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CNA Staff, May 7, 2020 / 11:50 am (CNA).- Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend said Thursday that the alleged visions and revelations known as “Our Lady of America” cannot be said to be of supernatural origin, and that public devotion to “Our Lady of America” is not permitted for Catholics.

Sister Mary Ephrem Neuzil of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus began having what seemed like mystical experiences, including inner locutions and visions of the spirit, around 1938. She revealed these to her confessor in 1948, and they became a devotion to Mary as “Our Lady of America” in 1954.

Sr. Neuzil said the Blessed Virgin began appearing to her in 1956 in Rome City, Ind., about 40 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.

The alleged visions and messages from Mary and from St. Joseph continued through 1959, in a number of locations. After 1959, she said Our Lady communicated with her primarily by locutions, until her death in 2000.

Bishop Rhoades agreed in 2017 to conduct an investigation into the alleged apparitions. The bishop issued to other U.S. bishops a statement May 7 on the investigation, which was obtained by CNA, along with a July 2019 decree on the matter.

In the statement, Rhoades said that Sr. Neuzil “was honest, morally upright, psychologically balanced, devoted to religious life and without guile.” He added that she had “signs of imperfection, but no evidence that she was the perpetrator of a hoax or the victim of delusion.”

“What she communicated about her alleged experiences, she believed to be true, and her communication of those experiences are filled with humility and forthrightness,” he added.

The bishop noted there are numerous reports of conversions, spiritual refreshments and consolations, and even some physical healings related to the alleged apparition. He added, though, that “we cannot conclude that any of these events are conclusive enough to warrant certification as miracles. It seems likely that in such personal contexts of faith and prayer, God's graces were received.”

While “much of what is expressed” in the alleged revelations “does not contain any doctrinal error,” Bishop Rhoades wrote that there is a claim of St. Joseph as “'co-redeemer' with Christ for the salvation of the world … which has never been expressed as Catholic doctrine and must be seen as an error.”

He reported that Sr. Neuzil's spiritual director, Archbishop Paul Leibold, wrote in 1970 that he was unable to make a judgement on the supernatural nature of her visions, and that while he had helped her in promoting them as a “private devotion,” he had never acted “to promote her devotion publicly.”

“Looking at the nature and quality of the experiences themselves, we find that they are more to be described as subjective inner religious experiences rather than objective external visions and revelations,” Bishop Rhoades wrote.

“Thus, while it may be said that there is possibly an authenticity to Sister Neuzil's subjective religious experience, we do not find evidence pointing to her experience as being in the category of objective private revelation.”

The bishop and his investigatory commission found that “her experiences were of a type where her own imagination and intellect were involved in the formation of the events. It seems that these were authentically graced moments, even perhaps of a spiritual quality beyond what most people experience, but subjective ones in which her own imagination and intellect were constitutively engaged, putting form to inner spiritual movements. However, we do not find evidence that these were objective visions and revelations of the type seen at Guadalupe, Fatima and Lourdes.”

Bishop Rhoades' judgement was issued in the July 29, 2019 decree, which was signed also by Fr. Mark Gurtner, then-chancellor of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

The five other bishops where the purported visions were said to have occurred – Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati, Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette in Indiana, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, and Bishop Daneil Thomas of Toledo in Ohio – each concur with Bishop Rhoades' findings and conclusions.

The six bishops had in 2017 asked the US bishops' conference to investigate the alleged apparitions, considering that inquiries were being received about the alleged apparition and its purported request for a procession of the nation's bishops and that a statue of Our Lady of America be placed in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith advised that it be conducted by one of the bishops, and Bishop Rhoades agreed to do so.

He received documentation of Sr. Neuzil's correspondence the following year, and he conducted the evaluation with a commission of theological and canonical experts. They also gathered personal interviews with witnesses who knew Sr. Neuzil.

The procedure for the investigation was carried out in accordance with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 1978 "Norms regarding the manner of proceeding in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations."

Some bishops have permitted the public display of statues of Our Lady of America, and then-Msgr. Liebold had given an imprimatur to a prayer attached to the devotion in 1963.

The six bishops wrote May 7 that “given this history of prayers and religious articles being given approval by competent ecclesiastical authority, the use of such prayers religious articles may continue as a matter of private devotion, but not as a public devotion of the Church.”

“Indeed, such private devotion would be consistent with the history of the United States of America being dedicated to Our Lady,” they added.

However, “such private devotion should in no way imply approval or acceptance of purported revelations, visions, or locutions attributed to Sister Mary Ephrem (Mildred) Neuzil other than as her own subjective inner religious experiences.”

A spokesperson for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend told CNA that “the conclusion of Bishop Rhoades and the other five bishops pertains to the entire Church. The same would have been true if the decision were in the affirmative.”

 

Denver Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- A Notre Dame sociologist is using data to challenge a Harvard Law professor’s assertions that homeschooling is “dangerous”, and detrimental to society.

The controversy stems from a recent paper by professor Elizabeth Bartholet in which she calls for a presumptive ban on homeschooling in the United States.

Bartholet, as quoted in a Harvard Magazine piece based on her paper, points to unspecified “surveys of homeschoolers” to assert that “up to 90 percent” of homeschooling families are “driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture.”

“Some” homeschooling parents are “‘extreme religious ideologues’ who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy,” she writes.

David Sikkink, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, analyzed surveys of homeschooling families— including a 2016 government survey—  and found that these families are not overwhelmingly Christian nor religious, and are not as universally closed-off to the outside world as Bartholet asserts.

In the analysis Sikkink conducted, just 16% of homeschooling parents said they were homeschooling primarily for religious reasons. The number one reason homeschooling parents cited was a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure.

Eleven percent of parents reported homeschooling because their child has special needs.

While approximately half of the homeschooling parents surveyed mentioned religion as a factor in their decision to homeschool, Sikkink notes that the parents who cited religion as a reason were, on the whole, more highly educated than those parents who did not.

In terms of Bartholet’s assertion that some homeschooling parents “believe that women should be totally subservient to men and educated in ways that promote such subservience,” Sikkink’s analysis did not find evidence that religious households oppose higher education for girls.

Among the homeschooling families in the survey who use a religious curriculum, there was no difference in their self-reported educational expectations— i.e., what education level they expected their children to reach—  for their male children vs. their female children.

Several past studies have shown that homeschool students typically outperform their public and private school counterparts on things like standardized tests and college performance. A 2016 study from the National Council on Measurement in Education showed that, when adjusted for demographic factors, homeschool students were on par academically with their demographically-similar peers.

Moreover, the data Sikkink analyzed suggests that after family background and demographic controls are accounted for, about 64% of homeschoolers “completely agree” that they have much in life to be thankful for, compared to 53% of public schoolers.

On feelings of helplessness, or lack or goals or direction in life, homeschoolers do not substantially differ from their public school counterparts, the analysis suggests.

In the Arizona Law Review, Bartholet argues that while homeschool children may perform as well as their peers on standardized tests or in college, they are also often isolated from their peers and denied experiences and exposures that would make them more productive citizens.

Bartholet claims in her article that “a very large proportion of homeschooling parents are ideologically committed to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture.”

“Isolated families,” she asserts, “constitute a significant part of the homeschooling world.”

In contrast, Sikkink’s analysis found that among the schooling groups surveyed, homeschooling families had the highest level of “community involvement” of all school sectors.

“Community involvement” activities included attending sporting events, attending concerts, going to the zoo or aquarium, going to a museum, going to a library, visiting a bookstore, or attending an event sponsored by a community, religious, or ethnic group.

Homeschooling graduates are almost identical to their public school counterparts in likelihood to vote in federal and local elections, Sikkink found.

Furthermore, the total number of volunteer and community service hours for homeschooling graduates is very similar to or slightly higher than public school graduates, the analysis found.

Bartholet asserts that some homeschoolers “engage in homeschooling to promote racist ideologies and avoid racial intermingling.”

In contrast: “The reality is that about 41% of homeschooled children are racial and ethnic minorities,” Sikkink writes.

“When asked about four closest friends, about 37% of young adult homeschoolers...mention someone of a different race or ethnicity—exactly the same as public schoolers.”

This diversity also extends to schooling practices— increasingly, Sikkink says, homeschooling adopts new forms, including “hybrids” that combine the benefits of home and institutional schooling.

“About 57 percent of homeschoolers are using some form of instruction outside the family,” Sikkink told CNA in an email.

“That includes using tutors, private or public schools, colleges or universities, or homeschooling coops. That percentage would be higher if we included those who reported obtaining curriculum from formal institutions, such as public schools.”

Moreover, about a third of homeschooling parents obtain their curriculum or books from a public school or school district.

“Altogether, 46% of homeschoolers have some pedagogical relationship with public schools,” Sikkink asserts.

Bartholet argues that homeschooling puts children at risk of abuse by their parents, while if children were in public schools, they would be among teachers who are mandatory reporters of any suspected abuse that may be taking place.

“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” Bartholet asserts in the Harvard Magazine piece.

“I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

Sikkink says Bartholet’s image of a child confined to the home “24/7...from ages zero to 18” is not consistent with the data.

“When we look at the use of homeschooling for each year of the child's upbringing, we only find a small percentage that report that the child was homeschooled for all their years of schooling,” Sikkink told CNA in an email.

Many of these students are part-time public schoolers— about 25% of homeschoolers receive some instruction in public schools during their school-age careers, he wrote.

Homeschooling regulations vary widely by state. Sikkink told CNA he hopes future studies will examine the effects of state-level variation in regulation on homeschooling quality.

“The question of schooling oversight remains, of course, but it would be short-sighted not to keep homeschooling and other creative schooling options in the mix, including the hybrid models that cross sector boundaries,” Sikkink concludes.

 

Subsequent to the publication of this story, Sikkink told CNA he had revised his assessment of the percentage of homeschoolers using instruction outside the family, from 64% to 57%. The story has been updated to reflect that assessment.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said that the Church must return to “normal life” after the governor announced plans to ban large gatherings until a COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is available.

Earlier in the week, the state’s Governor JB Pritzker unveiled a five-phase “Restore Illinois” plan that bans gatherings of more than 50 people until a vaccine or treatment is available, or the virus has stopped spreading for a sustained period of time. Health officials have said that a vaccine for the new coronavirus (COVID-19) might not be available for 12 to 18 months. 

Currently, people in the state are allowed to attend religious services of 10 or fewer people, but no gatherings of more than 10 people are permitted until phase 4 of Pritzker’s plan, and the state wouldn’t even be able to “advance” to phase 3 until May 29.

“The Church has certainly done her part in making great sacrifices to slow the spread of this virus,” Andrew Hansen, director of communications for the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, told CNA on Friday.

“That said, the Church must return to her normal life of liturgy and communal worship,” Hansen said, while emphasizing precautions such as social distancing “will likely be the appropriate path longer term for the return to some version of normalcy for the Church.”

Previously, in-person or drive-in religious services were banned in the state. The Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit on behalf of a church in Lena, Ill., on April 30. Later that evening a paragraph was added to the governor’s executive order allowing for people to leave their homes to attend religious services of ten or fewer people, the society’s president Peter Breen told CNA.

The next day, May 1, the archdiocese of Chicago announced it would be resuming public Masses with 10 or fewer people.

According to the “Restore Illinois” plan, there could not be any gathering of between 11 and 50 people in size until phase 4 of the plan—“Revitalization.”

That phase can start only when certain conditions have been met: the positivity rate of COVID tests is at or under 20% and doesn’t rise by more than 10 points over 14 days; hospital admissions don’t increase for 28 days; and hospitals have at least 14% “surge capacity” in ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

Pitzker clarified in a Wednesday press conference that religious services would be part of this 50-person limit in phase 4, and schools would not be allowed to reopen until then, raising questions of how tuition-dependent Catholic schools might fare in the fall if remote learning is still widely utilized.

The state’s superintendent of education has said that at least some schools might have to begin the new school year with remote learning, or with students attending classes in-person only on certain days.

“So we continue to hope and pray schools will reopen next school year. Certainly, when our schools reopen, new measures and precautions will be in place,” Hansen told CNA.

The president of DePaul University, located in Chicago, announced earlier this week that the university already plans to “minimize our footprint on campus this fall,” and that an announcement of the fall plans could happen by June 15.

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- As parishes and dioceses across the country deal with a drop in collections and the prospects of layoffs amid the pandemic, many parishes have managed to avail themselves of government loans designed to cover eight weeks of payroll expenses.

CBS News reported Friday that an estimated 12,000-13,000 of the 17,000 Catholic parishes in the U.S. had applied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) payroll loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA), and 9,000 so far had received them.

Guidance from the SBA on eligibility for the loans states that “no otherwise eligible organization will be disqualified from receiving a loan because of the religious nature, religious identity, or religious speech of the organization.”

Religious organizations are eligible for the loans as long as they meet the requirements of Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit and employ 500 or fewer people, the SBA said.

“The PPP isn't about the federal government assisting houses of worship or churches,” Pat Markey, the executive director of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, told CBS News.

“PPP is about keeping people on payrolls, and a large segment of our society [in] the not for profit world...are churches and houses of worship. And they have people on payrolls too. So, if what this is about is keeping people on payrolls, then we all should have availability to do that.”

The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference did not reply by press time to CNA’s request for additional comment.

Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act March 27 to help relieve the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

The CARES Act initially authorized some $350 billion in loans to small businesses, intended to allow them to continue to pay their employees. The loans were given on a first come, first serve basis.

The second round of funding, with some $310 billion in additional funds available, began April 27.

The loans were capped at $10 million, were open to businesses with fewer than 500 employees per location, and were intended to cover two months of payroll costs.

The federal government promised to forgive the loans if a business used at least 75% of the funds to maintain its payroll at “pre-pandemic levels” for eight weeks after the loan is disbursed, the New York Times reports.

The remaining money could be used only to pay for certain expenses, such as a mortgage, rent, and utilities, according to the Times.

A survey of Protestant pastors by LifeWay Research found that about 40% had applied for PPP loans with more than half of them reporting being approved.

NPR reports that synagogues have also applied for government funding, though in a smaller proportion— of nearly 4,000 synagogues in the United States, about 250 were approved for PPP loans in the first round of lending, according to surveys by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

The PPP has been subject to some criticism since its launch, including from those who say business owners with criminal records have been excluded from the program thus far.

In addition, several large companies, such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, have received multi-million dollar loans through the program. Some of these large companies, such as Shake Shack, have since returned their loans.

Two New York dioceses— Rochester and Buffalo— are suing the Small Business Administration for access to PPP funds, after they were denied loans because of their bankruptcy status.

An SBA rule stipulated that the funds would not go to bankruptcy debtors. Both the dioceses of Rochester and Buffalo have filed for bankruptcy in the past several months, after being named in hundreds of clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed under New York Child Victims Protection Act.

 

Every year SOLIDWORKS hosts one of the largest engineering conferences in the world. Since SOLIDWORKS World 2000, Model Mania® has been an attraction for many engineers wanting to show off their SOLIDWORKS skills. Model Mania, for those not familiar, is a

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CNA Staff, Apr 14, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell has said culture wars and anti-Catholic sentiment could have played a part in the decision of Victoria police to pursue charges against him, even while they lacked supportive evidence of the allegations in his case.

Cardinal Pell described Victoria police as having “advertised for business” against him in an April 14 interview with Sky News Australia. Pell was asked about the decision by Victoria police to launch an open-ended investigation into him, despite having received no complaints of a crime.

The interview was Pell’s first televised appearance since his release last week after more than 400 days in prison. On the evidence of a single accuser, Pell was convicted in December 2018 of sexually assaulting two choirboys at the Melbourne Cathedral in 1996.

On April 7, the Australian High Court unanimously ruled that the evidence presented during the trial would not have allowed the jury to avoid reasonable doubt and ordered Pell’s acquittal and release.

On the day of his release, Pell told CNA that “The only basis for long term healing is truth and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all.”

Pell spoke with Sky News’ Andrew Bolt about the decision by local police to bring 28 allegations of sexual abuse against him, only to see 27 of them dropped before reaching court. The remaining allegation resulted in Pell’s conviction by a Victoria jury and eventual acquittal by the High Court.

Asked directly if he thought police were “out to get” him, Pell said he did not know.

“I don’t know how you explain it, but it is certainly extraordinary,” Pell said.

Asked if he thought there was an anti-Catholic bias at work in the decision of police to charge him and by judges at the Victoria Court of Appeal to sustain his conviction, despite the evidence which eventually led to his exoneration, Pell said it was a possibility.

“I’ve seen too many people [make the leap] from possible to probable to fact. Certainly, people do not like Christians who teach Christianity, especially on life and family and issues like that.”

“The culture wars are real,” Pell said. “There is a systematic attempt to remove the Judeo-Christian legal foundations [on for example] marriage, life, gender, sex.”

“Unfortunately, there’s less rational discussion and more playing the man, more abuse and intimidation, and that’s not good for a democracy.”

During the interview, the cardinal was also asked if he believed that there was any connection between his work to reform the Vatican finances during his time as Prefect for the Economy and the emergence of charges against him in Victoria.

“Most of the senior people in Rome who are in any way sympathetic to financial reform believe that they are [connected]. But I have seen too much from people, as I said, going to possibility to probability to fact – I don’t have any evidence of that.”

“But one of my fears was that what we had done [to reform the Vatican finances] would remain hidden for ten years or so, and they’d would be revealed and the baddies would say ‘Well, Pell and Casey [Pell’s chief advisor] were in charge then, they turned a blind eye and did nothing to it.’”

“Thanks be to God all that’s gone, because there was a flurry of articles just before Christmas exposing all sorts of things like a disastrous purchase – actually a couple of them – in London, and it was very clearly demonstrated that we tenaciously opposed those things.”

“What we were pushing and saying has been massively vindicated,” Pell said. “Now you can see why they sacked the auditor [Libero Milone], why they got rid of the external auditors.”

Asked how high up in the curial hierarchy financial corruption goes, Pell said “Who knows? It’s a little bit like [anti-Catholicism] in Victoria, you’re not quite sure where the vein runs, how thick and broad it is, and how high it goes.”

But the cardinal also made clear that, in financial reforming efforts, Pope Francis had “absolutely” supported him and that “at the feet of the pope we’ve got Cardinal [Pietro] Parolin, he’s certainly not corrupt. Just how high up [the corruption goes] is an interesting hypothesis.”

Pell said that despite the difficulties he faced in prison, where he was held in solitary confinement for much of the time for his own safety, he bore no anger towards his accuser.

“I’ve got no anger, no hostility towards my complainant, I never have,” said Pell.

“I am called to forgive what happened to me that might have been a little unjust, and there is this heroic Christian call to forgiveness in the most appalling circumstances.”

But, Pell said, he had no hesitation in condemning the terrible scandal of sexual abuse in the Church.

“I totally condemn those sorts of activities [of abuse] and the damage that it has done to people – and I have seen the damage that it has done to people.”

“One of the things that grieves me is the suggestion that I’m anti-victim or not sufficiently sympathetic. I devoted a lot of time and energy to trying to get [victims] justice, and to get them help and compensation.”

Pell noted that as archbishop in the 1990s he set up the Melbourne Response to deal with sexual abuse in the Church and bringing about justice and compensation for victims.

“I worked hard,” Pell said, “when it wasn’t easy or fashionable, to get something in place – not run by clerics – that would give some protection and redress to these people, and I have worked consistently at that since at least the middle 90s.”

The cardinal said he had kept the same routine while in prison that, as a bishop, he had often urged on priests who found themselves “in a bit of trouble;” getting up early and at a set time, praying, exercising, and eating well.

“If you can’t pray when you are in trouble, your faith is very weak indeed.”

Asked if he had ever asked God, in the words of Christ on the cross, “why have you forsaken me?” Pell responded “No.”

“But I have said ‘My God, my God, what are you up to?’”

“One of the strangest teachings about Christianity – and the most useful – is that you can offer up your suffering,” Pell said. “Suffering is not just a brute fact. A Christian can offer that up to the Good God.”

CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom has called on the Pakistani government to ensure aid for the COVID-19 pandemic is being justly distributed to religious minorities, after receiving reports that aid organizations were barring Christians and Hindus from receiving food assistance.

“These actions are simply reprehensible,” USCIRF Commissioner Anurima Bhargava said in an April 13 statement. “As COVID-19 continues to spread, vulnerable communities within Pakistan are fighting hunger and to keep their families safe and healthy. Food aid must not be denied because of one’s faith. We urge the Pakistani government to ensure that food aid from distributing organizations is shared equally with Hindus, Christians, and other religions minorities,” she said.

According to the commission, recent reports have shown that in Karachi a non-government aid organization, the Saylani Welfare International Trust, has been denying food assistance to Christians and Hindus, telling them that the aid was reserved for Muslims. Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim.

The authorities of Pakistan have consistently failed to implement safeguards on behalf of religious minorities, despite numerous policies in favor of economic and physical protections for members of non-Muslim religions.

For example, the country has promised to provide quotas for employment to ensure that religious minorities are granted equal access to jobs, but so far it has not done so.

Additionally, strict blasphemy laws in the country are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities. While non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

In a recent highly publicized case, Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, spent eight years on death row on blasphemy charges after being accused of making disparaging remarks about Muhammad after an argument stemming from a cup of water. Amid strong international pressure, the Pakistan Supreme Court acquitted her in late 2018.

A 2019 report from USCIRF found that Christians and Hindus “face continued threats to their security and are subject to various forms of harassment and social exclusion,” the USCIRF statement said.

The country was also designated by the US Department of State as a “Country of Particular Concern” in December 2018 for its poor religious freedom record.

USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore noted in the April 13 statement that in a recent address to the international community, Prime Minister Imran Khan said that governments in developing countries must work to save people from starvation during the coronavirus pandemic.

Pakistan’s health ministry has reported nearly 6,000 cases of coronavirus in the country of 212 million people as of April 15.

“This is a monumental task laying before many countries. Prime Minister Khan’s government has the opportunity to lead the way but they must not leave religious minorities behind,” he said. “Otherwise, they may add on top of it all one more crisis, created by religious discrimination and inter-communal strife.”

A March 2020 report from USCIRF noted other countries who have had religious freedom problems in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, including in China, where the virus originated.

According to USCIRF, reports indicated that Chinese authorities forced Uighurs, a Muslim minority that has been forced into concentration camps since 2017, to work in factories to make up for the lack of workers during the country’s coronavirus quarantine. Reports also indicated that some Uighur residents in the city of Ghulja had “limited access to food and local officials have demanded payments in order to bring supplies,” USCIRF noted.

In South Korea, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a fringe Christian group that reported already facing “hostility” from mainline Protestants before the pandemic, faced additional pressures and harassment from the government and citizens after a 61-year-old female member of the church - known as Patient 31 - attended a church service with a fever before being diagnosed with coronavirus, and thus spreading the infection to thousands of others.

“The Shincheonji church has faced considerable criticism and even harassment from the South Korean government and society. Although some government measures appeared to be driven by legitimate public health concerns, others appeared to exaggerate the church’s role in the outbreak,” USCIRF reported, adding that members of the church have faced “discrimination at work and spousal abuse because of their affiliation with the church.”

Other countries in which coronavirus is reportedly impacting religious freedoms include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Italy and the Vatican (for government-mandated cancellation of religious services), the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, and Tajikistan.

CNA Staff, Apr 17, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Reports of an Indian hospital's segregated wards for Hindu and Muslim coronavirus patients drew concern from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, though Indian authorities strongly disputed the allegation.

"USCIRF is concerned with reports of Hindu and Muslim patients separated into separate hospital wards in Gujarat,” the commission said on Twitter and Facebook April 15. “Such actions only help to further increase ongoing stigmatization of Muslims in India and exacerbate false rumors of Muslims spreading COVID-19.”

The bipartisan U.S. federal government commission linked to a story in the Indian Express newspaper that cites a hospital official and a patient in the city of Ahmedabad in the western coastal Indian state of Gujarat.

India's Ministry for External Affairs opposed the commission, saying it was spreading “misguided reports” and “adding religious color” that distracts from India's efforts to combat the novel coronavirus.

“No segregation is being done in civil hospitals on the basis of religion, as clarified by the Gujarat government,” the ministry said April 15.

The reports concern Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where there are some 1,200 beds prepared for patients suffering from the novel coronavirus.

Medical Superintendent Dr. Gunvant. H. Rathod described the hospital division to the Indian Express, saying “generally, there are separate wards for male and female patients. But here, we have made separate wards for Hindu and Muslim patients.”

“It is a decision of the government and you can ask them,” he said.

Deputy Chief Minister and Health Minister Nitin Patel said he was not aware of the situation and would make inquiries. Ahmedabad's district magistrate, K.K. Nirala, also was not aware of any decision, the Indian Express reports.

However, the Indian Express cited a hospital patient who said the names of 28 men in a ward were called out, and they were moved to another ward.

“While we were not told why we were being shifted, all the names that were called out belonged to one community. We spoke to one staff member in our ward today and he said this had been done for ‘the comfort of both communities’,” the patient said.

The Gujarat Health and Family Welfare Department said the reports were “absolutely baseless.” Rather, it said, patients are treated based on symptoms and severity and “according to treating doctors' recommendations.

As of Wednesday, new known cases of coronavirus in Gujarat rose by 127 to 766, with 88 cases in Ahmedabad. The death toll there totals 33, the Times of India reports.

The Indian newspaper The Week reported that the commission had previously criticized India's Citizenship Amendment Act, which became effective in January 2020.

In December 2019 the commission expressed concern about the legislation, which enshrined a pathway to citizenship for immigrants but specifically excluded Muslims. The commission recommended U.S. sanctions on India as a possible response.

The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom reviews alleged religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. president, Secretary of State, and Congress.

The commission’s 2019 report said that religious freedom conditions in India “continued a downward trend” in 2018. It said India’s “history of religious freedom has come under attack in recent years with the growth of exclusionary extremist narratives—including, at times, the government’s allowance and encouragement of mob violence against religious minorities—that have facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities. Both public and private actors have engaged in this campaign.”

Mob violence against Christians by Hindus has been particularly acute.

In August 2019, six suspected members of a radical Hindu group were arrested after dozens of Catholics were attacked on a Marian pilgrimage from Karnataka to the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, a coastal town in south east India.

In September, around 500 armed Hindu extremists attacked a Jesuit mission in the Archdiocese of Ranchi. Armed with sticks, chains, iron bars, knives, and pistols, the mob beat tribal students including two who were seriously injured, and also seriously damaged the school’s facilities.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal has said numerous mob lynchings of Christians have occurred in which the victims are accused of eating beef or otherwise harming cattle, which are considered sacred in Hinduism.

Karnataka state suffered a wave of anti-Christian violence in 2008, when Hindu extremist groups led attacks on churches, schools and homes of Christians and physically beat hundreds of people. A 2011 independent report on the violence, known as the Saldhana Report, charged that attacks were pre-planned and backed by the state’s highest government authorities.

 

CNA Staff, Apr 21, 2020 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- Indigenous rights groups are warning that many families in Bangladesh who have lost jobs and income because of the coronavirus pandemic are not yet receiving aid, and many are facing starvation.

A joint statement from three Bangladeshi indigenous rights groups warns that the vast majority of those living in rural areas are day laborers, and are now out of work.

Bangladesh, a low lying county situated just east of India, has 3,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and has recorded 110 deaths. Officials say actual numbers are likely higher due to a lack of testing kits.

Romen Kisku, a Catholic father of five and member of the Santal ethnic group, told UCA News that his family has received a small amount of food aid from a charity, but he worries it will not be enough to feed his 10-member family. He and his family live in the northern region of Dinajpur, and he said he hopes to find work in a neighboring region as a paddy farmer.

“Three men of our family are day laborers and our income pays for everything. Now we cannot go to work and government aid has not reached us. The minimal aid was too little for our family, so we have to go on starving if things don’t improve,” Kisku told UCA News.

Ethnic-minority Santal people live mostly in northwestern Bangladesh as well as parts of India and Nepal. About eight percent are Christian.

Bangladesh has a low percentage of Catholics— as low as 0.3% in some areas— and the Catholic aid group Caritas is struggling to raise funds for the poor.

“We have made an appeal to people in our parishes and areas, so they come up with whatever they can to assist those having hard times during this crisis. The suffering of people will intensify if the crisis lingers, so we need to help people any way possible,” Bishop Sebastian Tudu of Dinajpur told UCA News.

Though the government and charitable organizations are mobilizing to provide relief, the remoteness of the areas where many indigenous people live mean that in some areas, very few families have yet received government assistance.

Though Catholic Relief Services is active in providing aid in refugee camps in Bangladesh, a CRS spokesperson confirmed to CNA that CRS is not currently active in the Dinajpur region.

The branch of Caritas in the southeastern port city of Chittagong has taken two emergency cash handouts of 2,250 taka (US$27) and 1,547 taka to support 950 families on the hills, UCA News reported.

Bangladesh’s government started food relief and subsidized food sales at the end of March, aiming to support about 50 million poor and needy people across the country, UCA News reports.

Bangladesh imposed a nationwide lockdown March 26, with a restriction of no more than five people allowed to congregate in prayer in a mosque, the New York Post reported. Despite this, on April 18 a crowd of some 100,000 people gathered for a funeral in Brahmanbaria, in the eastern part of the country.

CNA Staff, Apr 23, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- Iran has sentenced a 21 year-old Christian woman to prison and lashing for “disturbing public order,” after she protested the destruction of a passenger jet by the military.

Mary (Fatemeh) Mohammadi, a 21 year-old Iranian convert to Christianity, was arrested on Jan. 12 after taking part in anti-government protests that followed the shooting down of a passenger jet, Ukrainian Air Flight 752, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG).  Iran announced several days after the incident that the IRG mistakenly shot the plane down, resulting in the deaths of all 176 people on board the flight.

In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Mohammadi said her sentence of three months and one day in prison is suspended for one year. She was also sentenced to 10 lashes.

Mohammadi said she has been tortured in prison and suffered “terrible conditions” for “protesting against the slaughter of human beings.” She said she did not appeal her sentence “because the appeal courts have turned into affirmative tribunals.” 

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) tweeted a condemnation of Mohammadi’s sentencing on Wednesday, saying that “No peaceful activist should be targeted on the basis of their religious beliefs.”

President Trump highlighted her case in his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 6, saying that she “was seized and imprisoned in Iran because she converted to Christianity and shared the Gospel with others.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also discussed Mohammadi’s case in a Feb. 12 interview with Tony Perkins on Washington Watch. Perkins is also the chair of USCIRF.

Pompeo said the U.S. was “deeply concerned” of reports of Mohammadi’s arrest, and said she was “targeted by the regime because she made the choice to convert to Christianity.”

According to the All Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, Mohammadi was “physically and emotionally abused during her arrest and transfer to Qarchak prison,” and was questioned about her faith at her hearing.

Correction: This article originally stated that Mohammadi was one of a group of survivors of religious persecution who met with President Trump last July at the White House, as reported in the Christian Post. It was a different Iranian Christian, Dabrina Bet Tamraz, who met with Trump, not Mohammadi.

Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) covered up the spread of the new coronavirus within the country, suppressing the real rate of infection and violating the rights of its citizens as it did so, a Chinese human rights activist told a forum at The Catholic University of America on Friday.

“It is time to recognize the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to all humanity. The CCP represses and manipulates information to strengthen its hold on power, regardless of the toll on human lives,” human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng said April 24 during an online forum on the CCP and the new coronavirus.

The forum was hosted by Faith & Law in partnership with the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Guanchen is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.

Guangcheng is a blind human rights lawyer from China, who received sanctuary in the U.S. in 2012 after he was targeted by the CCP for his advocacy work. Guangcheng has sharply criticized the party for its human rights abuses, including from its one-child family planning policy.

He was sent to prison and subject to house arrest, during which he claims he and his family were repeatedly beaten and denied medical treatment.

On Friday, the lawyer warned audience members against suggestions that other countries should emulate China’s authoritarian response to the new coronavirus (COVID-19).

There are currently more than 2.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world.

The city of Wuhan is recognized as the epicenter of the global pandemic, and the government on Jan. 23 instituted a strict lockdown in the city of 11 million people. Guangchang cited reports of Chinese families being barricaded inside their own homes, and the group Human Rights Watch compiled stories of residents reportedly dying from lack of access to care during the lockdown.

“Whole families have been found dead in their apartments because they could not get out,” he said, noting that despite the CCP’s claim that it has the virus under control, lockdowns are currently in force in the city of Harbin.

“This is despite the authorities ordering everyone back to work and telling the outside world that they have the virus under control,” Guangcheng said. “The resurgence is directly related to the CCP hiding the truth, and cracking down on people who tried to share information on the virus.”

He also claimed that the CCP has been using the crisis caused by the pandemic to crack down on dissent, detaining human rights activists at separate “so-called quarantine sites.”

The wife of one human rights lawyer—who had just been released from prison told The Guardian that she feared the government was putting her husband under house arrest near where he was imprisoned, 400 kilometers away from her, under the guise of a quarantine.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, China’s number of COVID-19 cases rose considerably through January and February to 79,389 on Feb. 29 with 2,838 deaths, before its daily increase in case numbers slowed to a trickle in March including just one new reported case on March 22 in the country of more than 1.4 billion people.

Just 3,352 deaths were reported on April 16 before the reported number jumped to 4,642 the next day.

“There is nothing about the CCP’s numbers that are believable,” Guangcheng said. “What people are calculating is that roughly 700,000 may have died in China—in terms of people who have been infected, no one knows the numbers.”

For instance, he said, during the Wuhan lockdown citizen journalists claimed that the situation was far worse than the CCP was reporting; they recorded people collapsing in the streets and hearses and vans carrying body bags at all hours of the day.

“In summary, the CCP is the biggest and most serious virus of all, with over 193,000 people dead worldwide from the coronavirus,” the lawyer said. “There should be no question of the regime’s threat.”

CNA Staff, May 7, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell has expressed his “surprise” at newly released findings of an Australian investigation, which concluded that the cardinal was aware of sexual abuse by clerics in the 1970s and 80s, and failed to act.

In 2017, Australia’s Royal Commission released a report on sexual abuse of minors in the country, the result of a five-year enquiry into the behavior and responsibility of institutions including the Church. Sections of the report relating to Cardinal Pell were redacted until the conclusion of criminal legal proceedings against the cardinal. 

The redacted portions were released May 6.

In the newly available material, the commission found that Pell knew about the abusive activities of two priests during his own years as a priest, and that he failed to act to stop them. 

On Thursday, Pell said through a spokesperson that the commission’s conclusions about him were “not supported by evidence.”

Pell gave evidence to the commission in 2016 via video link from Rome. During his testimony, he denied failing to act against known sexual abusers in the clergy. Pell specifically denied that while he was a priest in Ballarat in the 1970s and 80s, he had any awareness of the actions of then-Father Gerald Ridsdale, a serial abuser from the same diocese.

The Royal Commission concluded that, as a member of Bishop Ronald Mulkearns’ college of priest consulters in the diocese, Pell would have been made aware of allegations of abuse against Ridsdale during discussions about the priest’s transfers between assignments in 1977 and 1982.

But Pell told the commission that he and the other consulters had been deceived by Mulkearns and were unaware of Ridsdale’s crimes until years later.

“The Consultors who gave evidence on the meetings in 1977 and 1982 either said they did not learn of Ridsdale’s offending against children until much later or they had no recollection of what was discussed. None said they were made aware of Ridsdale’s offending at these meetings,” Pell said in a statement released through a spokesperson late Wednesday evening.

In a 2017 statement, Pell said “I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children, and I did not do so.” 

The commission rejected Pell’s testimony, and found that it “ought to have been obvious” why Ridsdale was being transferred from one assignment to another.

“We are satisfied Bishop Mulkearns gave reasons for it being necessary to move Ridsdale. We are satisfied that he referred to homosexuality at the meeting, in the context of giving reasons for Ridsdale’s move,” the report found. “However, we are not satisfied that Bishop Mulkearns left the explanation there, as Cardinal Pell said there would have been a discussion."

“We do not accept that Bishop Mulkearns lied to his consultors.”

The commission did not delineate specific proofs for its conclusion.

The commission also said that Pell would have known about allegations of abuse made against Fr. Peter Searson, who was active as a Melbourne priest during Pell’s time as an auxiliary bishop in the Melbourne archdiocese.

In 1989, Pell held a meeting with representatives from the parish and school in Doveton, where Searson was assigned. During that meeting a number of complaints were made against Searson but, according to Pell, sexual misconduct with children was not raised, and Searson’s removal was not requested.

Following Pell’s installation as Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, Pell placed Searson on administrative leave and removed him from parish ministry in 1997. Searson died in 2009 and was never charged by police.

A spokesman for Victoria Police, which brought charges against Pell leading to his imprisonment for more than a year before the High Court freed him last month, told the Guardian that the newly released sections of the report would be studied and police would “undertake an assessment of those findings.”

“At this time it would not be appropriate to comment further about any possible action,” The spokesman said.

Current Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli released his own statement in response to the new material from the commission, in which he repeated his previous apologies “for the failure of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to responsibly care for and protect our young people and vulnerable adults.”

“Child safety and care is not a project with an end date”, Comensoli said, but a project that “requires life-long vigilance.”

In December 2018, Pell was convicted of five counts of sexual abuse, but was acquitted by the Australian High Court last monthl. Following that decision, the redacted portions of the commission’s findings were released.

As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed in the advisory in the link below. Please email any questions to Clearing.RiskManagement@cmegroup.com

The rates will be effective after the close of business on Friday, April 24, 2020.

For the full text of this advisory, please click here.

As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed in the advisory at the link below. Please email any questions to Clearing.RiskManagement@cmegroup.com

The rates will be effective after the close of business on Friday, May 1, 2020.

For the full text of this advisory, please click here.

As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed in the advisory at the link below. Please email any questions to Clearing.RiskManagement@cmegroup.com

The rates will be effective after the close of business on Friday, May 8, 2020.

For the full text of this advisory, please click here.

Antemoro “coastal people” of Amosiala come to faith after learning about Christ through an OM team and volunteers from a neighbouring village.

A village builds their own school - a big first for the area and a step in transforming the community.

German translation of the BIS Press Release on the presentation of the Annual Report (25 June 2017)

German translation of the speech delivered by Mr Jaime Caruana, General Manager of the BIS, on the occasion of the Bank's Annual General Meeting, Basel, 25 June 2017.

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, September 2017

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, December 2017

German translation of Press Release about BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens giving a speech on "Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?" (6 February 2018)

German translation of the BIS Quarterly Review, March 2018

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, March 2018

German translation of Press Release on the pre-release of two special chapters of the Annual Economic Report of the BIS, 17 June 2018. Trust is the missing link in today's cryptocurrencies - Cryptocurrencies' model of generating trust limits their potential to replace conventional money, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) writes in its Annual Economic Report (AER), a new title launched this year.

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, September 2018

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, December 2018

German translation of the BIS Quarterly Review, March 2019

German translation of the BIS press release about the BIS Quarterly Review, March 2019

Softball ministry in Hungary shows hospitality, international influence by hosting the 2016 Danube Cup

OM's new field leader in Hungary shares his journey in missions and his heart for establishing vibrant communities of Jesus followers.

The United Nations on Thursday issued a new appeal for $4.7 billion in funding to "protect millions of lives and stem the spread of coronavirus in fragile countries."

Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi said on Thursday afternoon that the Unemployment Insurance Fund was going to be under "very serious strain" and that he foresaw a period where there would be heavy dependence on the state.

Almost one million people in Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial hub, are in need of food aid due to movement restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic, according to its mayor.