As many as 94% of self-identified Nigerian Catholics surveyed said they attend weekly or daily Mass, according to a study published in early 2023 by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

The World Values Survey, which conducted the poll, doesn't survey all countries in the world. Still, Nigerian Catholics had the highest Mass attendance among those asked. Nigeria was followed by Kenya (73%) and Lebanon (69%).

At the same time, both Christian Concern and Open Doors, organisations that track Christian persecution in the world, rank Nigeria as one of the worst countries for Christians to live in after North Korea, followed by India, Iran, China, Pakistan and Eritrea as top countries for Christian persecution.

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Established in 1789, Georgetown is the USA's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university.

The donation is for the creation of a leadership programme for the university's student-athletes, and to fund a sports field.

"The athletics program at Georgetown has played a significant role in our family's life," he told the university.

The university said Cooper and his wife Susan were the parents of five Georgetown graduates — twins Kylie and Ryan, as well as Matthew, Kris and Adam.

He is a Kaitaia-raised son of a truck driver.

He is of Ngati Kahu, Ngati Kuri and Te Aupouri descent.

Cooper, now in his 60s, got his first taste of the US on a school scholarship and has had a foot in both countries ever since.

A lawyer specialising in commercial and property law, Mr Cooper was formerly executive director of Lion Nathan, chief executive of LD Nathan and joint managing director of Mace Development Corporation.

He practiced law for 11 years and was partner at Auckland law firm Russell McVeagh, where he specialized in commercial and property law.

Cooper made a fortune in real estate and private equity and developed projects including the billion-dollar, 6.5ha Britomart site in downtown Auckland.

He is the founder and Executive Chairman of Cooper and Company.

Cooper and Company is a private investment company, established in 1989, that develops and invests in assets on a long-term ownership basis.

The company has offices Newport Beach, California; Auckland, New Zealand; and Southlake, Texas.

Source

• m.nzherald.co.nz
• cooperandcompany.org
• nbr.co.nbr
• Image: nbr.co.nz

The Jesuit university is Blatty's alma mater, and his best-selling book and the 1973 blockbuster film The Exorcist were set in Georgetown.

His petition argues that Georgetown has regularly flouted Church teaching and discipline, and failed to provide students with authentic Catholic instruction.

According to Blatty's legal counsel, Manuel Miranda, "Georgetown University has been captured by the ideology of radical autonomy. It pervades everything. Academic freedom is now prisoner to intolerant new orthodoxies, and Catholic moral teaching has surrendered to the dictatorship of moral relativism."

The petition, including 124 witness statements, has been submitted to the Vatican Secretariat of State and to the Congregations for Education and for Religious.

It asks the Vatican to require that Georgetown implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the papal constitution governing Catholic colleges, and, if that is now done, to prevent the university from calling itself Catholic.

Blatty and his supporters — more than 2000 of whom have signed the petition — are buoyed by the knowledge that Pope Francis, as chancellor of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, successfully implemented Ex corde Ecclesiae, and also approved of Pope Benedict's 2012 decree removing consent from the University of Peru to call itself Catholic.

Asked to explain why he has backed a petition that could damage the reputation of his alma mater, Blatty said, "Today's Georgetown isn't Georgetown, but more like a living Picture of Dorian Gray."

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Washington said it "continues to work with Georgetown to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae".

But last year an editorial in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Standard, said at the university "leadership and faculty find their inspiration in sources other than the Gospel and Catholic teaching" and "the vision guiding university choices does not clearly reflect the light of the Gospel and authentic Catholic teaching".

Sources:

National Catholic Register

The Father King Society

Image: Georgetown Clinical Society

William Peter Blatty, 85, credits a Georgetown scholarship with fostering his writing career, which includes an Academy Award for "The Exorcist," a blockbuster based on his best-selling 1971 novel. In the book and movie, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown, the nation's oldest Catholic university, struggles to save a demon-possessed girl.

"What I owe Georgetown, however, is nothing as compared to what Georgetown owes to its founders and the Christ of faith," Blatty said in a statement.

The author says that Georgetown has violated church teaching for decades by inviting speakers who support abortion rights and refusing to obey instructions the late Pope John Paul II issued in 1990 to church-affiliated colleges and universities.

In response to criticism of the Sebelius speech, Georgetown president John J. DeGioia said this week that the university is "committed to the free exchange of ideas" even if it does not agree with all of them.

Blatty's "indictment" against Georgetown charges the school with failing to recruit Catholic teachers and students, neglecting to instruct students in Catholic morality and failing to act in accord with church doctrine. He expects the suit to be filed in the Archdiocese of Washington's court of canon law this fall.

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