Pope Francis elevated 20 more churchmen to the rank of cardinal on Saturday, formally expanding those now eligible to vote for his successor in case he dies or resigns — the latter a step he has said he’d consider if the need arises.

Of the churchmen being named new cardinals in the consistory ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, 16 are younger than 80 and thus eligible to participate in a conclave — the ritual-shrouded, locked-door assembly of cardinals who cast paper ballots to elect a new pontiff.

The 85-year-old Francis has now named 83 of the 132 cardinals currently young enough to join a conclave. The others were appointed by the previous two popes, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, whose unexpected retirement in 2013 paved the way for Francis to be elected.

With the eight batches of cardinals Francis has named, prospects are boosted that whoever becomes the next pontiff will share his vision for the future of the church.

Francis reminded the cardinals of their mission, which he said includes “an openness to all peoples, to the horizons of the world, to the peripheries as yet unknown.”

Underlining Francis’ attention to those on society’s margins, among the new cardinals is Archbishop Anthony Poola of Hyderabad, India. The prelate, 60, is the first member of the Dalit community, considered the lowest rung of India’s caste system, to become a cardinal.

One by one, the newest cardinals, whose red cassocks and headgear symbolizes the blood they must be prepared to shed if necessary in their mission, knelt before Francis, who placed on their head the prestigious biretta, as the three-peaked hat is known.

That intimate moment was a chance to exchange a few words with Francis, who smiled to put them at ease. At times, the seated Francis, himself hobbled by mobility problems, lent his own arms to help kneeling cardinals stand up.

In choosing San Diego Bishop Robert Walter McElroy, Francis passed over U.S. churchmen leading traditionally more prestigious dioceses, including San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

McElroy has been among a minority of American bishops who opposed to a campaign to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. Cordileone has said he’d no long allow U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to receive Communion for her defense of abortion rights.

While staunchly against abortion as a grave sin, Francis has also decried what he calls the weaponization of Communion.

McElroy last year was also among a small group of U.S. bishops signing a statement denouncing the bullying that is often directed at LGBTQ youth.

Francis has tried to make gay Catholics feel welcome in the church, whose teaching holds that same-sex intercourse is a sin.

Among the newest cardinals is Bishop Richard Kuuia Baawobr from Wa, Ghana, who has spoken out against LGBTQ rights. The African prelate felt ill when he arrived in Rome on Friday and was hospitalized for a heart problem, the pope told the other cardinals, asking them to pray “for this brother who should have been here.”

Asked by The Associated Press about such contrasting views among church leaders, McElroy replied that “there are always cultural differences within the life of the church as there is within in the human family. And different cultures approach these questions in different ways.”

McElroy added: “My own view is that we have an obligation in the church to make the LGBT persons feel equally welcome in the life of the church, as everyone else.”

With electing future pontiffs a key role for cardinals, McElroy, 68, was asked what he thought of Francis’ saying that resignation for popes is a valid option.

“In principle, I think it is a good idea at a particular moment when they feel they can no longer carry the burdens of that office, but I think this pope is far from that moment,” the U.S. prelate said. “I believe he sees himself as far from that moment. What he has is a mobility issue, but it has not affected his mind. I can tell you he is still on top of things.”

Archbishop Ulrich Steiner of Manaus, Brazil, became the first cardinal from the Amazon, the vast, environmentally-vulnerable region in South America on the Argentine-born pontiff’s home continent. In remarks to The AP, Steiner expressed concern about increasing violence in the Amazon.

“But this violence was not born there, it came from outside,” Steiner, 71, said. ”It is always violence related to money. Concessions, deforestation, also with the mines, also with the fishing.”

At 48, the youngest member among the cardinals’ ranks is an Italian missionary in Mongolia, where Catholics number some 1,300. Francis “knows how important it is supporting these little communities,” said the new cardinal, Giorgio Marengo.

Originally, the pope had picked 21 new cardinals. But retired Belgian Bishop Luc Van Looy declined the honor, citing his own inadequate handling of cases of sexually abusive priests while he led the Ghent diocese from 2004-2020.

Source: AP

Pope Francis said Sunday he was “concerned” by rising tensions between the state and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, two days after bishop and regime critic Rolando Alvarez was detained.

Francis said he was following “closely with concern and sorrow” the situation in Nicaragua, amid a worsening standoff between the Church and a government accused of increasing authoritarianism.

“I would like to express my conviction and hope that through open and sincere dialogue, the basis for respectful and peaceful coexistence can still be found,” the head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics said after the Angelus prayer.

A spokeswoman for the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU was “following closely the situation with concern”.

She repeated Brussel’s position that “Nicaraguans have to find a peaceful and democratic solution to their political crisis through dialogue”.

The Catholic Church in Nicaragua has been under increasing government pressure since opposition protests in 2018 were met with a crackdown that left hundreds dead.

President Daniel Ortega maintains the protests were part of a Washington-backed opposition plot to unseat him, and accuses bishops of complicity.

The Vatican has said Nicaragua expelled its ambassador to the country in March.

Taken ‘with violence’

Alvarez was detained Friday for “destabilizing and provocative” activities aimed at destabilizing the Central American country.

His detention followed two weeks under police siege at his official residence in Matagalpa, central Nicaragua, after he criticized the closure of Church radio stations and news channels.

Supporters said Alvarez was taken “with violence” to an unknown location, prompting the United Nations and Organization of American States (OAS) to express concern.

Eight others, including five priests, who had been holed up with Alvarez were taken to Managua with him, according to the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM), and were all under investigation.

Later, the church said Alvarez was being held at his “family home” where Cardinal Lepoldo Brenes was allowed to visit him.

Brenes reported the bishop’s “physical condition has deteriorated” but his “spirit is strong”, the archdiocese of Managua said in a statement.

The other eight were being held at El Chipote prison, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh). El Chipote is a notorious lockup for government critics.

According to the European Union, Nicaragua has more than 180 “political prisoners”.

In the first half of 2022, the bloc says, Nicaraguan authorities closed down over 1,200 civil society organizations.

Earlier this month, Borrell’s office called for the liberation of Nicaragua’s political prisoners, denouncing the government crackdown on opposition activists.

Source: AFP

In the din of Yaoundé’s traffic, thousands of youths comb various offices, documents in hand, in search of jobs.

As frustration sets in, many see a future beyond the country’s shores. That is how Jannet left Cameroon two years ago.

A recruiter told her she would have a well-paying job upon arrival in wealthy Kuwait. Her family agreed to go into debt with the recruiter to pay for airfare and other associated expenses.

But the promise of a good job turned into a nightmare in Kuwait. A member of the recruiter’s network confiscated her passport, mobile phone and other personal documents and took her to the home of a wealthy family, where Jannet had to work long hours with little food.

“I wake up at 5 a.m. and go to bed at 1 a.m., at times no food,” she told Catholic News Service.

For over two years, Jannet slaved for that family, sleeping on the kitchen floor. She said she was forced to use the “toilets” reserved for cats.

“I used to call them (the cats) my brothers,” Jannet recalled, because “they were the only family I had out there.”

Hers is not an isolated story. Beatrice Titanji, vice president of Cameroon’s Trauma Centre for Victims of Human Trafficking, said these modern-day slave markets can be found throughout the Gulf states.

“They actually have booths as you would have in the market, and (people) are sold and bought for domestic service,” said Titanji.

“So they move them to their various owners as negotiated before, because there are linesmen here in Cameroon who actually negotiate, get money, sell them at higher prices, sell them depending on the outlook of the victim, as it happened 200 years ago during slave trade. Our children are sold and bought today in the Middle East.”

The situation has caught the attention of members of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.

Meeting in Accra, Ghana, July 25-Aug. 1, the bishops examined the causes of migration, the risks involved — particularly when it comes to irregular migration — and what the church needs to be doing to help.

“Migration is a normal social phenomenon that is linked to the history of humankind,” the bishops said in a statement signed by Cardinal-designate Richard Kuuia Baawobr of Wa, Ghana, president of SECAM.

“This is why migration cannot be considered illegal but could be irregular,” they added. They said while the suffering of migrants is not linked to migration as such, migration can involve suffering: “abuse of the social status … exploitation, ignorance” and fear of poverty.

“We wish to express our pain in seeing our youth leaving our countries, knowing that they are going to suffer and possibly lose their lives, and we lament our inability to stop them from leaving,” the bishops said.

They urged young people willing to exercise their right to migrate “to do so in a manner that is administratively acceptable and with full knowledge of the challenges that await them.”

“We encourage our youths not to lose hope and to hold on to God through a life of holiness.”

The church leaders also called on governments to put in place structures and conditions that discourage irregular migration, such as good governance, employment opportunities, multifaceted security, political and social inclusion, promotion of social justice.

“We urge transit and host countries to respect the rights and human dignity of migrants.”

They also challenged Christian communities to “develop an active pastoral care for migration” that should involve welcoming migrants, protecting them, promoting them and integrating them into society.

Jannet eventually returned to Cameroon, sick and frail, with nothing other than the clothes she was wearing. She said when she became sick, her slavers threw her onto the streets.

As she roamed the streets of Kuwait, not knowing exactly where she was going, Jannet eventually came across the Embassy of the Central African Republic. Embassy staff took her to a hospital, helped her replace her stolen passport, and paid for her flight back to Cameroon.

Still, young people in Cameroon say they will continue to risk leaving.

George Atanga, who has a master’s degree in chemistry, said he has been looking for a job for the past five years.

“Whether I get a visa or not, I have to leave this country,” he told Catholic News Service as he waited in line to take photos for his passport.

“If I don’t get a visa, I will travel through Algeria and see if I can get to Spain. My future lies out there,” he said.

It’s a trend across Africa, a continent where 51% of young women and 43% of young men are unemployed.

Source: Crux

Pope Francis arrived Sunday in Canada, where he is expected to personally apologize to Indigenous survivors of abuse committed over a span of decades at residential schools run by the Catholic Church.

The head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics landed at Edmonton’s international airport shortly after 11 am (1700 GMT).

He was welcomed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, the country’s first Indigenous governor general, as well as Indigenous leaders in an airport ceremony that began with drums and chanting.

Afterwards Francis received welcome gifts from Indigenous leaders, shaking or kissing their hands and making conversation with each before the short ceremony ended.

During the 10-hour flight from Rome Francis told journalists travelling with him that “we must be aware that this is a penitential journey.”

The 85-year-old pontiff’s Canada visit is primarily to apologize to survivors for the Church’s role in the scandal that a national truth and reconciliation commission has called “cultural genocide”.

From the late 1800s to the 1990s, Canada’s government sent about 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children into 139 residential schools run by the Church, where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.

Many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Thousands of children are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect.

Since May 2021, more than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of the former schools.

A delegation of Indigenous peoples travelled to the Vatican in April and met the pope — a precursor to Francis’ six-day trip — after which he formally apologized.

But doing so again on Canadian soil will be of huge significance for survivors and their families, for whom the land of their ancestors is of particular importance.

The flight constituted the longest since 2019 for the pope, who has been suffering from knee pain that has forced him to use a cane or wheelchair in recent outings.

The pope was in a wheelchair Sunday and used a lifting platform to board the plane in Rome, and was also in a wheelchair on the tarmac in Edmonton, an AFP correspondent accompanying him said.

‘Too late’

 After resting Sunday, the pope will travel Monday to the community of Maskwacis, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Edmonton, and address an estimated crowd of 15,000 expected to include former students from across the country.

“I would like a lot of people to come,” said Charlotte Roan, 44, interviewed by AFP in June. The member of the Ermineskin Cree Nation said she wanted people to come “to hear that it wasn’t made up”.

Others see the pope’s visit as too little too late, including Linda McGilvery with the Saddle Lake Cree Nation near Saint Paul, about 200 kilometres east of Edmonton. 

“I wouldn’t go out of my way to see him,” said the 68-year-old.

“For me it’s kind of too late, because a lot of the people suffered, and the priests and the nuns have now passed on.”

McGilvery spent eight years of her childhood in one of the schools, from age six to 13.

“Being in the residential school I lost a lot of my culture, my ancestry. That’s many years of loss,” she told AFP.

After a mass before tens of thousands of faithful in Edmonton on Tuesday, Francis will head northwest to an important pilgrimage site, the Lac Sainte Anne.

Following a July 27-29 visit to Quebec City, he will end his trip in Iqaluit, capital of the northern territory of Nunavut and home to the largest Inuit population in Canada.

There he will meet with former residential school students, before returning to Italy.

In total, Francis is expected to deliver four speeches and four homilies, all in Spanish.

Francis is the second pope to visit Canada, after John Paul II, who visited three times (1984, 1987 and 2002).

Source: AFP

The biggest hajj pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic began kicks off Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of mostly maskless worshippers expected to circle Islam’s holiest site in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca.

One million fully vaccinated Muslims, including 850,000 from abroad, are allowed at this year’s hajj, a major break from two years of drastically curtailed numbers due to the pandemic.

At Mecca’s Grand Mosque, pilgrims will perform the “tawaf”, the circumambulation of the Kaaba, the large cubic structure draped in golden-embroidered black cloth that Muslims around the world turn towards to pray.

Many have chosen to perform the ritual ahead of Wednesday’s official hajj start date.

On Tuesday afternoon, white-robed male worshippers and women in colourful abayas walked side by side on the white floors near the Kaaba, the majority without a mask even though authorities said last month that masks would be mandatory at the site.

“I just prayed for you,” one pilgrim, wearing a green robe, said during a video call with relatives.

“I love you mother, I love you all,” she added, waving into her mobile phone screen as she continued walking around the Kaaba.

Five days of rituals

This year’s hajj is larger than the pared-down versions staged in 2020 and 2021 but still smaller than in normal times.

In 2019, some 2.5 million Muslims from around the world participated in the annual event—a key pillar of Islam that able-bodied Muslims must undertake at least once in their lives.

But after that, the coronavirus outbreak forced a dramatic downsizing. Just 60,000 fully vaccinated citizens and residents of the kingdom took part in 2021, up from a few thousand in 2020.

The pilgrimage consists of a series of religious rites which are completed over five days in Islam’s holiest city and its surroundings in western Saudi Arabia.

On Thursday, the pilgrims will move to Mina, around five kilometres (three miles) away from the Grand Mosque, ahead of the main rite at Mount Arafat, where it is believed the Prophet Mohammed delivered his final sermon.

This year’s hajj is restricted to vaccinated Muslims under the age of 65 chosen from millions of applicants through an online lottery system.

Those coming from outside Saudi Arabia were required to submit a negative Covid-19 PCR result from a test taken within 72 hours of travel.

Since the start of the pandemic, Saudi Arabia has registered more than 795,000 coronavirus cases, more than 9,000 of them fatal.

‘Too hot’

Those attempting to perform the hajj without a permit face fines of 10,000 Saudi riyals (around $2,600).

Policemen in the mountainous city have set up checkpoints and conducted foot patrols while holding green umbrellas to shield themselves from the scorching sun.

Temperatures in Mecca topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

Inside the Grand Mosque, female medics were on standby in different locations, and volunteers with wheelchairs were waiting in a long queue to help those needing assistance.

Authorities have set up multiple health facilities, mobile clinics and ambulances to cater to pilgrims.

Some pilgrims donned clothing featuring the names and flags of their countries. “Hajj 2020 — Chad” was written on the back of the white robes of one group.

Hosting the hajj is a matter of prestige and a powerful source of political legitimacy for Saudi Arabia’s rulers.

Costing at least $5,000 per person, it is also a money-spinner for the world’s biggest oil exporter, which is trying to diversify its economy.

In normal years, the pilgrimage brings in billions of dollars.

These days it represents a chance to showcase the kingdom’s ongoing social transformation, despite persistent complaints about human rights abuses and limits on personal freedoms.

Saudi Arabia now allows women to attend the hajj unaccompanied by male relatives, a requirement that was dropped last year.

“Being here is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can’t wait for the rest,” said 42-year-old Egyptian pilgrim Naima Mohsen, who came to the Grand Mosque by herself Tuesday.

“My only problem is the weather. It’s just too hot.”

Source: AFP

Gunmen with explosives stormed a Catholic church and opened fire in southwest Nigeria on Sunday, killing “many” worshippers and wounding others, the government and police said.

The violence at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo town in Ondo State erupted during the morning service in a rare attack in the southwest of Nigeria, where jihadists and criminal gangs operate in other regions.

Pope Francis said in a statement he had learned of the “death of dozens of faithful”, many children, during the celebration of the Christian holiday of the Pentecost.

“While the details of the incident are being clarified, Pope Francis prays for the victims and for the country,” he said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The motives and the exact death toll were not immediately clear, but President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the “heinous killing of worshippers”.

State police spokeswoman Ibukun Odunlami said the gunmen also attacked the church with explosives, leaving an unknown number of worshippers dead.

“It’s still premature to say exactly how many people were killed. But many worshippers lost their lives while others were injured in the attack,” she told AFP.

A spokesman for the Ondo State governor’s office said they would not be giving an official casualty figure for the moment.

But a witness, who gave his name as Abayomi, told AFP at least 20 worshippers had died in the attack.

“I was passing through the area when I heard a loud explosion and gunshots inside the church,” he said.

He said he saw at least five gunmen on the church premises before he ran for safety.

‘Vile and satanic attack’

Attacks on religious sites are particularly sensitive in Nigeria where tensions sometimes flare between communities in a country with a mostly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north.

Gun and bomb attacks are rare in Ondo state, but Nigeria’s military is battling a 12-year-old jihadist insurgency in the northeast, gangs in the northwest and separatist agitation in the southeast.

Boko Haram jihadist group in the northeast targeted churches in the past as part of Nigeria’s conflict that has killed 40,000 and displaced 2 million more.

Kidnapping assaults are common in most parts of Nigeria but mass gun attacks like Sunday’s violence are rare in the country’s relatively peaceful southwest.

Ondo state governor Rotimi Akeredolu said Sunday’s attack was a “vile and satanic attack” and appealed to the security forces to track down the assailants.

The attack comes a day before the ruling APC party starts primaries for its candidate in the 2023 election to replace Buhari, a former army commander who steps down after two terms in office.

Security will be a major challenge for whoever wins the race to govern Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy.

Parts of northwest and north-central Nigeria in particular have been increasingly plagued by heavily armed gangs who raid villages and target communities and schools for mass kidnapping attacks.

Source: AFP

Pope Francis on Sunday canonised a Frenchman murdered in the desert, a Dutch priest killed in a Nazi concentration camp and an Indian lay convert among 10 new saints officially proclaimed on Sunday.

Thousands of people from around the world crowded into St Peter’s Square in the Vatican for the canonisation mass, presided over by the 85-year-old pontiff and attended by delegations including France’s interior minister Gerald Darminin and Italian president Sergio Mattarella.

The pictures of the 10 new saints were hung on the facade of the world’s biggest basilica.

Unlike in recent days, Francis — who was surrounded by around 50 cardinals and 300 bishops and priests — did not appear in a wheelchair.

Under a sunny sky, groups of pilgrims had begun to converge on the square, some wearing shirts or scarves with the picture of one of the new saints.

Under the rules of the Catholic Church, all 10 have already been beatified, or named “blessed”, but had to then be attributed a miracle to take the final step to sainthood.

The new saints included Charles de Foucauld, a French soldier and explorer, who became a Catholic priest and lived among Trappist monks in Syria, in Palestine, and finally among the Tuaregs in the Algerian desert.

He was murdered by bandits on December 1, 1916, but his works outlasted him and he became one of France’s most celebrated men of faith.

Men of faith

Another who made the step to sainthood was Dutch Carmelite priest, theologian and journalist Titus Brandsma, who took a stand against the Nazis during World War II.

He spoke out against them before Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and afterward, encouraging Catholic Dutch newspapers to resist the occupiers’ propaganda.

Brandsma was arrested in January 1942 and ended up in the Dachau concentration camp, where he died on July 26 of that year, after being injected with carbolic acid.

He was beatified in 1985 after being declared a martyr, and was subsequently found to have enacted a miracle in healing a Carmelite priest.

Devasahayam Pillai, known as Lazarus, was the first Indian layman to become a saint, according to the Vatican.

A Hindu from what is now the southern state of Tamil Nadu, he converted to Catholicism in 1745 while working at the royal palace, where he met a captured Dutch commander who taught him about Christianity.

But his faith, and his preaching of equality of all peoples — a revolutionary view at the time — caused a stir and when he refused to renounce his new religion, he was arrested, according to the Vatican.

After almost three years of imprisonment and torture, during which he began to be visited by pilgrims, he was shot dead in a forest on the orders of the king on January 14, 1752.

He was declared a martyr and beatified in 2012, before being later attributed the miracle of resuscitating a foetus in the 20th week of pregnancy.

Source: AFP

Driving towards 1 Castleknock Close, Laurel lodge in his very modest car on Saturday April 30, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Jude Okolo reportedly reflected on his time in the Irish State. His work as the Vatican ambassador to Ireland is now over and the future of his accomplishments stand tall.

He met members of the Catholic Men Organization Swords Centre in the African Chaplaincy Archdiocese of Dublin who had gathered to listen to him for the last time.

The senior Roman Catholic cleric called on all the members of the Catholic Men Organization to continue to look up to St Joseph as their Patron Saint. But there was one small thing, small but great! Two elderly Irish women who heard that the Papal Nuncio was in their neighborhood came to see him.

 Archbishop Jude Okolo said a prayer for them and blessed the two women saying “Let the message of Divine Mercy always remain with you.”

Addressing the Papal Nuncio, the Chairman of the Catholic Men Organization Swords Centre Sir Dr Denis Chima said the Nuncio’s departure from Ireland is not a pit stop nor a comma but a continuation of his Christ mission in representing the Holy See.

The Holy Father Pope Francis on Sunday, May 1, appointed Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo the new Apostolic Nuncio to the Czech Republic.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Dublin