The cardinal had been hospitalized for heart problems after arriving in Rome in late August, and was therefore unable to attend the Vatican ceremony at which he was elevated to the College of Cardinals Aug. 27.

Baawobr died around 5:45 p.m. on Nov. 27, after being taken by ambulance to Rome's Gemelli hospital, according to a press release from André-Léon Simonart, secretary general of the Missionaries of Africa.

The African cardinal was hospitalized at Santo Spirito hospital close to the Vatican from Aug. 26 to Oct. 15, when he was transferred to the larger Gemelli Polyclinic and University Hospital to receive more specialized care.

On Nov. 18, he was discharged from the hospital and moved into the general house of the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, commonly known as the "White Fathers" for their distinctive white cassocks, of which he was a member.

Baawobr was expected to undergo heart surgery, but according to a communication from the missionary society, as of Nov. 1, the cardinal was still waiting for doctors to decide "the modalities and the time for an intervention." Continue reading

The celebrations will also encompass the 60th Independence Anniversary of the Republic of Ghana.
Pope Francis has appointed Giuseppe Cardinal Bertello, President of the Governatorate of Vatican City State as his special envoy to celebrations. Read more

Fr Thomas Schwiedessen had been sent to the centre for counselling after reportedly behaving strangely.

He had been referred to a psychiatrist and was scheduled for a review.

The priest was connected with the Spiritan University College at Ejisu.

Authorities at the Spiritan University College did not want to comment about the incident.

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Gender ideologies from the wealthy Western world are being imposed on developing nations by tying them to foreign aid and education,

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana, affirmed that what Pope Francis recently described as "ideological colonialism," meaning efforts by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies to force the developing world to adopt a liberal sexual ethic on matters such as abortion and contraception, is not just a hypothesis.

"It's very real, 100 percent. The pressure is definitely there," he said. "It's coming from the World Bank, the [International Monetary Fund], the [United Nations] Population Fund … all of them come with these ideologies."

"It's so secular, it's almost anti-religious, and it's espoused by all these agencies and NGOs," he said, and that when he led Ghana's smaller Koforidua diocese in the 1990s, he was responsible for four hospitals and 11 clinics, with a client base that was 85 percent non-Catholic and concentrated among the country's poorest and most rural people.

Yet he couldn't get UN support, because his facilities didn't distribute contraception or offer abortion.

"I couldn't get money to take care of malaria because we didn't have the right positions on gender and so on," he said.

Nigerian Archbishop Kaigama decries aid linked to unwanted population control measures with international organisations linking financial aid to population control.

He stressed that what is being offered to the Africans—condoms and artificial contraception—is not what they want.

"We want food, education, good roads, good health and so on," he said, adding "but we are given certain things and we are expected to accept just because we are poor."

Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, Nigeria, is convinced African nations are under threat from what Pope Francis has called an "ideological colonization" that is seeking to destroy the family.

It's so bad, he says, that the United States has made clear it will not help Nigeria fight the Boko Haram terror group unless the country modifies its laws regarding homosexuality, family planning and birth-control.

Bishop Paul Kariuki of Kenya, chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops' health committee, who were shocked to find a tetanus vaccine aimed at women in their childbearing years was laced with a birth control hormone called beta human chorionic gonadotropin.

The government insists the vaccine is safe. So too does the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The two groups issued a statement saying the vaccine, which has been used by 130 million women in 52 countries, is safe.

"These allegations are not backed up by evidence, and risk negatively impacting national immunization programs for children and women," the WHO and UNICEF statement said.

"What is immoral and evil is that the tetanus laced with HCG was given as a fertility regulating vaccine without disclosing its abortion and contraceptive effect to the girls and mothers," said Dr. Wahome Ngare, a member of the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association.

Antibodies produced by this combined vaccine neutralize natural HCG from the fertilized egg and lead to shedding, in other words it is an abortifacient and this tetanus/b-HCG vaccine induces antibodies which provide prolonged infertility.

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That's what Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana, supports, according to an interview published on the Crux website.

The archbishop said he believes this is a result Pope Francis wants from the synod also.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle is one of four executive officers for the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.

The assembly met Pope Francis in Rome on February 7.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle favours the proposal of Cardinal Walter Kasper to allow Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church to return to Communion under certain circumstances.

"When a person comes to me, I think I should be able to sit with him or her, or with the family, to find out what the situation is and to give solutions to individual cases without making a sweeping statement," Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said.

"It's not a matter of issuing a new law," he said.

"As for the doctrine [on marriage], I don't think the Church will change. It's a question of how we help individuals."

Pastors in Africa, he said, actually face a wide variety of marital situations, and some flexibility in dealing them would be helpful.

He said the landscape includes not just conventional divorce, but also levirate marriage, under which a widow is required to marry her dead husband's brother, and polygamy.

"I'll tell you, the Church in Africa is not just saying ‘divorce, no'," the archbishop told John Allen of Crux.

"If we look at our own pastoral challenges, there must be room to listen and to see how we can pastorally accompany whoever wants to belong more and more to Christ."

He gave an example of a woman who has been married to a man for 35 years and had raised children with him, despite him having two other wives.

Under Church law the archbishop would have to tell her to leave the marriage, the archbishop said.

But then her children would say the Church destroyed their family, he added.

Sources

• Crux
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Between 2005 and 2011, the proportion of Irish people declaring themselves to be religious dropped from 69 to 47 per cent — a percentage drop in religiosity exceeded only by the Vietnamese.

Over the same period, the proportion of Irish people describing themselves as either "a convinced atheist" or "not a religious person" increased from 36 to 54 per cent.

These results are contained in a WIN-Gallup International poll on religious beliefs, conducted in 57 countries (not including New Zealand).

Ghana (with 96 per cent of the population saying they are religious) was the most religious country and China (14 per cent) the least religious.

A spokesman for the Catholic Communications Office said faith was not a "numbers game". He said the latest survey contrasted sharply with last year's census in the Irish Republic, which found that 84 per cent described themselves as Catholic, and just 5 per cent said they had no religion.

Although Irish Mass attendances remain among the highest in Europe, a survey published last February by the Association of Catholic Priests showed that just 35 per cent of all Catholics now attend Mass at least once a week while 47 per cent go to Mass less than once a month.

David Quinn, a staunch defender of the faith who heads the Iona Institute, said the WIN-Gallup International findings indicated a significant amount of hostility towards institutional religion. He said this and other polls had found that a quarter of those surveyed "would be happy if the Church vanished from Ireland completely."

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, who has previously warned that the Irish Church is in crisis, responded: "The Catholic Church cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members."

Sources:

WIN-Gallup International

The Independent

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