Church desecration in India; Nicaragua closes Catholic universities; bishops reject human composting; sainthood sought for 3 Koreans; new Nigerian dicastery head

BISHOPS’ TEAM REPORTS TO VATICAN ON INDIAN CATHEDRAL DESECRATION

A Vatican-appointed team, retired Archbishop Maria Callist Soosa Pakiam of Trivandrum, and retired Bishop Stanley Roman of Quilon, has wrapped up its fact-finding exercise into the alleged “desecration and sacrilege” at a cathedral-basilica in southern India, linked to a decades-old dispute over the mode of celebrating Mass.

A group of 29 Catholics, mostly men, are accused of desecrating the consecrated bread and wine when some priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese were celebrating their traditional Mass.

A majority of priests and laity in the archdiocese want to continue with the traditional Mass in which the celebrant faces the congregation throughout the Mass. However, the Synod-approved mode requires the priests to face the congregation only until the Eucharistic Prayer and after Communion. The synod approved the new form across all its dioceses.

Church leaders familiar with the development reported that “this is perhaps the first such case in the history of the Catholic Church in which the Vatican had to step in.” (UCANews)

NICARAGUA CLOSES TWO CATHOLIC CHURCH-LINKED UNIVERSITIES

Nicaragua on March 7 shuttered two universities with ties to the Catholic Church just a day after stripping 18 employer unions of their legal status in an ongoing clampdown on dissent.

Since anti-government protests were violently put down in 2018, leaving more than 350 dead, hundreds imprisoned and more than 100,000 in exile, rights groups, the UN, and Western governments have accused President Daniel Ortega’s government of illegally attempting to crush any and all opposition.

The institutions were ordered to hand over all information on students, professors, study plans and other details to the country’s National Council of Universities (CNU), according to the publication. (UCANews)

3 DEAD, 6 HURT AS MYANMAR MILITARY BOMBS VILLAGE

Three civilians were killed and six others wounded after Myanmar’s military stepped up attacks on several villages in the predominantly Christian Kayah state on March 23.

The army’s jets bombed Wan Pala village in Bawlake township, according to the Karenni Human Rights Group, which tracks violence in the civil war-stricken southeast Asian nation.

The fresh round of attacks has prompted thousands, mostly Christians, to flee their homes and take shelter in churches, convents and jungles.

Noeleen Heyzer, special envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Myanmar, said violence continues “at an alarming scale” after the military, which toppled the civilian government in February 2021, extended the state of emergency on February 1 and beefed up its aerial bombings, burning of civilian structures, and other grave human rights violations to maintain its grip on power. (UCANews)

U.S. BISHOPS REJECT HUMAN COMPOSTING, ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS

In a March 23 statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine said it had evaluated two new alternatives to burial or cremation — human composting and alkaline hydrolysis — and concluded that both “fail to satisfy the Church’s requirements for proper respect for the bodies of the dead.”

In human composting, the body of the departed is placed in a metal bin with plant material to enable microbes and bacteria, along with heat and oxygen, to break down bones and tissues. The resulting mixture is then offered for lawn or garden use.

Alkaline hydrolysis dissolves the body in some 100 gallons of water and alkali under high temperature and pressure. Within hours, the body is dissolved, except for some bone material which is then dried and pulverized.

Burial is “the most fitting way to express faith and hope in the resurrection of the body,” wrote the bishops, quoting the 2016 instruction “Ad resurgendum cum Christo: Regarding the Burial of the Deceased and the Conservation of the Ashes in the Case of Cremation” by the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith.

According to the 2016 instruction, flame-based cremation is permissible, so long as the ashes are gathered and laid to rest in a sacred place.

In contrast, both human composting and alkaline hydrolysis leave nothing that could be properly interred, said the U.S. bishops. (UCANews)

POPE FRANCIS SAYS IMPRISONMENT OF NICARAGUAN BISHOP REMINDS HIM OF HITLER’S DICTATORSHIP

Pope Francis called Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega “unstable” and likened Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to Nazi Germany in an interview published March 10. Speaking about Nicaragua’s Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison by Ortega’s dictatorship last month, Pope Francis said: “It is something out of line with reality; it is as if we were bringing back the Communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitler dictatorship of 1935.”

“They are a type of vulgar dictatorships,” he added, also using the Argentine word guarangas, meaning “rude.”

Pope Francis said: “With much respect, I have no choice but to think that the person who leads (Nicaragua) [Daniel Ortega] is unstable.” (CNA)

UNBORN MARTYR “SHAKES OUR CONSCIENCES”

On March 24, 1944, in occupied Poland, all nine members of the Ulma family were killed by the Nazis — including a child still in the womb — for hiding a Jewish family in their home in Poland.

The anniversary of the martyrdom of the first unborn child on the way to sainthood marks a moment to pray for the protection of every human life, according to the postulator for the Ulma family, Father Witold Burda.

Burda stated that the Catholic Church’s decision to beatify an unborn child “shakes our consciences.”

In an interview with EWTN, Burda called it “a reminder for us of the sanctity of every human life that begins at the moment of conception until natural death.”

“It is a great reaffirmation, a great hymn of the sanctity and dignity of every human life,” he said. (CNA)

CHINA INSTALLS BISHOP WITHOUT VATICAN APPROVAL

The Chinese government has installed a new Bishop of Shanghai without Vatican approval, in a clear violation of the secret accord between Rome and Beijing.

Bishop Shen Bin, who had been Bishop of Haimen, was installed in Shanghai on April 4, having been named by the Council of Chinese Bishops — a body that is not recognized by the Holy See — of which Bishop Shen Bin himself is the chairman. Vatican spokesmen said that they were taken by surprise by the “unilateral” move, having only heard about the appointment “a few days ago” through media reports.

Although the terms of the Vatican-Beijing agreement have never been disclosed, it is generally understood that new Catholic bishops would be selected by the Holy See from a list of candidates approved by Chinese authorities. Evidently Beijing either did not submit Bishop Shen’s name to the Vatican for approval, or ignored the Vatican’s negative response.

The agreement has not produced new appointments to ease an acute shortage of Catholic bishops in China. Dozens of Chinese dioceses are currently without bishops, or are led by bishops well past retirement age.

The illicit appointment in Shanghai follows another violation of the accord last November, when Chinese authorities transferred Bishop John Peng Weizhao of Yujiang to become an auxiliary of the Nanching archdiocese— also without Vatican approval. The Vatican expressed “surprise and regret” at that move.

KOREAN CHURCH SEEKS SAINTHOOD FOR THREE PROMINENT CLERGYMEN

From left: Bishop Barthelemy Bruguiere, Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan and Father Leo Bang Yoo-ryong

The Seoul archdiocese in South Korea has officially launched the cause of canonization for three prominent Catholic clergymen including a French missionary bishop and the first Korean cardinal.

The Archdiocesan Committee for Beatification and Canonization finalized the decision to pursue the canonization of Bishop Barthelemy Bruguiere, Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan and Father Leo Bang Yoo-ryong, archdiocesan website Good News reported on March 28.

Bruguiere (1792-1835) from the Paris Foreign Mission Society was the first apostolic vicar of Korea; Kim (1922-2009) was archbishop of Seoul from 1968-1998; and Bang (1900-1986) was the founder of Korea’s first native religious order, the Clerical Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs.

Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taek on March 23 appointed Auxiliary Bishop Job Koo Yo-bi of Seoul the chairman of the committee to pursue canonization for the candidates. (UCANews)

MEET THE NEW NIGERIAN SECRETARY FOR THE VATICAN DICASTERY FOR EVANGELIZATION: ARCHBISHOP FORTUNATUS NWACHUKWU

From a childhood as a war refugee to a career as a Holy See diplomat, Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, 62, will now take on a new leadership role in one of the most important dicasteries in the Roman Curia.

The Nigerian archbishop was recently appointed by Pope Francis as a secretary for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization.

The dicastery is tasked with “the work of evangelization, so that Christ, the light of the nations, may be known and witnessed to by word and deed, and the Church, his mystical body, may be built up.” (CNA)