Churchgoers all over world ignore physical distancing advice

Services from Moscow to Rio go ahead as clerics disregard coronavirus risk

Millions of people across the world tuned into online church services on Sunday as their usual places of worship were closed, but in some places clerics insisted on their doors remaining open.

The day after Pope Francis delivered a blessing in an empty St Peter’s Square, watched on television by an estimated 11 million people, Sunday services were held at some of Russia’s largest religious sites after Orthodox church leaders said they were an expression of religious freedom.

Russian Orthodox believers receive communion in Kazan Cathedral, St Petersburg, on Sunday. Photograph: Peter Kovalev/Tass

Dozens of parishioners, many of them elderly, crowded into Kazan Cathedral in St Petersburg to receive communion. Earlier this month, the cathedral came under fire for continuing to exhibit a relic of John the Baptist despite fears that visitors kissing the exhibit could hasten the spread of coronavirus.

In virus-hit Louisiana, hundreds of worshippers attended services on Sunday, flouting a ban on large gatherings. An estimated 500 people of all ages filed inside the Life Tabernacle church in Central, a city of nearly 29,000 outside Baton Rouge

The Russian Orthodox church had insisted that mayors could not close churches and that it would continue to “fulfil its pastoral duty” unless given an order from the Kremlin.

But later on Sunday the church’s leader, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, called on believers to refrain from visiting churches.

Speaking after the liturgy at Christ the Saviour church in Moscow, Kirill said: “I have been preaching for 51 years, calling on people to come to church, overcome the gravitation of their own ill will and external circumstances, I dedicated my entire life to this call and I hope you understand how difficult it is for me to say now: refrain from visiting churches.”

In Romania and Georgia, two countries with strongly Orthodox Christian populations, there has been consternation over the insistence of some priests on continuing to use a shared spoon for the communion ritual.

Last Sunday, the day after Romania had been put into a strict lockdown, footage emerged from the city of Cluj of priests using a shared spoon. In Georgia, while the church has told worshippers not to spend long periods of time in churches and not to come if ill, it has rejected calls to abandon the reusing of spoons, claiming that as communion is a holy ceremony it is not possible to get ill during it.

In devoutly Catholic Poland, coronavirus restrictions limited the number of churchgoers to 50 at a time, and this was reduced again last week to five. Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, the head of the Polish episcopate, earlier in March called for more church services to accommodate worshippers, as not praying during the epidemic would be “unthinkable”. However, he has since urged faithful to use media broadcasts of services to prayer, especially over the Easter period.

In Brazil, the president, Jair Bolsonaro – who has called the coronavirus a “little flu” and attacked lockdown – included churches in a list of “public services and essential activities” essential for the “survival, health and safety” of the population, provided they followed health ministry guidelines.

Two days after Bolsonaro’s pronouncement, a judge in Rio de Janeiro state suspended his decree. Cathedrals in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are now closed. And while some churches are still open for prayer, mass and services have mostly moved online.

Dom Walmor Azevedo, the archbishop of Belo Horizonte and president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), last week told congregations to “stay at home”. The CNBB and other Catholic organisations called Bolsonaro’s “disinformation campaign” a “serious threat to all Brazilians”.

The liturgy in Kazan Cathedral, St Petersburg, on Sunday. Photograph: Peter Kovalev/Tass

About half of Brazilians are Catholic, but a growing number – currently 31% – belong to evangelical churches, which largely support Bolsonaro. Brazil’s biggest, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, said on Thursday that where services are not allowed, its churches are open for prayer. Where services are allowed, it controls numbers entering and provides soap and water.

Rio’s Assembly of God Victory in Christ church is open every day for “prayers and to attend those who need it”, said its pastor, Alexandre Camargo, but services went online even after it won a court battle to stay open. Rio’s Attitude Baptist church – frequented by Brazil’s first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro – is only holding online services.

“People are really suffering with this, because they need this spiritual, emotional and financial support,” said Pastor Josué Valandro Jr. “It is very serious to close all the churches.”

The Vatican said at the weekend that Pope Francis did not have coronavirus after testing of Holy See staff resulted in one new case. The total number of people with Covid-19 at the Vatican is now six. “I can confirm that neither the Holy Father nor his closest collaborators are involved,” a spokesperson said.

(Source: The Guardian)

Pope to list nuclear weapons as immoral in Catholic manual

Pope Francis, who met victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster while in Japan, is planning to change official Catholic Church teaching to declare the use and possession of atomic weapons as “immoral,” a move that makes clear that his rejection of the Cold War-era doctrine of deterrence is to be official church policy.

Francis had declared the possession of nuclear weapons immoral on Sunday in Hiroshima during an emotional encounter with survivors of the U.S. atomic bomb.

On Tuesday, during a news conference en route home from Japan, Francis indicated that his Hiroshima address should be considered part of his magisterium, or official church teaching.

“This must go in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” he said, referring to the published compendium of official church teaching.

“Not just the use, also the possession,” he said. “Because an accident of possession, or the insanity of a leader or someone, can destroy humanity.”

Francis first articulated his opposition to the doctrine of deterrence in 2017, during a Vatican conference, when he said the possession of nuclear weapons was “to be condemned.”

Pope Francis speaks to reporters Tuesday during a news conference on his flight back to Rome after a weeklong trip to Thailand and Japan. | POOL / VIA AFP-JIJJI

The shift upended three decades of the Vatican’s tacit acceptance of nuclear arsenals. Starting in 1982, St. John Paul II had held that deterrence could be morally acceptable in the interim as long as it was used as a step toward mutual, verifiable disarmament.

In the ensuing years, however, the Holy See has watched as arms control treaties collapsed, new nuclear powers emerged and the policy of assured mutual destruction resulted in a permanent stockpiling of bombs.

Francis also went further Tuesday in his comments on nuclear energy, saying he would rule out its use until scientists can offer “total security” to ensure that accidents, natural disasters and “crazed” individuals won’t destroy humanity and the environment with nuclear fallout.

Francis offered his “personal opinion” that went beyond the “concern” he expressed in public a day earlier during a meeting with survivors of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, where he noted a call by Japan’s Catholic bishops to abolish nuclear power outright.

The Japanese government strongly backs nuclear energy despite the 2011 “triple disaster,” in which three Fukushima nuclear reactors partially melted down after an earthquake triggered a tsunami. The disaster spewed nuclear fallout across the region and at one point forced the evacuation of 160,000 people.

“I have a personal opinion,” Francis said. “I would not use nuclear energy as long as there’s not a total security on the use.”

Francis stayed in Japan for four days beginning on Saturday, during which he called for the elimination of nuclear weapons in addresses to Nagasaki and Hiroshima — the two Japanese cities that were devastated by U.S. atomic bombings in the closing days of World War II.

Visiting both cities was his desire, the pope said, adding that his trip to Nagasaki, where Christianity has taken root in Japan, was especially “touching.”

Francis was elected as the Roman Catholic pontiff in 2013. His trip to Japan was the first papal visit to the Asian country in 38 years.

(Source: JT)

Vatican reveals it has secret rules for priests who father children

Spokesman says guidelines for those who break celibacy vows will not be made public

The Vatican has acknowledged for the first time the existence of secret guidelines for priests who break their vows of celibacy and father children.

However, it declined to make its advice public, saying it was an internal matter. Alessandro Gisotti, a Vatican spokesman, told the New York Times that the “fundamental principle” of the 2017 document was the “protection of the child”.

The document requests that a cleric who has fathered a child leaves the priesthood to “assume his responsibilities as a parent by devoting himself exclusively to the child”. Gisotti told CBS News that the document was “for internal use … and is not intended for publication”.

Survivors of clerical sexual abuse from around the world are gathering in Rome this week to hold vigils and protests outside an unprecedented summit of senior bishops and other church figures called by Pope Francis.

Cardinals and bishops at a canonisation ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica in
Vatican City. Photograph: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis via Getty Images

The number of children born to priests is unknown although one support group, Coping International, has 50,000 users in 175 countries. Some children are the result of consensual relationships, but others are the result of rape or abuse.

According to Vincent Doyle, the son of a priest and the founder of Coping International, the issue of clerical offspring is “the next scandal” to confront the church. “There are kids everywhere,” he told the New York Times.

A commission set up by Francis to tackle clerical sexual abuse was tasked with looking at how the church should respond to the issue of priests’ offspring.

Irish bishops have published their own guidelines, saying that if a priest becomes a father, the “wellbeing of his child should be his first consideration”. The document adds: “A priest, as any new father, should face up to his responsibilities – personal, legal, moral and financial. At a minimum, no priest should walk away from his responsibilities.”

Some people have argued the Roman Catholic church should drop its requirement for priests to take a lifelong vow of celibacy. They say it may be a factor in sexual abuse, and that it deters people from signing up for the priesthood, with many countries now having an acute shortage of priests.

The eastern Catholic churches have a long tradition of married priests, and exceptions to the celibacy rule have been made on a case-by-case basis for former Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.

But last month, Francis said he was opposed to any general change to the centuries-old tradition. “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the church,” he said. “I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.”

Exceptions could be considered in “very far places” where there was “a pastoral necessity” owing to a lack of priests, he said.

(Source: The Guardian)

Pope Francis calls Donald Trump's separation of families at border 'immoral'

Pope Francis has called Donald Trump‘s “zero tolerance” policy that leads to the separation of migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border “immoral”.

“Populism is not the solution” to America’s immigration crisis, the pontiff said.

Francis made the comments in an interview with Reuters.

It comes as Republicans in Congress scramble to include a solution to the separations crisis as part of broader immigration reform.

Donald Trump has defended the policy as necessary and the fault of his political opponents, who he claimed wanted “illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like [the gang] MS-13”.

His administration’s “zero tolerance” stance toward undocumented migrants and asylum seekers who enter the US means it will seek to prosecute each one criminally. Because their children cannot be taken to jail due to prior legal rulings, they are separated and put into the Department of Health and Human Services’ care.

Images of children held in cages have prompted bipartisan and international criticism.

Republicans in Congress are currently trying to create provisions to end the separations within existing bills aimed at immigration reform. Mr Trump has said he is “1,000 per cent” behind their efforts.

The pope said populists were “creating psychosis” on the issue of immigration, even as ageing societies like Europe faced “a great demographic winter” and needed more immigrants.

Without immigration, he said, Europe “will become empty”.

(Source: The Independent)

Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute

'Reanalysing that reputation that she had we can see she was probably a woman of greater social status, higher social status, a woman of wealth who accompanied Jesus'

If there’s a feminist figure from the Bible for the #MeToo era, it could very well be Mary Magdalene.

The major character in the life of Jesus was long maligned in the West and portrayed as a reformed former prostitute. But scholars have adopted a different approach more recently, viewing her as a strong, independent woman who supported Jesus financially and spiritually.

The New Testament tells how Jesus cast demons out of her. She then accompanied Jesus in his ministry around the Galilee, before witnessing his crucifixion, burial and resurrection in Jerusalem, which is being commemorated by Christians this week and next. The Roman Catholic Church and Western Christian churches observe Easter on Sunday, Eastern Orthodox Christians a week later.

Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to rehabilitate Mary Magdalene’s image by declaring a major feast day in her honour on 22 June. His 2016 decree put the woman who first proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection on par with the liturgical celebrations of the male apostles.

“By doing this, he established the absolute equality of Mary Magdalene to the apostles, something that has never been done before and is also a point of no return” for women in the church, said Lucetta Scarrafia, editor of the Vatican-published Women Church World monthly magazine.

For centuries, Western Christianity depicted Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute, a narrative that began in the sixth century. Pope Gregory the Great conflated Mary Magdalene with an anonymous sinful woman mentioned in the chapter before she’s introduced in the Gospel of Luke.

Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church roll back centuries of labelling Mary Magdalene as such, stating she was distinct from the sinful woman mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Eastern Orthodox Christians never depicted her as a prostitute.

Mary Magdalene was from a thriving fishing village on the Sea of Galilee named Magdala, which has been excavated extensively by archaeologists in recent decades.

Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to rehabilitate her image by declaring a major feast day in her honour Shutterstock

The site is home to the oldest known synagogue in the Galilee, where a stone bearing the likeness of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was found, as well as a marketplace, ritual baths and fishing harbour. Marcela Zapata-Meza, the lead archaeologist at the site, has called it “the Israeli Pompeii”.

Modern scholars have adopted a different understanding of Mary Magdalene and regard her as one of Jesus’ most prominent disciples, who stood by him to the end while his most devoted apostles did not.

“Historical tradition says she was a prostitute from Magdala,” said Jennifer Ristine, director of the Magdalena Institute at Magdala. “Reanalysing that reputation that she had we can see she was probably a woman of greater social status, higher social status, a woman of wealth who accompanied Jesus as we see in Luke 8:2, helping Jesus and his disciples with her own resources.”

Nonetheless, the image of Mary Magdalene as a licentious, sexualised woman has persisted in Western culture, including in Jesus Christ Superstar and The Da Vinci Code.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, said Mary Magdalene’s reputation was sullied by her depiction in art over the centuries.

“Art history made her become a prostitute, which is something that is not present in the Gospels,” he said, adding that she also has been portrayed as Jesus’ wife.

“It is important to find the real face of Mary Magdalene, who is a woman who represents the importance of the female aspect on the side of Christ,” he told the Associated Press at the Vatican.

The Gospel of Mary, an early Christian text, depicted her as a visionary who received secret revelations and knowledge from Jesus.

Claire Pfann, academic dean at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said Mary Magdalene must be seen for what she was: “An independent woman who has discretionary time and wealth from the city of Magdala, not identified by a father or a husband, whose life was dramatically restored, healed, changed by her encounter with this Jewish itinerant teacher and healer, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“It takes a long time for serious scholarship to trickle down to the popular level,” she added.

A new film on the life of Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara in the title role, Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter the Apostle, recasts her in that mold.

The film has been released in Europe and Australia. A release date for the United States has not been set, following the collapse of its original distributor, the Weinstein Company, after a series of sexual harassment and assault claims against founder Harvey Weinstein. The rash of allegations made against Weinstein spawned the global #MeToo movement.

Ms Ristine said Mary Magdalene plays a critical role in the New Testament and carries an “essential pivotal message of Christianity”.

“Why is a woman there, giving testimony to that in a culture where woman are just not paid attention to, or not placed as witnesses?” Ms Ristine asked. “Well, this speaks very strongly to women today, that the power of their witness, the power of their testimony to speak up for a truth, can have effects that ripple down through the centuries.”

(Source: Independent)

Pope issues anti-war photo featuring victims of Nagasaki atomic bombing

Pope Francis has issued a card showing a 1945 photo of victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki in a warning against war.

According to media reports, the Pope asked that the card be distributed with the words “the fruit of war” written on the back.

The photo captures a boy carrying his dead brother on his shoulders while waiting in line at a crematorium.

Pope Francis has issued a card showing victims of the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bombing
in an effort to convey the importance of peace. | VATICAN CITY / VIA KYODO

A portion of the photo’s caption says the young boy’s sadness is expressed only in his gesture of biting his lips. The photo was reported to have been taken by a U.S. military photographer.

The atomic bomb was dropped on Aug. 9, 1945, in the closing days of World War II, three days after the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

(Source: JT)

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real

Francis goes against Benedict XVI’s apparent support for 'intelligent design' - but does hail his predecessor’s 'great contribution to theology'

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

The Catholic Church has long had a reputation for being anti-science – most famously when Galileo faced the inquisition and was forced to retract his “heretic” theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

But Pope Francis’s comments were more in keeping with the progressive work of Pope Pius XII, who opened the door to the idea of evolution and actively welcomed the Big Bang theory. In 1996, John Paul II went further and suggested evolution was “more than a hypothesis” and “effectively proven fact”.

Yet more recently, Benedict XVI and his close advisors have apparently endorsed the idea that intelligent design underpins evolution – the idea that natural selection on its own is insufficient to explain the complexity of the world. In 2005, his close associate Cardinal Schoenborn wrote an article saying “evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process – is not”.

Giovanni Bignami, a professor and president of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos: “The pope’s statement is significant. We are the direct descendents from the Big Bang that created the universe. Evolution came from creation.”

Giulio Giorello, professor of the philosophy of science at Milan’s University degli Studi, told reporters that he believed Francis was “trying to reduce the emotion of dispute or presumed disputes” with science.

Despite the huge gulf in theological stance between his tenure and that of his predecessor, Francis praised Benedict XVI as he unveiled a bronze bust of him at the academy's headquarters in the Vatican Gardens.

“No one could ever say of him that study and science made him and his love for God and his neighbour wither,” Francis said, according to a translation by the Catholic News Service.

“On the contrary, knowledge, wisdom and prayer enlarged his heart and his spirit. Let us thank God for the gift that he gave the church and the world with the existence and the pontificate of Pope Benedict.”

(Source: Independent)