities, for Fr. Patrico Hileman – a priest responsible for establishing Perpetual Adoration chapels in Latin America – there is a much deeper reason: Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

“When a parish adores God day and night, the city is transformed,” Fr. Hileman said.

The priest told Radio María Argentina that in 2013 the missionaries opened the first Perpetual Adoration Chapel in Juarez. At that time “40 people a day were dying because two drug gangs were fighting over the city to move drugs into the United States.”

It was the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, whose former leader Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán Loera was recently extradited from Mexico to the United States.

Fr. Hileman recalled that “the parishes were saying that the war wasn't ending because a group of soldiers were with one gang and the police were with the other one. They were killing people, burning houses down so they would leave, fighting over the city.”

One of the parishes that was “desperate” asked the missionaries to open a Perpetual Adoration chapel because they assured that “only Jesus is going to save us from this, only Jesus can give us security.”

The missionaries only took three days to establish the first Perpetual Adoration chapel in Juarez.

Fr. Hileman told how one day, when the city was under a state of siege, a lady was on her way to the chapel to do her Holy Hour at 3:00 in the morning, when she was intercepted by six soldiers who asked her where she was heading.

When the woman told them that she was going to “the little chapel” the uniformed men asked her what place, because everything was closed at that hour. Then the woman proposed  they accompany her to see for themselves.

When they got to the chapel, the soldiers found “six women making the Holy Hour at the 3:00 in the morning,” Fr. Hileman said.

At that moment the lady said to the soldiers: “Do you think you're protecting us? We're praying for you 24 hours a day.”

One of the uniformed men fell down holding his weapon,“crying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. The next day at 3:00 in the morning they saw him in civilian clothes doing a Holy Hour, crying oceans of tears,” he said.

Two months after the chapel was opened, the pastor “calls us and says to us: Father, since the chapel was opened there has not been one death in Juarez, it's been two months since anyone has died.”

“We put up ten little chapels in a year,” Fr. Hileman said.

As if that were not enough, “at that time they were going to close the seminary because there were only eight seminarians and now there are 88. The bishop told me me that these seminarians had participated in the Holy Hours.”

Fr. Hileman pointed out that “that is what Jesus does in a parish” when people understand that “we find security in Christ.”

He also noted that “the greatest miracles occur in the early hours of the morning. “

The early morning “is when you're most at peace, when you hear God better, your mind, your heart  is more tranquil, you're there alone for God. If you are generous with Jesus, he is a thousand times more generous with you,” Fr. Hileman said.

 

This article was originally published on CNA Jan. 26, 2017.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Romeo Ranoco, Reuters

By Simone Orendain

The Philippines stands poised to reinstate the death penalty after it was put on hold 11 years ago. The church in the Philippines, which has grown more vocal in recent months, continues to oppose the measure that passed the Philippine House on the third and final reading March 7 and is widely expected to move quickly through the Senate. This latest version specifically targets drug crimes.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, lamented that the lower House "has given its consent for the state to kill."

"We, your bishops, are overcome with grief, but we are not defeated nor shall we be silenced," Archbishop Villegas said.

"In the midst of Lent we prepare to celebrate the triumph of life over death, and while we grieve that the lower House has voted for death, our faith assures us that life will triumph," he said.

At the same time, the archbishop called on the Filipinos who stand for life to continue the "spirited opposition" to the death penalty.

In the months and weeks leading up to the Congressional votes on the measure, the bishops' conference has posted statements opposing the death penalty and led marches against it, reiterating that life is sacred and that the death penalty would not put an end to crime. Some leaders have also urged the faithful to go to their representatives and voice their opposition. The conference also signaled that should the death penalty become law again, it would support any effort to oppose the law at the Supreme Court level.

Throughout its history, the Philippines has imposed and suspended the death penalty, and the church has consistently opposed it.

Since taking office in late June, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has pursued drug dealers and addicts with laser-like focus. In July, his close associates in Congress filed a bill to reinstate the death penalty, to support his tough-on-crime stance.

So far in Duterte's "war on drugs," which started even before he was sworn in, more than 7,000 mostly poor people have been killed in both police operations and unexplained killings of alleged drug offenders. Currently, drug offenses carry sentences ranging from 12 years to life in prison, along with fines.

"Certainly we are for the campaign against drugs, and we know drugs can have very serious harmful effects on families," said Archbishop Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro. "But also we would like to say that drug offenders should not be subject to the death penalty, because it's not a humane and Christian way of dealing with the problem."

Archbishop Ledesma, a strong critic of Duterte in the final days before the May elections, told Catholic News Service instead of putting drug criminals to death, the country needs to address the "root causes of poverty" and pursue rehabilitation.

Duterte has said he was not interested in killing drug users and dealers to make examples of them, but that he simply wanted them to pay for their crimes.

The head of the Restorative Justice program at Caritas Manila, Father Roberto de la Cruz, said, "We believe, the Catholic Church believes, well, any believer believes the death penalty would not be a deterrent to crime."

Father De La Cruz told CNS the church believes there is always " hope for change" for the drug offenders.

The Manila-based priest, who comes from a well-off family, said that more than two decades ago, he was a meth addict for 10 years. Then he found himself in a church listening to a talk on evangelization and decided he would seek help there to get clean. That was also the start of his discernment to the priesthood.

Father De La Cruz is one of the creators of Sanlakbay, which incorporates spiritual formation, counseling, work skills training, arts and cultural outlets and sports activities into a parish-based rehabilitation program.

As of March 6, he said five parishes in metropolitan Manila were involved in Sanlakbay and another five would also take part in the coming weeks. But the priest noted that the numbers of those who originally turned themselves in and went for church rehab dwindled significantly when it came to following through with the program.

Archbishop Ledesma said apart from such programs, more effective than putting someone to death "is to have better implementation of the laws and to make sure that the justice system is fast enough to prosecute any wrongdoers."

Congressman Harry Roque, a human rights attorney specializing in international law, said he was prepared to take a case to the Supreme Court should the death penalty become law. He said having the death penalty violates the constitution based on the Philippines' international treaty obligations.

He told CNS he did not think the death penalty was the answer to criminality.

"I think (the answer is) enforcing the law," said Roque. "Given the dire statistics on conviction rates, I'd say drug pushers are doing their trade because no one's really been punished. They only have a 10 percent conviction rate for drug cases ... So ... we don't need the death penalty. We just need to enforce the law."

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