By Matthew Trojacek with G. Galazka photos
Murder of priest highlights rising violence in South Africa
Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, former Media and Communications Officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), was found shot to death on April 27.
According to Father Jeremia Thami Mkhwanazi — the Provincial Secretary of the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/ Stigmatines) to which Mothobi belonged — his body was found in his car with bullet wounds along the road that runs from Cape Town through Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Polokwane to BeitBridge, a border town with Zimbabwe.
The priest, who comes from Lesotho’s Catholic Archdiocese of Maseru, was studying for his Doctorate in Communication at the University of Johannesburg when he met his death.
Johan Viljoen, the Director of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute (DHPI) of the Southern Africa Bishops’ Conference, said he was “deeply shocked by the killing of Father Paul.”
“Nobody is safe in South Africa and the government is doing nothing to improve the situation. They have lost touch with the people they claim to represent, thinking only of how to enrich themselves,” Viljoen said. (Crux)
U.S. Ambassador to Vatican steps down
After two years serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Joseph Donnelly will soon step down from the post, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See announced May 30 in Rome. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve my country in this unique way,” Donnelly, a pro-life Democrat who served one term each in the U.S. House and Senate, said in a statement. No reason was cited for his departure.
President Joe Biden nominated Donnelly, an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame with both BA and JD degrees, for the post in 2021; he was confirmed in 2022. Donnelly has defended Biden as a man of faith. Donnelly served as co-chair of Catholics for Biden through the 2020 election, and even wrote an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star when Biden’s faith was questioned by President Donald Trump, saying Biden “lives his faith every day.” (Catholic Herald)
Myanmar Military bombings hit two churches
Aerial bombings by military junta have left a Catholic Church and a Baptist Church damaged in a village in the Christian-majority Chin state in western Myanmar May 11 and 12, says a report (photo).
The bombardment also destroyed five houses, prompting terrified villagers to flee their homes. The affected Catholic Church is under Kalay Diocese and the local parish priest Titus En Za Khan managed to flee to nearby forests with local Catholics to escape bombings.
“The violence continues to impact the civilian population, especially in the area of Sagaing, part of the diocese of Kalay,” a local Catholic told Fides.
The junta forces targeted churches, Church-run organizations and Christian villages as some of the states including Chin, Shan, Kachin, and Kayah are predominantly Christian, where largely Christian ethnic rebels have been battling the military. (UCANews)
India gets its first speech-impaired priest
Born deaf and speech-impaired, Father Joseph Thermadom, 38, of the Holy Cross Congregation, was ordained at Our Lady of Dolours Basilica in Thrissur, in the state of Kerala, by Archbishop Mar Andrews Thazhath on May 3.
According to Church sources in India, Thermadom is the first deaf person to be ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church in the country.
He is believed to be the second such priest in Asia and the 26th in the world.
He did his theology studies at the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate in the United States. He conducts his prayers in sign language.
Speaking to Crux, Thermadom said his mission as a priest “is to provide all sacraments in Indian Sign Language to all Catholic deaf people in India.” (Crux)
Roberto Benigni joins Pope at World Children’s Day
The Italian actor and comedian Roberto Benigni, best known in the English-speaking world for his 1997 film Life is Beautiful, which won three Oscars, is famous in his native country for his monologues, which blend humor with commentary on politics and literature. Benigni delivered one of them to a packed St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, May 26, following Mass for the first World Children’s Day. (In the photo, Benigni is on the lower right, facing Pope Francis and a group of children, in St. Peter’s Square.) “In life, people give a lot of advice,” Begnini said. “But I can honestly say: the only sensible thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, do you know who I heard it from? From Jesus. In the Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount… ‘Blessed are the merciful’… It seems to me to be the only sensible thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” (VaticanNews)
Weigel: “Pontifical Academy for Life betraying its founder”
George Weigel, biographer of Pope St. John Paul II, lamented that the Pontifical Academy for Life betrayed Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, its founding president, with a book that dissents from the pontiff’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”).
In a talk titled “St. John Paul II and Jérôme Lejeune: Two Lives at the Service of Life,” given as part of the second International Conference on Bioethics in Rome from May 1718, Weigel said that “the academy has published a book with the ironic title La Gioia della Vita, (“The Joy of Life”) authored by theologians who can only be described honestly as dissenting from the authoritative teaching of Evangelium Vitae.”
“That book not only weakens the Catholic case for a culture of life that rejects the grave crimes against life identified by Evangelium Vitae. It does so in terms of an anti-biblical and anti-metaphysical anthropology that would have been completely foreign, indeed abhorrent, to both Jérôme Lejeune and John Paul II,” he pointed out. (CNA)
Francis: Jubilee a time to act on debt relief
Pope Francis spoke on June 5 to participants in a meeting on the “Debt Crisis in the Global South,” and suggested that the coming Jubilee Year would be an appropriate time for action to relieve that debt.
He said: “In order to try to break the debt-financing cycle, it is necessary to create a multinational mechanism, based on the solidarity and harmony of peoples, that takes into account the global nature of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications.” (Vatican News)
Vatican sting operation: alleged manuscript theft
A former Vatican employee, identified by news outlets as Alfio Maria Daniele Pergolizzi, was arrested in a sting operation for trying to sell back a manuscript he allegedly pilfered from the archives of St. Peter’s Basilica (left, a sketch of the basilica’s main altar), the Vatican confirmed June 6. Pergolizzi is an art historian who ran the communications office for St. Peter’s Basilica from 1995 to 2011. At least one individual, however, has raised doubts about actual Vatican ownership of the manuscript.
Maria Grazia D’Amelio (photo) a professor of architecture who authored the 2021 volume edited by Pergolizzi, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini and the Gold for the Baldacchino of St. Peter (1624-1633), said she never saw any trace or reference to the manuscript during the many times she used the archives in her research, and only saw a scanned copy provided by Pergolizzi.
Pergolizzi told gendarmes that he received the manuscript from Italian Monsignor Vittorino Canciani, a former canon of St. Peter’s Basilica who died in 2014, suggesting it was part of a private collection.
The news site Faro di Roma (“Lighthouse of Rome”) was critical of the Promoter of Justice’s use of deception to ensnare Pergolizzi. “Clearly, this is an investigation based on a trap set for a former employee… it’s stupefying that this kind of logic is followed within the Vatican State,” said a May 6 statement by Faro di Roma.
Jerusalem patriarch on Gaza Catholic community’s “steadfast faith”
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa (above, in Gaza, wearing his red cardinal’s hat), the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, described the small resilient community of the Holy Family Parish compound in Gaza City as one with “steadfast faith,” amid horrific destruction and constant bombardment following his return from a four-day pastoral visit during Pentecost.
“Despite the everyday issues, I saw a community united, well-organized, concerned about the future. There was suffering and complaints, but there were no words of anger or resentment. This is something which should not be taken for granted,” he said in a press conference on May 20. Their main concern at the moment is for their children and their education, he said, having already lost an academic school year. “Inside the compound, there are dozens of children but also all around is full of children. Everything is destroyed and it is very difficult to find one house (intact).” (UCANews)
