France is to allow the resumption of religious gatherings after a two-month hiatus caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, but worshippers will have to wear face masks, the French interior ministry announced.

The ministry said late on Friday that it would issue a decree setting out the new rules for religious gatherings.

Under the decree, a ban on gatherings imposed in March, as part of government efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, would be rescinded. But collective worship would have to observe conditions, including the wearing of masks, a distance of at least one metre between worshippers and hand-washing, the ministry said in a statement.

The French government relaxed some of its lockdown restrictions earlier this month, but did not ease the ban on collective worship. That prompted complaints from faith groups, which said they were being treated unfairly.

The ministry statement said it expected worship to resume from the start of June, but that in some cases faith groups could worship together once the new rules were published, which it said would be “in the coming hours.”

Muslims — who make up around 9% of France’s population, according to a 2017 report by the Pew Research Center — are this weekend celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the holy Muslim month of fasting.

Source: France 24

Theme: The Dialectics Between Jerusalem & Emmaus: The Courage to Move on With Life. Ste Anne’s Parish, Salem MA: Catechesis, Third Sunday of Easter
“We Had Hoped that He will be the One to Liberate Israel” (Luke 24:21)

Dear Holy People of God,

Jesus Christ is Risen, Alleluia! I would like to reflect with you this Sunday on the two cities, Emmaus and Jerusalem, in terms of their significance for us today. And what is this significance? The Courage to Move on with Life!

1. Today’s Gospel text offers the opportunity to walk with the Lord to Emmaus. St Luke gives us very interesting details about the journey of these two disciples on the way to Emmaus. I find it interesting that though located just seven miles from Jerusalem, Biblical scholars are still unable till date to locate the present-day site of Emmaus. That itself is spiritually very symbolic, for it means that Emmaus is the unknown destination that captures the uncertainties of human existence. Emmaus is the route of existential and pragmatic blindness. It symbolizes the human search for meaning, for the purpose of life: “We had hoped that he (Jesus) will be the one that will liberate Israel,” the two disciples say to the Risen Christ who remains unrecognizable to them. Emmaus is the point in which with my back against the wall, I set out in search of possible new solutions.
2. “We had hoped….” These words offer us the hidden word of Emmaus: A journey of dashed hopes. How often do we feel our hopes dashed? The disciples had just been in Jerusalem, the place of certainty. They had accompanied their Master to the City of David, that is, Jerusalem, the political and religious capital of Israel, expecting there their Master’s ultimate triumph over the forces of oppression over Israel, specifically, Roman power. And yet, like a horrible dream, Good Friday happened. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem?” (Luke 24:18), – the disciples ask the unidentifiable Risen Jesus. The disciples were still in a state of shock that Jesus, the one who had power to raise Lazarus from death, the one who had performed so many miracles, could not help himself. He had died a shameful death on the Cross of Calvary. Thus, Jerusalem, the place of hope and ultimate triumph over servitude, oppression and exploitation, had suddenly become a place of despair and hopelessness.
3. Hence, the two locations are very spiritually significant: Jerusalem, the place they were leaving behind, and Emmaus, the place they were heading to. How often do we feel the need to leave things behind, to put certain happenings behind us? We can no longer withstand them. Thinking about them takes the energy away from us. We do not want to remain with that thing that happened or that event. We do not want to keep going back there, because the thought of it elicits memories we would rather not have. That is Jerusalem, the place we no longer want to be. Yes, it is true that there had been some good things, some good times, some beautiful times, but how it all turned out is not what I had expected. Hence, I’d rather move on. To remain at that point, to remain in Jerusalem, is killing me in the inside! I can’t take it anymore. I am suffocating. I just got to move, to leave this place, to leave this person. I might not know where I am going to; I might not know where I will pass this night; I might not know how I will pay the mortgage; I might not know whom I will meet on the other side; I might not even be sure if I will get to the other side, but being here, in Jerusalem, is no longer an option for me. Jerusalem is death. It has only horrible memories to offer me. It is the place of betrayal. I trusted in this friend, he betrayed me. I gave her my love, she betrayed me. I took him into my inner circle as a confidant, shared the secrets of my life with him, and he turned around and used those secrets against me! I loved her. Married her. Placed all together. Hoped for a life together. All of a sudden, I got a divorce notice! I lost everything I had ever worked for! I did all I could for these kids or this kid, sacrificed my life’s savings to see them through college. And yet, no sense of appreciation. Thoughts of all I have sacrificed is killing me in the inside. If I continue to be in this place, my head will explode. I got to go, even if I do not know where I am going to. I must leave Jerusalem, even if I am unsure of the next bus stop. I can’t stand the pain, which is killing me many times over, before my real death.
4. I do not know if I am speaking to you, but my own experiences of life have presented me with a thousand moments of Jerusalem! I have had friends that have stood by me, friends whose company I continue to cherish. I have had moments that I wanted no end to; events that I never felt should cease to be. And I can go on. Life has been good. But to tell you the truth, and I owe you the truth, more so as your spiritual leader, life has not all been rosy. There have been friends whom I trusted and confided in that have betrayed me. There have been companions that I felt we were on the same page, people I placed so much faith in, gave all of myself to, stood by them, made consequential sacrifices for them, risked all I could for them, only to discover that what I had hoped for, – like the hope of Cleopas and his friend in today’s Gospel text, – was not to be. How could he do that to me? How could she do that to me? How could they do that to me? It is hard when love is betrayed.
5. But with time, I have learnt what the Danish Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard captured in his celebrated maxim, that is, that life must be lived forward but understood backward. I can either choose to remain in the pain and despair of Jerusalem, or seek for a new lease for my life in Emmaus, even if unsure of where Emmaus is. It has been better, in the final analysis, to move on. It is not easy, because one gets trapped in the known. There is security in the known. But the disciples on the way to Emmaus show us that as hard as it might be, there is value in letting sleeping dogs lie, there is a value in burying the hatchet, there is value in moving on. How so? Because Emmaus is the place of encounter with the Risen Lord and with the Risen Lord comes new energy, a new vigor, not to escape the challenges of life, but to face them head on, learning from them, and bringing out the new from the old.
6. Emmaus teaches us that the Risen Lord enters the story when the story has hit rock bottom. Emmaus teaches us that movement, the readiness to leave behind, is the prerequisite for new energy, for a new lease on life. We cannot simultaneously be in Jerusalem and at Emmaus. There has to a “seven-mile” movement, for faith comes from movement: Abraham leaving the land of Ur to Canaan; Moses, leaving Pharaoh’s Palace to the Desert; Simon, Andrew, James and John, leaving Wall Street for the itinerant preacher who had no way to lay his head; Matthew abandoning the IRS for the same preacher, and so on. There is always a movement in order to be ready for prime time, in order to be ready for the next level that God has in store for you. The question is, do you have the courage to make the move? Greek philosophy had a sense of the value of movement in order to get to the next level: Katabatic movement, that is, movement from the One (that is, God), and Anabatic movement, that is, movement to the One (that is, God) – (Plotinus, Enneads).
7. Emmaus teaches us that you cannot combine despair and hope, and that running away from despair, leaving frustration behind, is the doorway to hope, to the burning of heart – a symbol of reinvigoration. It is only after we have had the courage to leave behind the pain, the feeling of frustration, of agony, and of embarking on the unknown journey, that is, of making the leap to faith, the darkness of faith, the unknown of faith, of the “suspension of the ethical” – as Kierkegaard writes in Fear and Trembling, that the Risen Lord comes to give us back all that we had thought was lost, that is, the gift of the Risen Lord himself, the hope, energy and vitality and all that the Risen Lord brings into our lives, the light at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining behind the dark cloud, for the present and the future, Amen!

(Fr Maurice Agbaw-Ebai)

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, has announced that the holy fasting month of Ramadan will start Friday, as Muslims worldwide face unprecedented restrictions to counter coronavirus.

“Based on the sighting of the new month’s moon … it has been decided that Friday is the start of the month of Ramadan,” the royal court said Thursday in a statement cited by the SPA news agency.

King Salman said he is saddened that Muslims cannot pray at mosques because of coronavirus restrictions.

“I am pained that the holy month arrives amid circumstances that make us unable to perform group prayers and Taraweeh — special Ramadan night prayers — at mosques due to precautionary measures to protect the peoples’ lives and health in combating the coronavirus pandemic,” the king said in a statement cited by SPA.

Observant Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk during Ramadan and gather with family to break the fast in the evening.

It is also a month of prayers during which Muslims traditionally converge in large numbers at mosques, especially at night.

But due to the coronavirus, almost all Muslim majority countries have closed mosques and asked people to pray at home in addition to imposing curfews to limit the spread of the deadly virus.

In Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sanaa noted that Ramadan comes as the country struggles with war and affliction.

“People across Yemen will mark Islam’s holy month this year amid ongoing conflict, seasonal diseases, floods and rising prices, in a country where the economic situation doesn’t allow two thirds of the population to access or afford enough food,” the ICRC said in a statement.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen called for the cessation of hostilities in a war which has killed tens of thousands of civilians.

“To the parties to the conflict, I say: be guided by the spirit of the Holy month and put an end to the suffering of your people,” Martin Griffiths said.

“Put down the arms. Release all those who lost their liberty due to the conflict. Open humanitarian corridors. Focus on coordinating your efforts to help your country respond to the pandemic outbreak and other emergency needs,” he added.

Most Arab countries including Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Bahrain have announced Friday as the first day of Ramadan.

Several countries have eased restrictions on the occasion of the holy month with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other countries reducing the duration of the lockdowns.

The UAE said on Thursday it has decided to ease a total lockdown to an eight-hour nightly curfew and also moved to partially reopen malls and markets.

The start date of Ramadan, the holiest Muslim month, is set by both lunar calculations and physical sightings which determine when one month ends and another begins.

Source: AFP

Pope Francis called on Sunday for global solidarity in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, urging the relaxation of international sanctions, debt relief for poor nations and ceasefires in all conflicts.

“May Christ our peace enlighten all who have responsibility in conflicts, that they may have the courage to support the appeal for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world,” the pope said in a live streamed Easter message.

He condemned arms manufacturing and said the pandemic should spur leaders to finally end long-running wars such as that in Syria. He also appealed for help for migrants and others suffering from existing humanitarian conflicts.

The pope also warned the European Union that it risked collapse if it did not agree on how to help the region recover.

The pope’s Easter “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message, delivered from an empty St. Peter’s Basilica instead of to the usual crowd of tens of thousands in the square outside, was by far his most pressing and political since his election in 2013.

Saying the message of this year’s “Easter of solitude” should be a “contagion of hope,” he heaped praise on doctors, nurses and others risking their lives to save others and hailed those working to keep essential services running.

“This is not a time for indifference, because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic,” he said in the message, almost entirely dedicated to the pandemic’s effects on personal and international relations.

“Indifference, self-centredness, division and forgetfulness are not words we want to hear at this time. We want to ban these words forever!” he said.

Easter in the time of Covid-19

Francis expressed sympathy for those not able to bid farewell to their loved ones because of restrictions, for Catholics who have not been able to receive the sacraments and for all those worried about an uncertain future.

“In these weeks, the lives of millions of people have suddenly changed,” he said.

The pope said it was up to politicians and governments, too, to avoid “self-centredness” and take decisive, concerted action to help each others’ populations live through the crisis and eventually resume normal life.

“May international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens,” Francis said.

He also called for debt reductions or forgiveness for the poorest nations, without naming any countries.

Europe’s divisions

Francis expressed particular concern for the future of Europe, saying it was vital that rivalries that existed before World War Two “do not regain force” as a result of the pandemic.

European Union nations are divided over how to help the continent’s economy recover – with Italy and other eurozone members seeking the issuance of euro bonds backed by all, but Germany, the Netherlands and other countries opposed to this.

“The European Union is presently facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world,” Francis said.

That echoed a position by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose country has suffered one of the highest death tolls from Covid-19.

“This is not a time for division,” Francis said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

US President Donald Trump last month predicted “packed churches” on Easter Sunday despite a raging coronavirus death toll. His prediction has proved horribly wrong and highlights the inconsistencies populist leaders who have exploited religion now face.

Easter, Passover and the start of Ramadan all fall in April this year, a coincidence that, in normal times, would see millions of followers of the  world’s major monotheist religions come together in congregational prayers or family gatherings.

But the coronavirus pandemic has physically atomised the faithful, with lockdown measures sparking unprecedented scenes of clergymen conducting Holy Week services in empty churches and cathedrals across the world.

Inside the fire-ravaged Notre Dame cathedral, Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit joined a small group of priests for a Good Friday service minus a congregation commemorating one of Christianity’s holiest days as well as the first anniversary of the inferno that ravaged the Gothic landmark. In a haunting sight inside the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, a handful of Franciscan friars in dark robes and face masks walked through deserted streets under the pelting rain along the Via Dolorosa, believed to be the path Jesus took to his crucifixion.

Saudi Arabia has already suspended the year-round umrah pilgrimage and has asked Muslims to delay their travel bookings to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina for the annual Haj in July and August amid questions over whether the world’s largest religious gathering can go ahead on schedule.

There’s no doubt however that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins around April 23, will be very different this year with the faithful unable to gather together for the iftar evening meal ending the day’s fasting.

Earlier this week, Jews across the world celebrated Passover with Zoom Seders instead of the traditional family gathering of generations around tables. Israeli authorities tightened the existing lockdown measures with a special nighttime curfew on Wednesday to dissuade visits and gatherings. Joining “grandma and grandpa” for a Seder, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett warned in a stark pre-Passover message, “could kill them”.

The deadly Covid-19 virus has killed more than 100,000 people across the world and it’s attacking what French sociologist Emile Durkheim identified as the fundamental purpose of religion: the social phenomenon of drawing communities together in rites and ritual observances. It is also exposing the fault lines between religious faith and science as well as tensions between spiritual and secular powers. The infectiousness of the disease has undermined the congregational nature of religious practices while the failures by some religious groups to follow social distancing has exacerbated the targeting and stereotyping of religious followers.

For populist leaders who have exploited religion to rise to power or maintain their political positions, the crisis “could threaten the foundations of their religious support base as well as their discriminatory policies towards religious or ethnic minorities”, noted James Dorsey, senior fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. This could play out in countries with “segments of ultraconservative religious communities that have different concepts of medicine or a blind faith in God to solve the problem”, explained Dorsey in a phone interview with FRANCE 24.

The health minister who put his faith in the Messiah

Tensions between the temple and laboratory were on stark display in Israel, where Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, a member of the ultra orthodox Ger Hasidic community, told Israeli media last month that he was “sure the messiah would come and save us”.

Litzman and his wife later tested positive for coronavirus, forcing several senior Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of the Mossad intelligence service – into quarantine since they had been in contact with the health minister who put his faith in the messiah.

Critics have called for Litzman’s resignation and dubbed him “Typhoid Miriam” after “Typhoid Mary”, the New York cook who infected dozens at the turn of the 20^th century. Despite his cabinet position, Litzman’s “primary loyalty” was to the rabbinical leaders of his religious sect, Yehoshua Pfeffer, an ultra-Orthodox expert, told AFP. The health minister, Pfeffer noted, had failed to prevent members of his ultra-orthodox sect from conducting religious gatherings while the country had already imposed travel restrictions and banned mass events.

Netanyahu, who relies on the ultra-orthodox support base which makes up about 10 percent of the population, has struggled to enforce the closure of synagogues and yeshivas in places such as Bnei Brak, one of the country’s poorest, most congested cities and centre of the ultra-orthodox community. Members who live in self-imposed segregation have been particularly affected by the pandemic, with health authorities estimating that at least 38 percent of Beni Brak residents may be carrying the coronavirus.

The crisis has threatened Netanyahu’s coalition and its impact could stretch even deeper. The ultra-orthodox community’s disproportionate political influence and exemption from the country’s mandatory military service is a longstanding source of tension, with critics calling for the integration of the Haredim, as the community is called, into modern Israeli life.

The coronavirus crisis, Dorsey suggests, could also threaten the community from within. “In Israel, the ultra-orthodox live in their own world, they don’t listen to the media, they listen to the rabbi’s advice. The pandemic could undermine rabbinical authority on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, when rabbis advised members not to leave Europe and people paid a heavy price for that advice,” noted Dorsey.

Cow urine and #CoronaJihad in India

Political leaders who “seek religious legitimacy, cater to a religious support base or initially discarded scientific advice for expedient political reasons may have met their match in the coronavirus. Science has knocked religion and traditional healing methods out of the ring in the battle between rival approaches towards getting the coronavirus pandemic under control”, Dorsey noted in an April 7 blog, “Stopping COVID-19 in its tracks: Science gets the upper hand”.

In the first two weeks of March, while Italy was already under a nationwide lockdown, supporters of India’s Hindu right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi were hosting “gaumutra parties” across the country, where crowds, urged by saffron-robed religious leaders, gulped cups of cow urine which, they were told, was a miracle cure against the coronavirus.

Although some of the events were held by senior members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian prime minister — who relies on a vast vote base of Hindutva [or “Hinduness”] supporters to win elections — kept silent on the issue.

As the number of coronavirus cases in India mounted, Modi finally took to the airwaves towards the end of March to call on his countrymen to unite in the fight against coronavirus. In a widely hailed address devoid of Hindu supremacist bluster or anti-elitist or anti-Muslim rhetoric, Modi called for solidarity in the face of the deadly pandemic.

But weeks later, as the number of coronavirus cases in India mounted, national unity calls appeared to fall on deaf ears as hate crimes against Muslims spiked following a coronavirus contagion spread from a religious event organised by the Islamic missionary group, Tablighi Jamat.

As #CoronaJihad and #CoronaTerrorism trended on Twitter, with government spokesmen devoting more time to lambasting the Muslim religious gathering than measures to tackle the humanitarian fallout of a hastily-imposed nationwide lockdown, fake news reports began to swell on WhatsApp and other platforms. They, in turn, sparked anti-Muslim attacks across the country with at least one person killed in the eastern state of Jharkhand, according to Indian media reports.

Muslim missionary movement under scrutiny

The Tablighi Jamat movement has come under scrutiny in a number of countries for its role in spreading the coronavirus in Asia.

A missionary movement that originated in India in the 1920s, the Tablighi Jamat has branches across the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe and the US. Given the loose nature of participation and membership, follower estimates are hard to gauge, with the Pew Research Center noting they range from 12 to 80 million across roughly 150 countries.

An apolitical group focused on proselytizing and worship, the Tablighi Jamat is known for its khuruj – or proselytizing tours which see devotees, dressed in simple clothing, traveling for days, sometimes months, while sleeping in mosques and other religious sites. The group’s country branches also hold annual ijtema events, which can gather millions in countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

A February 27 to March 1 ijtema in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, which was attented by more than 16,000 people, including 1,500 foreigners, triggered the epidemic in Malaysia as well as in Brunei, with cases traced to Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. It was followed by a mid-March ijtema near the Pakistani city of Lahore, which resulted in the spread of coronavirus as far afield as Gaza. It was cut short by Pakistani authorities last month.

In India, a gathering at the groups global spiritual centre, or markaz, in the Nizamuddin area of the Indian capital, New Delhi, was shut down on March 22, days before a nationwide lockdown went into effect at midnight, March 25.

While the religious group’s irresponsibility has been widely slammed, experts have noted that in India, a number of mass religious gatherings took place in the same period. These include a Sikh gathering in Punjab — where a single “super spreader” preacher who died of the virus sparked a quarantine of 40,000 people —  and a Hindu temple festival in the southern state of Kerala. None of them sparked the level of public anger faced by the Tablighi Jamat.

Meanwhile, a more controversial breach of Modi’s strict nationwide lockdown occurred in Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanand, the Hindu firebrand chief minister of India’s most populous state, led a ceremony to install a religious icon on a disputed religious site the morning after the lockdown was called. While the Uttar Pradesh police allowed the ceremony to go ahead, a criminal complaint was filed by the state’s police against the editor of the news site, The Wire, for covering the event, sparking condemnations from international press freedom groups.

Adityanath was allowed to perform the ritual with a select gathering of officials and religious supporters, sparking criticisms of elitism and hypocrisy that have also dogged Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan’s VIP prayers and Trump’s Easter prediction  

On March 27, as Turkish Muslims were being urged to pray at home, Erdogan held a select Friday prayer service on the presidential palace grounds that has since been dubbed, “the VIP prayer”.

Photographs of the event was posted on Twitter by Diyanet, the country’s Religious Affairs Directorate that coordinates Turkey’s religious activities and has increasingly turned into a tool of Erdogan’s bid for leadership of the Sunni Muslim world.

Over the past few weeks, Turkey’s Diyanet has come under intense criticism for its failure to stem the spread of the epidemic. Some opposition politicians claim pilgrims returning home were given medication to conceal rising fever readings and allowed to return to their villages, spreading the epidemic to Turkey’s rural areas.

Religion and politics have a long, complicated history with each needing the other at different times in different ways in different places to survive. Blasting the role of the Evangelical movement in US politics in a New York Times column, author Katherine Stewart noted that “Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise.

“In the current crisis,” Stewart wrote, “we are all reaping what that movement has sown.”

Not all religious groups or leaders have been in opposition to science or public health directives. The vast majority of priests, imams and clergymen and women of different faiths across the world have seen no inconsistency in emphasising the importance of saving human life over the need for ritual gatherings.

But that depends on their acceptance of scientific principles and the primacy of the world of facts over issues of faith. The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the dangers of rejecting science for a blind acceptance of faith.

Last month, Trump was optimistic that the US would be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter”. The prospect of “packed churches all over our country”, Trump said, would make it “a beautiful time”. But as residents in his home city, New York, wake up to headlines of mass graves in the heart of the metropolis, Trump’s brash forecast of a beautiful Easter with packed churches is unlikely to be forgotten in some quarters, or forgiven in the spirit of the teachings of the risen Christ.

Culled from France 24