Bishop Angelo Moreschi Indonesia Holy Week celebrations go online due to coronavirus
Several dioceses in Indonesia are to hold Holy Week celebrations in churches without congregations as coronavirus (Covid-19) cases continue to rise in the country.
The celebrations of Holy Week, daily Masses and Sunday Masses will now be live-streamed online or broadcast on radio instead.
The Jakarta Archdiocese, which had previously cancelled all Church activities until April 3, has now extended its Covid-19 emergency period to April 30.
“All Church activities involving crowds are called off,” said Fr Samuel Pengestu, the archdiocese’s vicar general, last week.
Semarang Archdiocese in Central Java, Bogor Diocese in West Java and Larantuka Diocese in East Tenggara have also cancelled public attendance at churches.
Peru parish hosts rooftop Holy Hour for home confined faithful
St Anthony of Padua parish in Lima held a rooftop exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for parishioners from the church’s rooftop last week.
The exposition started with music with a nearby restaurant joining in by providing lighting and equipment, so all neighbours in the high-rise surround buildings could experience the hour of adoration.
Fr Enrique Díaz said the neighbours came to their windows and balconies and many knelt before the Blessed Sacrament.
“It was beautiful,” he said, adding “it was very well received by all the people in the neighbouring buildings.”
The country is currently under a nationwide stay-at-home order.
Only bishop of Mongolian ethnicity dies, aged 101
Bishop Giuseppe Ma Zhongmu Tegusbeleg, the only Mongolian bishop, has died at the age of 101 last week.
Bishop Ma was an unofficial bishop, not recognised by the Chinese state, who considered him a priest. For the Holy See, he was the bishop of Ningxia Diocese.
Bishop Ma retired in 2005 and lived as a pastor in his hometown parish of Chengchuan (Inner Mongolia).
According to the obituary of his diocese, Bishop Ma translated the Roman Missal into Mongolian and submitted it to the Vatican for approval. However, the translation was never approved.
Catholic leaders in US state praise abolition of death penalty
Colorado has become the 22nd US state to abolish the death penalty and the third since Pope Francis revised the Catholic Catechism in August 2018. The decision, made last week, was welcomed by the Catholic bishops of Colorado who oppose the “erasing or taking away” of one’s life.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy of the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN) hailed the action as “a critical step toward respecting the dignity of human life”.
Similarly, the Colorado Catholic Conference commended the state’s lawmakers for signing the “historic piece of legislation”.
At present, there are 28 US states that can deliver a death sentence, 10 of these have not delivered one in over a decade.
First bishop coronavirus death was Ethiopia missionary
An Italian bishop of a missionary region of Ethiopia is the first Catholic bishop known to have died of the global coronavirus pandemic last week.
Bishop Angelo Moreschi, 67, was the leader of Ethiopia’s Apostolic Vicariate of Gambella, a missionary region of 25,000 Catholics in the western part of the country where he had been a missionary since 1991.
Bishop Moreschi was renowned in Ethiopia for his pastoral ministry to the service of young people and the poor.
In the local dialect, he was afforded the title ‘Abba’, meaning ‘Father’.
A member of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Moreschi died on March 25 in Brescia.