A high-ranking American cardinal has criticized Pope Francis over his recent remarks in Chile, saying the comments had caused “great pain” for victims of sexual abuse.

“It is understandable” that Pope Francis’ comments in Chile on Thursday were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by [the] clergy or any other perpetrator,” US Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is a top adviser to the pontiff, said in a statement.

O’Malley’s rare criticism of the pope on Saturday came two days after Pope Francis defended a Chilean bishop named Juan Barros, who and has now been accused of protecting a pedophile priest close to him.

“There is not a single piece of evidence against him. It is all slander. Is that clear?,” Pope Francis firmly told reporters in Chile who questioned him about Bishop Barros.

Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, Rev. Fernando Karadima, a convicted pedophile.

The Vatican in 2011 found Karadima guilty of abusing teenage boys over many years.

Karadima, however, denies the allegations, and Barros has sided with him.

The enigmatic Barros-Karadima link has for years fascinated people not only in Chile but also in neighboring Argentina, where Pope Francis hails from.

O’Malley’s statement further said, “Words that convey the message ‘if you cannot prove your claims, then you will not be believed’ abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile.”

O’Malley headed a papal commission — the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — that advised the pontiff on how to root out sexual abuse in the Church. The commission’s three-year term ended last month, and its future is not clear.

O’Malley admitted, however, that the Pope “fully recognizes the egregious failures of the Church and its clergy who abused children and the devastating impact those crimes have had on survivors and their loved ones.” He said he could not “address why the Holy Father chose the particular words he used at that time.”

While the Pope has vowed “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse, his efforts have sputtered.

A plan to open a tribunal in the Vatican to judge bishops accused of covering up sexual abuse or mishandling cases never saw the light of day.

The much-touted commission headed by O’Malley was hit by two high-profile defections of lay members who had been victims of abuse.

Source: Presstv

Pope Francis said Monday that the world stood on the “edge” of nuclear war and admitted the situation terrified him.

The Argentine was speaking aboard the papal plane on his way to Chile and Peru, the day after a false missile alert sparked panic in the US state of Hawaii, already on edge over fears of a North Korean attack.

Asked about the threat of nuclear war in the wake of a flurry of nuclear and missile tests since last year in North Korea, the pope said: “I think we are at the very edge.

“I am really afraid of this. One accident is enough to precipitate things,” he told journalists.

The 81-year old, who has often spoken of the dangers of nuclear weapons, presented the press pack aboard his plane with a harrowing photograph taken in 1945 that shows a young Japanese boy carrying his dead brother.

The child, carried on the boy’s back, was killed when the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki.

Francis had written on the back of the image just four words: “The fruit of war”.

“I wanted to reprint and distribute it because an image like this can be more moving than a thousand words. That is why I wanted to share it with you,” he said.

(Source: AFP)

“It was like I was watching a horror movie” is how the bishop of Mamfe diocese in Cameroon’s South West Region described the scene he saw in the village of Kembong village.

Mgr Andrew Nkea had visited the village in the wake of the deaths of four soldiers late December, killed by unknown assailants (although the government claimed they were secessionists). In a retaliatory move, Cameroonian soldiers had incinerated the whole village.

“I saw more than 20 houses burnt down by soldiers and one dead body still lying there, being fed on by dogs and chicken,” said Nkea. Of the village’s 5,000 or so residents, only 30 remained, all huddled in the house of the area’s priest because “they had nowhere else to go.”

The December attack is the latest in an ongoing crisis – pitting Cameroon’s English speakers (who make up 20 percent of Cameroon’s estimated 24 million people) against the Francophone-dominated government – that now risks exploding into a full-scale civil war.

With Anglophone Cameroonians having long complained that they are being marginalised, resentment burst into the open a year ago with teachers and lawyers in the English-speaking part of Cameroon taking to the streets to protest against the use of French in their schools and courts.

What started as a teachers’ and lawyers’ strike has escalated into a full-blown political crisis, with many in the English-speaking regions now calling for secession.

In fact, on October 1, 2016, secessionist leaders in the English-speaking part of the country announced a nominal declaration of independence, provoking a muscular reaction from Cameroon’s security forces, with the ensuing clashes leaving at least 17 people dead according to the government (although opposition leaders claimed at least 100 died).

Rift between Anglophone and Francophone bishops

The crisis has drawn sharp lines between Catholic bishops from the English-speaking and French-speaking parts of the country.

Anglophone bishops described the killings as “a growing genocide” and published a long and detailed statement on Oct. 4 in which they decried a “warlike atmosphere” of killings, looting and arson carried out by “young people” and acts of “brutality, torture, inhuman and unjustified treatment meted out” by the “forces of law and order”.

But the characterisation of the crisis as genocide was not shared by the bishops from the other regions of the country.

Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, who is president of the country’s Episcopal Conference issued a statement condemning the violence, but refusing to use the inflammatory language of his Anglophone colleagues.

“In the name of our common citizenship, brotherhood and humanity, the defence of legitimate interests must go hand in hand with social harmony, which is what is being sought … Violence, regardless of its source, does not build, it destroys,” said Kleda.

The archbishop pointed out that all regions of Cameroon face problems which, he said, can be resolved through dialogue, arguing that decentralisation would resolve many regional problems in Cameroon, including the Anglophone problem.

That drew sharp criticism from the clergy in Anglophone Cameroon who have always seen the ‘Anglophone Problem’ as one that is unique.

Father Gerald Jumbam said that by lumping the ‘Anglophone Problem’ with all other problems in the country, Kleda was ignoring a key historical fact: that English and French-speaking Cameroons were two countries that had decided to come together and that that they had come together under agreed terms which have been jettisoned to the disadvantage of Anglophones.

In a lengthy missive to Kleda, Jumbam wrote that by virtue of their history, Anglophone Cameroonians “cannot be loyal subjects to the despicable and tyrannous Yaoundé government. Archbishop, you speak of decentralisation and you offer us it as the best gift you think fitting for the resolution of this crisis? We are determined to decline a gift so laden with spurious promises and deceitful propensities.”

Church leaders in Anglophone Cameroon have also accused the president of the National Episcopal Conference of failing to as much as acknowledge the ‘Anglophone Problem’, let alone condemn the arrests and detention of Anglophone leaders and the “grotesque campaign of human savagery and barbarism perpetrated on the people of Southern Cameroons by the government.” Instead, they said, the Prelate seems to be toeing the government line by reducing the ‘Anglophone Problem’ to just another Cameroonian problem.

Cardinal Christian Tumi, one of Cameroon’s most revered clerics who comes from the English-speaking part of Cameroon, says that such corrosive representation of the problem must be discontinued.  “I would say that the others should keep quiet when the bishops of [English-speaking] Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province write because they know better what is happening.”

Genesis of a crisis

French-speaking Cameroon obtained independence from France in 1960, with British Cameroons obtaining independence in 1961. Both sides agreed to reunite following an 11 February 1961 plebiscite, but they did so under a federal system of governance that guaranteed the survival of the political, cultural, educational and judiciary legacies of both sides inherited from the colonial masters.

Just three years after that reunification, English speakers began feeling they were being marginalised.

In a confidential letter to Cameroon’s first President, Ahmadou Ahidjo, Professor Bernard Fonlon, a senior official of the ruling KNDP party in the then Southern Cameroons (now the English-speaking part of Cameroon) summed up this feeling: “Since we came together, the KNDP has hardly done more than stand by and look on. For, talking sincerely, can we name one single policy in any field – economics, education, external affairs – that has been worked out jointly by the two parties? Can we point a finger at one idea that took birth in the KNDP and was welcomed and implemented by this government?

“There is disillusionment; discontent and frustration are sinking and spreading. There is nothing so calculated as to wring and crush the human spirit, before a lofty enterprise, as to know what should be done and yet to have to stand by impotent and see the opposite taking place. This desperation has become explosive.”

Even then, a controversial referendum scrapping the federal system in 1972 meant that whatever protections the federal constitution gave English speakers were simply destroyed.

Anglophone Cameroonians believe that the agenda has always been that of annihilating their identity as a people, which is why their simmering discontent exploded in late 2017.

www.indepthnews.net

Pope Francis has used his traditional New Year’s Day address to highlight the plight of refugees seekers, describing them as the world’s “weakest and most needy.”

In a Monday speech before an estimated 40,000 people who had converged at St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, the Pope also said he had chosen the plight of migrants and refugees as the theme for the Church’s World Day of Peace, celebrated annually on January 1.

“For this peace, to which everyone has a right, many of them (the refugees) are willing to risk their lives in a journey, which is often long and dangerous; they are willing to face strain and suffering,” the pontiff said.

“It is important that there is a commitment from everyone, from civil institutions, and those in education, welfare and church organizations, to ensure a peaceful future for refugees, migrants, everyone,” he said. “Please, let us not extinguish the hope in their hearts, let us not suffocate their hopes for peace!”

In November last year, the pope had released a message in which he said the politicians who incited fear of migrants were sowing violence and racism. He acknowledged, however, that the intake of refugees could complicate existing problems in a country, while appealing for practical solutions for welcoming newcomers.

Pope’s remarks about the plight of refugees come as some have questioned his response to the exodus of widely-persecuted minority Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh. In a trip to Myanmar last November, the pontiff refused to refer to the minority Muslims by their community name, the Rohingya, because of concerns not to unsettle the Myanmarese government.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled state-sponsored violence in Myanmar to Bangladesh. 40,000 have also escaped from Southern Cameroons into Nigeria.

In Myanmar, the Pope made no explicit mention of the brutality, amid reports that he had been warned by advisers against mentioning the word “Rohingya” out of fear that it would turn the country’s military and government against minority Christians in Myanmar as well.

Over the past months, Myanmarese government troops and Buddhist mobs have been raping, killing, and arbitrarily arresting the Rohingya. They have also been carrying out mass arson attacks to destroy houses in predominantly-Rohingya villages in the west of the country.

Culled from Eagle-Tribune by Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap

Pope Francis has denounced the “corrupted” elements and the “cancer” of cliques in the Catholic Church who portray themselves as “martyrs” when they are removed.

The Pope said on Thursday that while there were many faithful elements working at the Holy See, there were also elements that were “corrupted.”

When they are removed, “they falsely declare themselves martyrs of the system, of an ‘uninformed pope’ or the ‘old guard,’ when in fact they should have done a mea culpa,” he said.

On that same day, the pontiff attended the funeral service of dishonored US Cardinal Bernard Law at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

Cardinal Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests but was promoted at the Vatican, died Wednesday at age 86.

His funeral was held with about 200 people attending and no mention of what caused his downfall.

Pope Francis attended the funeral to recite blessings and conduct a brief service known as the Final Commendation and Farewell, which he does for all cardinals who die in Rome. The pope read out the Latin prayer of farewell and commendation to God without adding any comment.

About 15 cardinals were present, including Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Piero Parolin, but Law’s successor in Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, did not attend.

Law was Archbishop of Boston — one of the most prestigious and wealthy American archdioceses — for 18 years when then-Pope John Paul reluctantly accepted his resignation on December 13, 2002, after a tumultuous year in Church history.

A succession of devastating news stories by Boston Globe reporters showed how priests who sexually abused children had been moved from parish to parish for years under Law’s tenure without parishioners or law authorities being informed.

Victim groups had expressed outrage that Law’s funeral would be held in St. Peter’s Basilica and that he would be buried in a crypt in a chapel of the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he served as archpriest after leaving Boston.

About a half dozen ambassadors to the Vatican attended the Mass. The United States’ official representative was Louis Bono, the current chief of mission at the US embassy to the Vatican.

US Ambassador-designate to Vatican Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, attended in a private capacity. Callista officially takes on her role as ambassador on Friday.

The ambassadors of Britain, Japan, and South Korea also attended.

‘New bishops worse than amateur Cardinal Law’

Law left Boston after revelations that he covered up for dozens of priests who raped and sexually molested children, moving them to different parishes without telling parents or police.

The scandal, exposed by The Boston Globe then spread throughout the US and the world, with thousands of people from all continents coming forward in ensuing years with claims their priests sexually abused them when they were children.

St. John Paul II’s decision to promote Law to head St. Mary Major in 2004 reinforced the impression that the Vatican — which had turned a blind eye to abuse for decades — still hadn’t grasped the scale of the problem, the trauma it caused its victims, and the moral credibility the church had lost as a result.

Rev. Thomas Doyle, a key whistleblower in the decades-old clerical sex abuse saga, said there were still bishops who have chosen to protect the Church and their priests more than children.

“One thing is certain: Bernard Law may be the remembered face of hierarchical cover-up and mendacity, but there are others who were far, far worse and carry a greater burden of guilt because they knew by then what the score was,” Doyle said in an email, ticking off a list of well-known bishops who have been publicly shamed — and in some cases prosecuted — for covering up for their priests.

“They make Law look like an amateur.”

Source: Presstv

A certified pastor in the US state of Colorado has been arrested after allegedly impregnating a 14-year old girl, who gave birth to his child.

The 22-year-old pastor, identified as Romello Leach of Colorado Springs, faces multiple charges of sexual assault against a minor, local daily The Gazette reported Saturday, adding that he served as a pastor for several local churches in the city.

According to the report, the unidentified teenage girl gave birth to the child on September 15 when she was 15 years old.

She reportedly did not inform anyone about her pregnancy until her mother noticed her “larger belly” in May, according to arrest records cited in the report.

The teenager’s mother took her to the Colorado Springs Pregnancy Center where they notified an employee that Leach was the father, the affidavit further stated. The employee then informed the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office of the pregnancy, prompting the launch of an investigation.

Leach told his ex-wife in a recorded telephone conversation that he had sexual relations with the teenager and admitted to being the father of her baby, arrest records also indicated.

Leach further explained to his ex-wife that “he knows he had made the worst mistake” and “it’s not like he will go around and sleep with everybody’s 13 or 14-year-daughter,” according to the affidavit.

In a different recorded phone call, Leach admitted to an unidentified person of having sexual relations with the girl at least four times and being the baby’s father. Leach “admitted the behavior was wrong and said he was full of lust at the time,” the daily reported.

Leach is being held at El Paso County jail without bond, the report said, adding that deputies were probing whether there were any other victims of Leach’s.

Culled from Presstv

At least 235 people have been killed and over 130 others injured in a shooting attack and bombing at a mosque in the restive Sinai Peninsula, state TV says.

Police officers said militants attacked al-Rawdah mosque in the town of Bir al-Abd, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the North Sinai provincial capital of el-Arish, during Friday prayers.

The attack, the deadliest single incident in the country’s recent history, reportedly targeted the supporters of Egyptian security forces attending prayers there.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which had the hallmarks of the Daesh-affiliated Velayat Sinai terrorist group.

A security source was quoted by Sky News as saying that Egyptian military drones killed 15 perpetrators of the Friday attack. The source, however, did not provide further details on the attackers’ affiliation or where the airstrikes were carried out.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack, state television reported. The Egyptian president announced three days of national mourning.

“The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period,” Sisi said.

The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, after a deadly terrorist attack left 33 Egyptian soldiers dead.

Over the past few years, militants have been carrying out anti-government activities and fatal attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil in Egypt that erupted after the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.

Velayat Sinai has claimed responsibility for most of the assaults. The group later expanded its attacks to target members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community as well as foreigners visiting the country. That has prompted the government to impose the state of emergency and widen a controversial crackdown, which critics say has mostly targeted dissidents.

Source: Presstv

A bombing attack has killed at least 50 people at a mosque in northeastern Nigeria, police say.

Police said a teenage assailant detonated his explosives early Tuesday as people were arriving for morning prayers at the mosque in the town of Mubi in Nigeria’s Adamawa State.

“So far, we have at least 50 dead from an attack at a mosque in Mubi,” state police spokesman Othman Abubakar said Tuesday.

He added that Takfiri Boko Haram terrorists were responsible for the attack.

The Tuesday attack saw the highest loss of life since September, when 18 people were killed in a bombing attack in the nearby Borno State.

Abubakar said officials were “still trying to ascertain the number of injured because they are in various hospitals.”

More than 20,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram started its deadly campaign in northeast Nigeria in 2009. The violence has claimed many lives in neighboring countries of Chad, Niger, and Cameroon as well.

A large-scale government offensive has pushed the militants from key areas they used to control, although sporadic attacks have continued over the past months.

Source: Presstv

Pope Francis says he was “saddened” by recent terrorist attacks around the world, including in New York. “I am saddened by the terrorist attacks in recent days in Somalia, Afghanistan and yesterday in New York,” the pontiff said during his Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

He called on people to pray that God “converts the hearts of terrorists and frees the world of hatred and murderous madness, which abuses the name of God to disseminate death.”

The pope further said that he was praying for the victims and their families.

At least eight people were killed and 11 others injured after a pickup truck plowed into a pedestrian and cycle path in Lower Manhattan, New York City, on Tuesday. The suspect, reportedly a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant, was shot and injured by police.

Also on Tuesday, at least five people were killed after a bomber blew himself up in the diplomatic zone of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

At least 27 people lost their lives on October 28 in a high-profile attack targeting the Somali capital, Mogadishu, which was claimed by al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants.

Source: Presstv