(Vatican Radio) Romania plunged into political turmoil Tuesday as the president refused to nominate as prime minister an economist who could have become the country's first female Muslim premier. Listen to the report by Stefan Bos: President Klaus Iohannis made clear that he used the Christmas holiday to decide whether to nominate the 52-year-old Muslim Sevil Shhaideh to the post of prime minister. On Tuesday he urged the Social Democratic Party, the winners of the December 11 elections, to nominate someone else as government leader. "I carefully examined the pros and cons and I have decided not to accept this nomination," he told reporters. "Consequently I request the PSD-ALDE coalition to put forward another name."He did not say why he would not name Shhaideh as the country's first female Muslim prime minister of this mainly Eastern Orthodox Christian nation of some 22 million people. UNDER PRESSUREHowever she had been criticized f...
(Vatican Radio) Romania plunged into political turmoil Tuesday as the president refused to nominate as prime minister an economist who could have become the country's first female Muslim premier.
Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:
President Klaus Iohannis made clear that he used the Christmas holiday to decide whether to nominate the 52-year-old Muslim Sevil Shhaideh to the post of prime minister.
On Tuesday he urged the Social Democratic Party, the winners of the December 11 elections, to nominate someone else as government leader. "I carefully examined the pros and cons and I have decided not to accept this nomination," he told reporters.
"Consequently I request the PSD-ALDE coalition to put forward another name."
He did not say why he would not name Shhaideh as the country's first female Muslim prime minister of this mainly Eastern Orthodox Christian nation of some 22 million people.
UNDER PRESSURE
However she had been criticized for lacking sufficient political experience. Shhadeih briefly served as regional development minister last year.
Social Democrat chairman Liviu Dragnea is unable to become prime minister because he was convicted this year of election fraud.
The opposition had accused him of trying to run the country from the sidelines by installing Shhaideh as his puppet.
Tuesday's tensions comes amid public pressure on politicians to end corruption and social difficulties in what is one of the poorest European Union nations.
Many people still struggle with the daily burden of transition in Romania, where ousted authoritarian leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed in 1989, on Christmas Day.
Outer details of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Chicago. / Credit: Eric Allix RogersCNA Staff, May 15, 2024 / 12:12 pm (CNA).Catholics and city preservationists in Chicago are scrambling to try to preserve a historic parish on the city's North Side, one that has survived a century of the city's development including being fully moved to a new location after it was first built. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish will hold its final Mass on Sunday, May 19, before the parish merges with nearby St. Mary of the Lake. The consolidation is part of the Archdiocese of Chicago's ongoing "Renew My Church" initiative that has closed and merged dozens of parishes in order to address shrinking budgets and priest shortages. The archdiocese announced the Lourdes parish merger in 2021. Katerina Garcia, the president of the Our Lady of Lourdes Church Preservation Society, told "EWTN News Nightly" anchor Tracy Sabol this week that parishioners at the parish dispute ...
Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan, SJ, archbishop of Hong Kong, China. / Credit: Daniel IbáñezRome Newsroom, May 15, 2024 / 14:17 pm (CNA).Cardinal Stephen Chow recently visited three Catholic dioceses in mainland China, one year after the bishop of Hong Kong's first historic trip to Beijing.Chow led a 10-person delegation of Catholics from Hong Kong to the southern Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Shantou, and Shenzhen in April in his second official visit to China since becoming bishop of Hong Kong."We brought our people to have an encounter … where we share common concerns, for example, youth ministry, catechism, marriage and family," Chow said in a video interview published May 5.Here is a look at some of the Catholic communities Chow visited:St. Joseph's Cathedral in ShantouSt. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou, China. Credit: Kc1446 at Chinese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsHundreds of Chinese Catholics attended a Mass in St. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou concelebrated...
Stained-glass window at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis. / Credit: Ella Manthey/ShutterstockSt. Louis, Mo., May 15, 2024 / 14:47 pm (CNA).Two St. Louis parishes that appealed to the Vatican after Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski ordered them to merge last year have had their appeals upheld by the Holy See, reversing the archbishop's prior decision.As part of the archdiocese's major pastoral planning initiative dubbed "All Things New," Rozanski announced a year ago that the number of parishes would be reduced by nearly 50 by way of parish mergers and closures.Under canon law, a diocesan bishop has the authority to alter parishes, but only for a just reason specific to each parish. Concern for souls must be the principal motivation for modifying a parish.Amid the All Things New process, a number of parishes announced their intention to send appeals to the Vatican, putting aspects of the mergers planned for the parishes on hold until the Dicastery for the Clergy's rulings. Af...