All posts tagged: Roman Catholic Church

Haitian aid workers worry American Christians donors could worsen crisis

Haitian aid workers worry American Christians donors could worsen crisis

Published by Sam

(RNS) — As the security crisis in Haiti continues, the humanitarian aid group Haiti Family Care Network is urging U.S. Christian donors to refrain from worsening the situation by donating to orphanages and to redirect their efforts instead toward initiatives helping parents support their children. “There are actually better ways to care for the needs of children than building and supporting orphanages,” said Heather Nozea, chair of the network, which is part of Better Care Network, based in Guatemala. In 2021, five humanitarian organizations created Haiti Family Care Network to change how relief for children works in the impoverished, often chaotically led nation. In 2011, the year after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake killed some 300,000, mostly around the capital, Port-au-Prince, orphanages proliferated from about 300 to 754, despite their failures to provide appropriate care for children. “Everyone assumed that the best way to respond was by building and supporting new orphanages and it became a solution to problems without actually addressing the real problem,” said Nozea, who has worked in Haiti for eight years for …

Church leaders in Kenya give qualified support for plan to close orphanages

Church leaders in Kenya give qualified support for plan to close orphanages

Published by Sam

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Amid a growing push among child welfare organizations to reunite families rather than keep children in institutional homes, Kenyan authorities are set to adopt a new national program that will phase out traditional orphanages over the next decade. Church leaders in the country, whose denominations run hundreds of orphanages, have expressed support for the plan, saying children’s homes have exposed children to abuse. Other faith leaders back private institutional operators in opposing the change. Roman Catholic Bishop Willybard Kitogho Lagho of Malindi said the Catholic Church supports the government plan because many of the institutions are no longer safe for children.  “There have been a lot of abuses in these homes,” said the bishop. “Children have been sexually, physical and emotionally abused. There have also been cases of child trafficking.” Some orphanages, he alleged, were founded by “unscrupulous people who want to gain from donor funding.” The treatment of orphans in Africa has come under fire in recent years as recent studies have shown that as many as half of children …

How clean water and faith go hand in hand

How clean water and faith go hand in hand

Published by Sam

(RNS) — Earth Day is no longer the one day a year we dedicate to thinking about the health of our planet. The urgency of climate change has made concern about the environment a daily consideration. But when thinking of the health of the Earth, we must remember that all our health depends on the health of our water. Water is also of deep concern to our world’s faiths, as it is the only symbol every world religion shares. Water cleanses, sanctifies and blesses rituals around the world. But it is more than a symbol: clean water is a conduit of care and love. So many problems in health care can be traced to unsafe water, a leading preventable cause of early childhood malnutrition, cognitive stunting and death. For women and girls in the most marginalized parts of the world, it’s a lifelong issue. A girl will often drop out of school when she hits puberty because she has no sanitation facilities to meet her needs. In many cultures it is the job of women to wake …

Terror attack strikes Istanbul Catholic church known for its welcome

Terror attack strikes Istanbul Catholic church known for its welcome

Published by Sam

ISTANBUL (RNS) — Gunshots rang out during Mass in Istanbul’s Santa Maria Italian Catholic Church Sunday (Jan. 28), as two gunmen assaulted the building, killing one in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, also known as IS.  According to church leaders, the victim, 52-year-old Tuncer Cihan, was killed after standing up to the gunmen who had entered the church firing into the air and ordering congregants to lie on the ground. Two suspects have been detained by police, both foreign nationals, according to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya. “One of them is from Tajikistan and the other is Russian, and we evaluated them to be with the Islamic State.” Cihan was not a Catholic but an Alevi, a Muslim minority in Turkey that is not recognized by the country’s government. Cihan’s funeral was held Monday at an Alevi house of worship, known as a cemevi.    “Basically we have two communities who are today united in sorrow,” the Rev. Luka Refatti, a Catholic priest in Istanbul, told the Religion News Service after attending Cihan’s funeral. …

In South America’s ‘Lithium Triangle,’ Indigenous people defend sacred sites

In South America’s ‘Lithium Triangle,’ Indigenous people defend sacred sites

Published by Sam

SÃO PAULO (RNS) — On Dec. 16, Indigenous activists from the remote province of Jujuy, in far northwestern Argentina, were preparing to pack up their camp in a public plaza in Buenos Aires, where they had been living since August, when a group of heavily armed men arrived to forcibly remove them. The dozen or so activists had come to protest a change in Jujuy’s provincial constitution that they say will make it easier for mining companies to extract lithium from the Indigenous community’s land. Their extended stay in Argentina’s capital allowed them to present their case to the Supreme Court, the Congress and the presidential administration before they were forced out. “There are some mining projects already in progress, and others getting government authorization. We’ll keep resisting them,” said Néstor Jerez, “cacique,” or head man, of the Ocloya people and one of the leaders of the struggle. “They cause serious damage to the environment and are a kind of pillage of Pachamama,” referring to the South American earth goddess. The Supreme Court and the …

Guido Calabresi: ‘I Am a Practicing Catholic and I Am a Proud Jew’

Guido Calabresi: ‘I Am a Practicing Catholic and I Am a Proud Jew’

Published by skeptic

The Jewish cemetery in Ferrara, Italy, is a melancholy place nestled against the walls that encircle the medieval city. Its 800 gravestones are bunched in clusters amid overgrown grass, fallen leaves, and brooding trees. The impressive expanse is evidence of what had been, before the Second World War, a large, vibrant Jewish community, now reduced to a few dozen souls. An occasional visitor comes to photograph the jarringly modernist gravestone of Giorgio Bassani, the author of the novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which opens with a description of the Finzi-Contini family’s mausoleum here. Others come to see the memorials to some of the 150 Jews of Ferrara who were deported to Nazi death camps. While walking through the cemetery one day last year—I was in Ferrara for the launch of the Italian edition of my book The Pope at War, about Italy and the Vatican during the Second World War—I came across a group of gravestones bearing the name Calabresi. One in particular caught my eye. I stopped to look more closely at the …

The Coming Attack on No-Fault Divorce Laws

The Coming Attack on No-Fault Divorce Laws

Published by skeptic

For the past half century, many women in America have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of freedom and legal protection, not because of Roe v. Wade or antidiscrimination laws but because of something much less celebrated: “no fault” divorce. Beginning in the early 1970s, no-fault divorce enabled millions of people, most of them women, to file for divorce over “irreconcilable differences” or the equivalent without having to prove misconduct by a spouse—such as adultery, domestic violence, bigamy, cruelty, abandonment, or impotence. But now conservative politicians in states such as Texas and Louisiana, as well as a devoutly Catholic husband who tried to halt his wife’s divorce efforts in Nebraska, are attacking no-fault divorce. One of the more alarming steps taken in that direction came from the Texas Republican Party, whose 2022 platform called on the legislature to “rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws and support covenant marriage.” Given the Republican Party’s control of the offices of governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature, Texas has a chance of actually doing …