Leaders of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) emphasised that they would champion vulnerable communities and work towards immigration reform.

"As the successors of the Apostles and vicars of Christ in our dioceses, we never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel" said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the conference. "We proclaim it in and out of season."

Commitment to human dignity

Broglio, who also leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, said that Catholic teachings on human dignity encompass all stages of life. "Human dignity should be protected from womb to tomb" he stated.

He stressed that the bishops would work to "defend and lift up the poor" and to "encourage immigration reform, while we continue to care for those in need who cross our borders".

The archbishop clarified that the conference "certainly does not encourage illegal immigration" and reminded attendees of their responsibility to see Christ in "the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, stranger or the sick".

Concerns on mass deportations

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the USCCB's migration committee, spoke on the potential for mass deportations under Trump's administration. Seitz said the conference would "raise our voice loudly" if fundamental protections for migrants were threatened, calling it a "test for our nation" regarding its commitment to human rights.

"We will raise our voice loudly if those basic protections for people that have been a part of our country from its very beginning are not being respected" Seitz said. He emphasised that the church's role includes advocating for both legal and human rights.

Conscience and the Military

Broglio also addressed concerns about potential military involvement in deportation efforts. While military personnel typically cannot object to individual policies or actions, Broglio noted that "no one can be obliged to go against his or her conscience".

He added that military chaplains would support personnel in navigating ethical conflicts within the constraints of military service.

Looking forward, Broglio noted economic considerations around potential mass deportations, suggesting that filling open jobs could be a more pragmatic approach.

Source

• RNS

The rights groups, many of them Saudi and Egyptian, said they were "gravely fearful for the lives of hundreds of prisoners threatened with imminent execution" on the charges.

"These men are living in a state of terror since the number of executions for such offences has spiked in the past two months," said the statement signed by 31 organisations, including the London-based Saudi rights group ALQST and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Since May, Saudi Arabia has executed 42 people on drug-related charges, compared to just two in 2023, according to a tally compiled by AFP based on official data.

Read More

Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the Taliban's morality laws, which severely limit women's roles in society, are a form of systematic gender persecution.

Speaking to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Türk criticised new rules that ban women's voices in public and enforce strict dress codes, including mandatory full-body coverings.

"I shudder to think what is next for the women and girls of Afghanistan" Türk said.

The Taliban, who regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, have systematically continued the repression of Afghan women. They have excluded women from public life, education and most forms of employment.

Despite their initial promises of a more moderate rule, the regime has since prohibited girls from attending school beyond primary level and restricted women's access to work and healthcare unless accompanied by a male guardian. Public punishments for not adhering to the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic dress codes have also been reported.

"I want to make clear my abhorrence of these latest measures which include forbidding even eye contact between women and men who are not related and imposing mandatory covering for women from head to toe, including their faces" Türk told the council members.

Institutionalising gender discrimination

The Taliban have yet to respond to the UN's statements. However their latest actions, including banning women's voices from public broadcast and tightening restrictions on travel, have drawn widespread international criticism. The Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has enforced these rules which further isolate Afghanistan from the global community.

Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, also addressed the council. He warned that these policies are institutionalising gender discrimination and could have long-lasting impacts on Afghan society.

Bennett said he had talked to Afghans in several provinces. They had described a visible increase in the presence of morality inspectors and tightening restrictions, particularly on people's freedom of movement.

The UN has called for greater humanitarian assistance, with 24 million Afghans currently in need of aid. Yet the Taliban's policies, along with international sanctions, have hindered the flow of much-needed support.

Sources

AP News

International human rights state the maximum stay in solitary confinement is 15 days.

Extreme risk

Set up in 2019 in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack, PERU has just been inspected for the first time.

The unit houses prisoners considered by Corrections to present a high and ongoing level of risk. Some pose a very high risk of violence. Some are involved in transnational organised crime.

When the Office of the Inspectorate visited the prison in July 2023, there were 13 people being managed in the prison unit.

Chief Inspector Janis Adair acknowledges additional measures are necessary to manage these prisoners safely.

"However despite this we found conditions in the PERU to be overly and unnecessarily restrictive."

Inspection findings

The Inspectorate found that the 13 men staying in the unit had spent an average 632 days there.

Five had been there for over 900 days.

Some have been convicted of serious offending while others are still on remand.

They have limited interactions with staff. They sometimes interact with chaplaincy, religious, educational and psychological services.

"None of the men were mixing with any other prisoners and there were very few interventions that offered meaningful human interaction or constructive activities.

"Some of the men had spent months or years in these conditions which likely amounted to prolonged solitary confinement" says Adair.

The inspection report says many prisoners had no idea what they might be able to do - or if there was even an option - to progress out of the PERU and into a less restrictive regime.

The report notes prisoners felt psychologically unsafe, suffered severe anxiety, hypervigilance and increased risk of self-harm. Clinicians "felt ethically compromised" by the regime.

Prison within a prison

Lawyer Emma Priest, who represents some of the men and is a member of the Parole and Prisoner Rights Committee, says PERU is a "super-maxi" unit.

It's a "prison within a prison" she says.

The men are confined to a nine square-metre cell with access to a small yard attached. Priest says the yard has little sunlight or opportunity for meaningful physical activity.

"Rehabilitation services are extremely limited. Only non-contact visits are permitted. It is causing enormous psychological harm" she says.

Change needed

Adair's report arrived at 12 findings including placement decisions and pathways, health and wellbeing, and segregation directions.

She expects Corrections to take steps to offer more meaningful human interaction and constructive activities to these men.

She says it should implement a robust assurance framework to provide safeguards to the PERU decision-makers and the men.

Commissioner of Custodial Services at Corrections, Leigh Marsh, says PERU inmates are of the highest risk, with convictions for terrorism and violent extremism he says.

While Marsh acknowledges PERU has challenges, he is confident staff have the right skills to run it.

Corrections says thes unit. findings will inform the work programme to ensure continuous improvement in the PERU unit.

Source

• Newsroom
• ODT

Extremely expensive

Last Thursday human rights organisation Lao Hamutuk told Union of Catholic Asian (UCA) News that the Government's budgeted US$12 million is out of line with the country's extreme poverty.

Among the provisions within the budget is an altar costing US$1 million.

A researcher at the Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis is concerned about the imbalance between the amount budgeted for the papal visit and the amount budgeted for food production.

Far from the millions the Government has set aside for the two-days Francis will spend in East Timor, it has earmarked only US$4.7 million to increase food production the researcher says.

Such a "really low" budget will contribute almost nothing to increasing East Timor's food production sustainability or to agricultural development.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation is concerned about the Southeast Asian country.

It says East Timor is facing major challenges in terms of food security.

In addition, the United Nations organisation says high inflation and weather changes have reduced grain production.

Right now, about 364,000 people (27 percent of the population) are currently suffering from acute food insecurity.

Families evicted

The location chosen for the papal Mass is also garnering criticism.

It will be held in Tasi-Tolu, an open area on the coast about eight kilometres from Dili - East Timor's capital city.

To create the space needed for the Mass, the Government has seized 23 hectares of land.

Human rights activists say the confiscation will displace the 185 families who live there.

A Land Network coordinator says the Government hasn't offered the families - who are all poor - any alternatives.

"They are still waiting for compensation" the coordinator told UCA News.

" The date of their eviction is constantly changing. The lives of these families are uncertain at the moment, they don't know where to go."

Catholic majority

Like the Philippines, East Timor has a Christian majority.

Almost 98 per cent of the population is Catholic.

About 700,000 of East Timor's 1.3 million population are expected to attend the papal Mass.

Source

• katholisch.de

The UN Human Rights Council has reported the human rights situation in West Papua has deteriorated, citing reports of torture and mass displacement.

"We know the violence that West Papuans are having to endure is getting increasingly worse," Green Party spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said at a Morning Star flag raising ceremony in Auckland on Friday. Read more

Nicaragua's government declared Pope Francis's Society of Jesus (Jesuit) order illegal on Wednesday.

All the Jesuits' property and assets were confiscated. The government claims that's because the Jesuits had failed to comply with tax laws.

On Wednesday, the San Salvador-based Jesuit Province of Central America which oversees the Jesuit order in Nicaragua decried the expulsion.

The Nicaraguan decree "cancelled the [Jesuits] legal status" and allowed the government to seize the Jesuits' "immovable and movable property," they announced.

The decision was made "without evidence that the administrative procedures established by law had been carried out."

Nor did the decree allow "the opportunity for a legitimate defence on the part of the Jesuits and without an impartial body that judges and stops these totally unjustified and arbitrary abuses of authority."

Crimes against humanity

The Jesuits say that the decree is a fresh act of "aggression" against the Society of Jesus.

It is "framed in a national context of systematic repression classified as ‘crimes against humanity' by the group of experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua formed by the United Nations.

The government's actions are aimed at "the full establishment of a totalitarian regime" the Jesuits say.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, Nicaragua's Vice President, have failed to "at least being honest with these facts."

The Jesuits say the president and vice president are responsible for impeding an independent and neutral judiciary, which would allow it "to take measures to stop, reverse and sanction" the unjust actions that have been taken.

Their statement calls on the couple to "cease the repression" and seek "a rational solution in which truth, dialogue, justice, respect for human rights and for the rule of law prevail."

It also asks the Ortega government to respect the "freedom and total integrity" of the Jesuits and their collaborators.

Thousands of Nicaraguan victims are "waiting for justice and the repair of the damage that the current Nicaraguan government is causing," the Jesuits say.

At least 26 universities have been closed and their assets seized by the government since December 2021. The most recent occurred two weeks ago.

Catholic tension

Tensions with the Catholic Church in the country have escalated.

Diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed in April when Nicaragua ousted the Vatican's envoy. The Holy See subsequently formally closed its embassy.

Last year, two orders of nuns were expelled.

In August 2022, Nicaraguan authorities arrested Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was among the Church's most outspoken critics of the Ortega regime.

He was charged with treason and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Nicaragua has also outlawed or closed over 3,000 civic groups and NGOs including the Red Cross.

Thousands of Nicaraguans have fled since the regime's violent crackdown on the 2018 protests.

Defiant thanks

The Jesuits say they're grateful for the many expressions of support and solidarity they have received "in the face of these growing outrages."

Source

• Crux Now

He happens to be Catholic.

So why did Abbott put razor wire and a floating barrier in the Rio Grande? Do migrant children not have heartbeats?

There is an angry selectivity when it comes to life issues.

Abortion is certainly a tragic reality in too many places in the world.

Without denying the ability of the polity to allow or disallow abortion legally, the better course is to make it unnecessary.

To respect life means just that: the unborn, yes, and the elderly and the stranger, the migrant, and the homeless individual. Respect life includes the "other," no matter how defined — by gender, skin colour, language, ethnicity — the list is endless.

Yet too many so-called pro-life advocates demonstrate an abject denial of others' right to life.

The task of religion is to expand the conversation, model good behaviour and call out the frauds.

On abortion, for example, the leading candidates in the United States' presidential race exhibit distinct approaches to the question. One has said women who suffer abortion should be legally charged; the other supports legalized abortion.

We could call the first a "pro-lifer," but does he in fact respect life?

He has bragged about molesting a woman and has been found guilty of sexual assault. He currently faces 91 felony counts in four different jurisdictions.

He does not pay his own legal bills, including those from one of his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani. (He complained that Giuliani lost. Recall his comments about the former Vietnam POW, Sen. John McCain.)

Since the federal right to abortion was overturned by a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, the other candidate has worked to circumvent the resulting patchwork of state laws.

The complicating factor is his Catholicism, and it is hard to reconcile his position.

Still, he seems to be a decent man. While in the U.S. Congress, he took the train home each night to Delaware. He is said to call his children every day.

So, what to do? The U.S. bishops say not to vote on any candidate because of one position on one issue.

Abortion is important, and Catholic opposition is well known. But what happens when you expand the conversation? What happens when you look at other life issues, and how they fare inside the Catholic Church?

The church has stepped up to house immigrants, and there are some places for unwanted children. But here and there is not everywhere.

Too many questions linger.

Does the pastor pay women employees on the same scale as the men? Or are women workers part-timers without benefits or vacation pay? Does he snicker at the thought of ordaining women deacons? Is he capable of informed discussion? Is he an autocrat, a dictator?

Did the bishop move the pederasts, and cover up his — and their — tracks?

Has he drained diocesan bank accounts to fight rather than settle with the victims? Does he tweet against Pope Francis? Has he paid lip service to the Synod on Synodality? Does he answer letters of complaint?

These are real questions for the Catholic Church, as it continues to bleed money and adherents while it seems to focus only on abortion.

If clerics preach against abortion, they must also preach against the razor wire. If they preach about the value of life, they must respect the people of the church.

Immigration? The death penalty? Workers' rights?

Too many clerics have replaced the Gospel with their personal politics. Until they demonstrate respect for all life, they will continue to be ignored.

• Phyllis Zagano is an American author and academic. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons.
• First published in Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

Free To Be Church Trust, on behalf of several religious groups, say restrictions under the red traffic light setting during the pandemic, and the Government's failure to review them sooner, was a breach of human rights.

Their case has been before the Court of Appeal in Wellington this week, a year after their initial bid in the High Court fell short.

The group have argued the decision to continue restrictions on gatherings after February 2022 was not "demonstrably justified", saying the policy needed a "recalibration" when public health information advanced after the arrival of the Omicron variant. Read more

Yet in many, rents keep going up.

While rent hikes can reflect the costs landlords face, there are standards that must be maintained, according to Wellington Property Investors Association president Peter Ambrose.

Passing those costs onto tenants was how landlords kept their rentals to a high standard, he explains. Conversely, landlords also need to do whatever maintenance is required.

It's unacceptable for landlords to rent properties which should not be lived in, Ambrose says. In fact, maintaining them was ultimately a basic human right.

Successive governments have failed New Zealand's renters, the Green Party says.

It has recently conducted a survey which confirms New Zealand 2023 is not a good place for many of the country's 1.4 million renters.

If it were part of the next Government, the Greens promise a Renters' Rights Bill.

Rental survey findings

Many landlords are quick to hike rents but slow to fix homes, the Green Party survey found. Renters are living in damp, mouldy houses, coping with rent rises and accepting insecure tenancies.

In Wellington, one in five renting households pay over 50 percent of their weekly income on rent, the Greens discovered.

One tenant told RNZ the state of one Wellington house she rented was so bad she and her partner moved out.

Parts of the house were unstable, damaged and damp.

Among the long list of problems she mentioned were the fireplace with cracks so big you could fit your fingers in them, and a deck that was falling apart.

Complaints dismissed

The woman who spoke to RNZ said she informed her landlord the bedroom leaked.

The landlord decided to do nothing as the leak happened only intermittently. Ditto to problems with the neglected bathroom which had mushrooms growing in it. A variety of mushrooms.

Landlords with multiple properties make big profits, the woman said. In her view, they should treat their rentals like a business and invest.

For some of them "it's quite apparent that rather than investing in repairing or maintaining these properties, they're just kind of degrading them," she added.

Tenants health at risk

The Government's new Healthy Homes Standards for heating, insulation and ventilation came into effect in July 2021.

Landlords with existing tenancies, however, needn't comply until 2025. Negligent landlords ignoring evidence of substandard accommodation are driving many tenants out of their rentals.

The mental health issues that follow are manifold.

One tenant says he is offered only annual leases. At renewal, there's a rent increase. He can't afford any more of those, he says. If there are, he'll be driven to return to his family home.

Then there's the fear a landlord won't renew a lease. This leads to tenants tiptoeing around their homes, so there's no "just cause" to be kicked out.

"That can be extremely anxiety-inducing and debilitating, and I feel quite powerless at the end of the lease cycle," the tenant says.

Futhermore, few landlords allow pets, which adds stress to pet owners, he says.

Source

• RNZ

Addressing a UN expert group in Geneva the commission's Kaitahutahu Rangatahi, Waimihia Maniapoto-Love said there have been periods of good progress towards tino rangatiratanga alongside periods of inactivity.

The Government, the National Iwi Chairs Forum and the commission jointly set about developing a national action plan to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People - or UNDRIP, in 2019. Read more

The most public of the targets was Msgr Jeffrey Burrill, who was general secretary for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops when he was outed in such a sting a couple of years ago.

This story reveals an ongoing problem for both priests and bishops.

Progressive Catholics were uncomfortable with the revelations. Michael Sean Winters (National Catholic Reporter) said the sting was "creepy." James Martin SJ (America) noted on Twitter that it targeted gay priests rather than all the unchaste people who work for the Church.

Both observations are true, but is there anything more to say about the ethics of the sting itself?

Conservatives defended the sting on moral grounds. But their moral analyses were largely consequentialist.

R. R. Reno, the editor of First Things, emphasized the importance of promoting clerical sexual integrity. The stings provide "useful and important information." He analogized the sting to reporting a drunk priest you see stumbling out of a bar.

Maybe—but only if you put a hidden camera monitored by the ecclesial vice squad at every bar within a hundred miles of his rectory.

Francis X. Maier, the former speechwriter for Archbishop Charles Chaput, took a similarly consequentialist stance, fuming over the priests' violation of their promise to remain celibate.

He also noted that the means used to detect the priests were not against the law and observed that, in any case, everyone is invading other people's digital privacy these days. This was ironic, given Maier's work as a pro-life activist.

Treating priests as targets, not as fellow Christians

The fact that certain procedures are legal doesn't make them moral. And the fact that a practice is rampant doesn't mean that it is fit for Catholics. And as Reno surely would attest in other circumstances, we need to pay attention to the morality of the means, not just the morality of the ends we seek.

So the question is this: Is it moral to spend millions of dollars to turn peoples' cell-phone data into a tracking device for wayward clerics?

One problem is the money spent on this surveillance project.

Would not it have been better to devote this money to the corporal works of mercy? A defender could respond that the sting is a spiritual work of mercy, in that it permits the Church to identify and admonish the sinner. But does such an argument really work?

In the Catholic tradition, admonishing a sinner presupposes a face-to-face relationship between the admonisher and the admonished, a relationship that is premised on equality in Christ.

But the sting treats the unnamed people at the end of the data like targets, not like brothers in Christ. The process does not admit of equality, just as there can be no equality between a hunter and his prey.

Maier claims that priests who break their promises of celibacy don't have a right to privacy.

This claim is distorted, both morally and theologically. Morally, it is putting the cart before the horse. You can only tell who's breaking those promises by violating that right.

Theologically, the Church recognized some right to privacy for sinners by abandoning the requirement for public atonement in the fourth century.

Moral danger for all

The right to privacy may sometimes be exaggerated, and it can certainly be abused. But that doesn't mean it is not real.

Freedom from the constant, prying eyes of other people is essential to developing and maintaining a sense of selfhood.

If we do not recognize the claim that other people have to be free of our scrutiny, then we treat them as objects for study, manipulation, and destruction—not as human beings equal in dignity to ourselves.

The sting distorts the relationship between the Catholics who fund and run it and the priests who fall within its ambit — which was potentially all priests. The moral danger to the self-appointed members of the purity committee is substantial.

How does it affect their own relationship to the Church to see its priests as guilty of sexual sin until proven innocent?

How does it affect their relationship with Christ to see themselves not as fellow sinners needing redemption (even if one's own sins are of a different sort), but as self-appointed police officers and judges?

There is also a moral danger to the priests, and to those who might wish to become priests.

• Will the fact that they live their lives in a context of pervasive suspicion and scrutiny, including electronic scrutiny, crush their spirits and erode their freedom in Christ?
• How will such priests interact with parishioners?
• Will they see them as fellow sinners in need of redemption, or as potential spies?
• How will they structure their lives?
• Will this lead them to avoid some sins (especially sexual ones) more than others (say, gluttony and waste)?
• Will an anxious obsession with not being suspected of committing sexual sin make them more likely to ignore sins of omission in their lives, including the duty to reach out to those at the margins?

The bishops need to act decisively. If they do not, their priests will become weapons and targets in the competing Panopticons of the culture wars. After all, if they put their minds to it, progressives can track and embarrass priests as easily as conservatives.

Unreasonable searches affect everyone - not just the guilty

The bishops' first task is distinguishing morally legitimate from morally illegitimate ways of obtaining compromising information.

Stumbling upon a priest on Grindr is different from de-anonymizing data.

Their second task will be deciding how to handle illegitimately obtained information. Here, in my view, is where the Church might helpfully borrow from the state.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures. It recognizes that unreasonable searches affect everyone—not just the guilty. But without enforcement, such a prohibition is no more than a paper tiger.

Consequently, the provision is interpreted as preventing the government from introducing evidence obtained directly or indirectly from such a search into a criminal trial. The government is thereby disincentivised from conducting searches without a warrant, except in certain extreme circumstances.

The bishops should adopt similar disincentives for lay sleuths.

They should strongly condemn any violation of priestly privacy, and they should declare that they will not allow priests whose activities were discovered in an unethical manner to be targeted or punished.

The only exception, in my view, should be activities involving minors.

Some might say that this approach goes too easy on priests who break their promises of celibacy.

I disagree—just as I disagree with those who say the Fourth Amendment goes too easy on those who commit crimes.

The point of the Fourth Amendment is not to say that committing crimes is okay. It is to say that in using its considerable power to chase criminals, the government must observe reasonable limits.

If that is what members of a state bound together by earthly ties owe one another, consider how much stronger the obligations are among members of the body of Christ.

• Cathleen Kaveny teaches law and theology at Boston College.
• Published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

A world first, the conference is driven by the Australian Catholic University with support from the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

New Zealanders, however, are still invited to register and listen in over Zoom.

Sources in New Zealand expressed surprise there were no New Zealand representatives on the conference's list of experts, particularly given indigenous people are a significant part of the conference focus.

"The omission of Maori is puzzling," a Church official told CathNews.

The ACU and Vatican Dicastery's invitation to participate describes the process as "Synodal".

"Experience a synodal process of storytelling, reflection, practical theology and dialogue in preparation for the 2023 Federation of Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Oceania General Assembly," reads the invitation.

However, Secreariat Advisor Kaupapa Maori to the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, Deacon Danny Karatea-Goddard, Ngati Maniapoto, Ngapuhi, Te Kapotai, Te Honihoni, Ngati Whatua, Ngati Hine, is disappointed that Maori have been ignored.

"Given our whakapapa connection to Te Moananui a Kiwa, o Hawaikinui (the great Ocean of Kiwa and South East Asia) there is always an opportunity for the Maori voice to be present and to offer our indigenous perspective," he told CathNews.

Karatea-Goddard says the ability of Maori to understand, record and forecast weather and climate has been an important factor in responding to weather and climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand.

He says responding to weather and climate change is essential not only for our survival but for all life around us.

"In our creation narrative, all-natural elements around us are senior to humanity and we are able to name the genealogical names that connect us," he said.

"Like our Oceanic northern kin, with whom we have never lost whakapapa connections to, it is through, over the centuries, interacting with the local environments that Maori have developed a wealth of environmental knowledge, with the lessons being learned having become incorporated into traditional and modern practices of agriculture, fishing, medicine, education and conservation.

"Online forums enable all indigenous to share their genius, reclaim our commonalities always in the spirit of care of creation and our unique indigenous place in that narrative and all its good works."

The conference is being held in preparation for the General Assembly of the Federation of Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO).

The conference format will be framed by processes of storytelling, reflection and theological dialogue, akin to cultural experiences of Talanoa or yarning-circle style conversations.

Practical theologians from within Oceania will share their deep understanding of the gifts Oceania has received.

According to the conference outline, the conference's purpose is to listen to diverse voices of creation and cultures of people in Oceania.

It seeks to offer a platform to share stories and amplify vulnerable voices, which can be heard by decision-makers at local, regional and global levels both in and outside the church and encourage a synodal dialogue generating commitment from the FCBCO member countries.

The ACU told CathNews Monday that First Nation voices of Pacific islands are deliberately being held up at the conference, and there will be more focus on Maori in four years time when the FCBCO conference is held in Australia.

FCBCO member countries include American Samoa, Cook Islands, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Marian Island, Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and expert contributors to the conference from Fiji, Tonga, Niue and Australia.

The FCBCO meets every four years. Their next assembly will be held in the Archdiocese of Suva, Fiji, from February 5-10, 2023.

Sources

• Media Release ACU
• ACU
• GC Catholic

The group was reacting to the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review into Indonesia report in Geneva last week.

"Eight countries raised issues about human rights in West Papua and it is good to see our government among them," said Catherine Delahunty, spokesperson for West Papua Action Aotearoa, in a statement. Read more

He was aiming to further solidify his outreach to the Muslim community and to offer support to Bahrain's small Christian minority.

Pope Francis and the King

Francis's first official engagement was a courtesy visit to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the Sakhir Royal Palace. There he was welcomed in an official ceremony.

Human Rights

Human rights and Bahrain's constitution were particular issues Francis raised with the King.

He cited the Bahraini constitution and urged "equal dignity and equal opportunities... for each group and for every individual". (In Bahrain Shias have fewer rights than Sunnis.)

This is "so that fundamental human rights are not violated but promoted", he said.

Religious freedom must be "complete and not limited to freedom of worship.

"I am thinking in particular of the right to life, of the need to always guarantee it, even with regard to those who are punished."

At present, 26 people are on death row in Bahrain. The only thing standing between them and their execution is the king's approval.

Francis also called for "humane working conditions" and condemned forced labour in neighbouring Qatar, where the World Cup will begin later this month.

"Men and women" must never be "reduced instead to a mere means of producing wealth," Francis said.

Joining forces for peace

Peace can be achieved only by moving beyond past conflicts, he said.

Instead, we need to join forces to promote the common good, Francis explained when he met Bahrain's Muslim Council of Elders on Friday.

This means getting to know one another, putting "a future of fraternity ahead of a past of antagonism ... the name of the One who is the source of peace."

The great religious traditions "must be the heart that unites the members of the body, the soul that gives hope and life to its highest aspirations."

Prior to the meeting, Francis delivered one of three keynote speeches at the closing session of "Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence".

About 200 figures, leaders and religious representatives from around the world took part in the event.

Among them was was Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt, Ahmed Al-Tayeb.

Like Francis, the Imam delivered a keynote speech. The other was delivered by King Hamad, who was the forum patron.

Francis called on interfaith leaders to be "exemplary models of what we preach, not only in our communities and in our homes - for this is no longer enough - but also before a world now unified and globalised."

As members of the Abrahamic faiths, they must look outside themselves and "speak to the entire human community, to all who dwell on this earth".

Unity in diversity

An ecumenical prayer meeting for peace at Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral was also on Francis's agenda.

Striving for "unity in diversity" will help the Christian community as a whole achieve peace, he told the Christian leaders at the meeting.

Source

• La Croix
• Brussels Times
• Middle East Monitor
• Crux Now
• Crux Now

The research published in Experiences of Workplace Bullying and Harassment in Aotearoa New Zealand showed 61% of disabled workers had been racially harassed in the previous five years, compared to 37% of non-disabled workers.

Nearly 60% of disabled workers had been sexually harassed in the same time period compared to 28% of non-disabled workers.

Meanwhile, 52% had been bullied in the previous 12 months, compared to 17% of non-disabled workers. Read more

To put it bluntly, the vast majority (70 percent) of El Salvador's 590 rivers are swamped with giant amounts of human poo and killer doses of heavy metals.

Treating the fast-dwindling water supplies as a matter of urgency, the bishops have written a statement to the government calling on everyone in the Central American country to stop polluting their precious water resource.

They should consider its necessity for life and treat clean water supplies as a human right.

They bishops statement asks the government to ratify appropriate reforms to El Salvador's freshwater water protection and management measures.

They say much of the pollution poisoning El Salvador's waterways comes from industries - both its own and its neighbours - discharging waste into rivers. It also comes from municipalities that do not have systems to treat wastewater or lack sanitation.

One source they quote is from a National Service of Territorial Studies report, which says only 20 percent of El Salvador's rivers are safe to drink from.

A study on the Cérron Grande, El Salvador's largest body of freshwater, found it to be one of Central America's most contaminated, the bishops say.

The study found high levels of heavy metals, banned insecticides, cyanide and toxic algae.

It also found over 8.5 million pounds (about 3,860,000kg) of faeces is dumped into the river each year, causing algal blooms and eutrophication.

The bishops' statement notes El Salvador's rivers start in neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala - and about 42 mining projects directly threaten the transboundary basins and pollute the waterways.

Ironically, in 2017 El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban metal mining.

Yet arsenic from the mining works at neighbouring Guatamala's Cerro Blanco mining project located just 14 kilometers from El Salvador is polluting several of the country's waterways.

"We make a vehement appeal ...to stop this project; and, we ask the international community, not to allow such a human and environmental disaster," the bishops statement says.

El Salvador has about 2,500 water boards, plus community committees providing over 500,000 families with water. Although theoretically public works, they are regarded as private companies.

The bishops have asked the government for the opportunity to present them with their concerns about the approved law. They hope to urge the Legislative Assembly to ratify constitutional reforms on the human right to water and adequate food, already approved.

"In the name of the people, today we raise our voices to ask for this ratification."

The "General Law of Water Resources'" purpose is to assure basins care, reforestation, guaranteeing water as a human right.

It also establishes a national authority of water resources within the Ministry of the Environment to regulate water quality.

Observers say the work has stalled over who should control the governing body: state agencies only or including representatives of the powerful commercial carbonated beverages, juices, beer and bottled water.

According to The Borgen Project, El Salvador will be uninhabitable in 80 years.

Source

• La Croix
• Image: El Salvador INFO

Some of the human rights violations occurred as recently as 2019.

The report and accompanying database, documents 167 serious human rights violations perpetrated against 91 Christians.

The report's eyewitness interviews are current: human rights NGO Korea Future conducted them between November 2019 and August 2021.

The interviewers heard of 34 people detained in North Korea for possessing religious items, 23 held for having practiced religious activities in China and 21 people seized for religious practice in North Korea itself.

The NGO was told many times of instances where a person was arrested for being in possession of a Bible.

In one case, a young woman was "beaten with a wooden stick until a superior intervened after hearing the victim screaming".

The beating occurred while the woman was in the custody of the North Korean Ministry of State Security Central Command.

Another victim, a woman in her 50s who was a member of an underground church, was beaten so severely in 2019 that she later died from her injuries.

"Where it could be established that detainees had been associated with Christianity, their crime was considered to be ‘political,'" the report says.

These prisoners were then transferred from city or county-level detention centers to provincial or national-level detention centers or internment camps run by the Ministry of State Security.

The report says many North Korean Christians were first exposed to Christianity while in China.

One of those arrested in China for being a Christian says he was deported to North Korea.

There he was investigated for nearly five months and experienced forms of torture as well as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

He was then sentenced to three years in Chongori re-education camp.

The man says he secretly preached the Gospel in North Korea until 2017, when he escaped after learning that a person he had preached to was an informant for the Ministry of State Security.

The human rights report accused the Chinese government of violating the principle of non-refoulement.

This prohibits the repatriation of an individual when there are grounds for believing that they would be at risk of harm upon their return.

Even incarceration and risking cruel punishments do not prevent Christian detainees from their prayer lives, says a former prisoner who was held in a North Korean cell for two months with Christians.

They "would pray in the corner of the cell that was hidden from the CCTV camera … They would escape a beating if their prayers went undetected by the correctional officers, but they would be beaten if they were caught," he says.

"On one occasion when they were caught praying, they were beaten every morning for 20 consecutive days."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Crowdcast

He says the current law covers race and ethnicity, but is silent on disability, religious beliefs or sexual gender or orientation.

About half the complaints to the Human Rights Commission are about racial discrimination, and the other half allege discrimination against disabled people. Read more

The UN experts' statement will probably be made under the guise of demands that the Vatican takes all necessary steps to prevent abuse. It has the hallmarks of an attempt to undermine Catholic doctrine by using the sex abuse scandals, says Catholic commentator Andrea Gagliarducci (pictured).

The UN experts cannot urge a state to adopt procedures or to change its law. Nor can they question how a state is putting into action their proposals, Gagliarducci points out.

He says back in February 2014, a U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child committee report took on the Church's teaching on human sexuality and canon law.

In May that same year, another UN report - from the Convention against Torture - suggested child abuse was torture. Its aim in doing so was to push the Holy See to introduce new measures, Gagliarducci says.

In December 2019, Dutch jurist Maud de Boer-Buquicchio was the U.N. Special Rapporteur on sale and sexual exploitation of children.

While she praised the pope's decision that the pontifical secret would no longer apply in cases of accusations and trials involving abuse of minors or vulnerable persons, she urged the Vatican to "enforce mandatory reporting for all clergy and staff who have knowledge of these heinous acts."

Gagliarducci says the final scope of these statements aims to force the Holy See to change canon law to adapt it to a "human rights protocol".

This protocol would subtly back or mention "gender perspective" and "sexual and reproductive rights" - meaning a push for the "right" to abortion.

He says he has seen a statement from the "experts" in advance of publication in which they refer to a letter addressed to the Holy See in April.

Gagliarducci says they expressed "utmost concern about the numerous allegations around the world of sexual abuse and violence" against children" and the Church's attempts to protect the abusers.

They also complained the Holy See's concordats and agreements with states "limit the ability of the civil authority to question, compel the production of documents, or prosecute people" associated with the Church."

The Holy See should "refrain from obstructive practices and to cooperate fully with the civil, judicial, and law enforcement authorities of the countries concerned."

Two Catholic principles are targeted in the article, Gagliarducci says.

One involves the confessional seal, which prevents priests from reporting the contents of confessions to civil authorities.

The second principle is that of the Holy See's sovereignty.

Gagliarducci says the experts specifically want to see an end to the distinction between the Holy See and the Vatican City State, which ensures the protection of religious freedom. This will enable states to have full jurisdiction over the Church.

The expected letter follows up de Boer-Buquicchio's statement and will be signed by four other special rapporteurs.

Source

• The Catholic Telegraph
• CBCP News
• Image:YouTube