Martin Lee Chu-ming Poland must support mothers of disabled, children – bishop
After a ban on aborting disabled children came into force, Poland’s Catholic Church urged “all possible help” for pregnant women and single mothers.
“It isn’t enough just to implement the law – those governing today, as well as the Church and other groups have a supreme duty to care for parents, women and their disabled children, so none are left alone and unsupported,” said Bishop Wieslaw Smigiel, chairman of the bishops’ family commission.
“We must take great care not to lose sight of what’s truly important in the fervour of political struggle – not prohibitions and punishments, but concern for life from conception to natural death,” he told Poland’s Catholic Information Agency, KAI, January 28, a day after the ban took effect.
Archbishop welcomes Biden orders on environmental protection
Presidential executive orders related to environmental protection and climate change have gained the support of Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
President Joe Biden’s actions “resonate deeply with an integral ecology that listens to the ‘least of these,’” as expressed in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home, the archbishop said in a February 3 statement released by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
He added that Biden’s steps to restore regulations governing automobile emission standards, hazardous air pollutants and the integrity of the Environmental Policy Act, all of which the USCCB previously supported, “speak of a commitment to restoring public health and the common home”.
Hong Kong Catholic lawyer nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
A Catholic lawyer who helped found the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Martin Lee Chu-ming, 82, founded Hong Kong’s Democratic Party in 1994.
Lee has been demonstrating for universal suffrage in Hong Kong for nearly 40 years.
He was founding chairman in 1990 of Hong Kong’s first pro-democracy party, the United Democrats of Hong Kong, and led the party’s successor, the Democratic Party, while serving in the territory’s legislature for more than two decades, UCA News reported.
Norwegian Conservative Party members Mathilde Tybring-Gjedde and Peter Frolic nominated Lee for the prize, calling the lawyer “a source of inspiration for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and advocates for freedom around the world”.
Russian Catholic urges bishops to speak out on mass arrests
A prominent Russian Catholic urged his nation’s bishops to condemn the mass arrest and beating of protesters.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed February 2 for three-and-a-half years for violating probation while receiving treatment abroad for a near-fatal August nerve agent attack, widely blamed on state security agents.
At least 1,400 demonstrators were detained February 2 bringing to more than 10,000 the number arrested in two weeks of protests.
“Although the Church’s moral voice is desperately needed and Catholics are demanding it be raised in the public sphere, our priests and bishops seem to have conveniently concluded it’s less risky if they just keep totally silent,” said Victor Khroul, a Catholic professor at Moscow’s HSE University and prominent religious writer and editor.