US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi. Photo: CNS Judge sets bail of $1.6 million for Italian broker
A UK judge has set a bail of $1.6 million for Gianluigi Torzi, the businessman who helped to broker the Vatican’s controversial purchase of a London investment property.
Judge Paul Goldspring ordered the broker to put up the sum because he feared that Mr Torzi was a flight risk following his arrest in London at the request of a judge in Rome, reported Bloomberg News May 19.
The news agency said that Mr Torzi was required to surrender all his passports and would not be released from custody until he put up the full amount.
Mr Torzi was arrested in London on May 11, accused of money laundering. He is also under investigation by the Vatican for his role in securing the Secretariat of State’s purchase of a London property.
Catholic priest among 11 kidnapped in Nigeria
A Catholic priest serving in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna archdiocese is among 11 people reportedly kidnapped on Monday.
ACI Africa, said that gunmen attacked Kadaje community in Kachia, a Local Government Area in southern Kaduna State, on May 17, killing eight people and kidnapping 11 others.
“The people of Kadaje of Kachia woke up early Monday with gunshots of bandits,” a source told the website Sahara Reporters.
While the inhabitants of Kadaje “cried and called for help,” the source said that no one, including the military personnel who have been deployed in the region, came to their aid.
“At the moment, 11 persons are missing while eight have died. A priest … is also missing,” Sahara Reporters quoted the source as saying.
US High court to hear major abortion case
The US Supreme Court said in a May 17 order that it will hear oral arguments during its next term on a 2018 Mississippi abortion law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court’s term opens in October and a decision is expected by June 2022.
Just after then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed the law March 19, 2018, a federal judge blocked it temporarily from taking effect after the state’s only abortion clinic filed suit, saying it is unconstitutional. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the block on the law.
The state’s Catholic bishops, Bishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson and Bishop Louis Kihneman III of Biloxi, commended Mr Bryant’s signature.
Pelosi’s archbishop hopes for dialogue on abortion support
The Archbishop of San Francisco last Monday responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said last week she was “pleased” with a recent Vatican statement on Communion.
Ms Pelosi, who is Catholic and pro-abortion, had claimed that a May 7 Vatican letter to US bishops instructed the bishops not to be “divisive” on the matter of Communion for pro-abortion politicians.
Last Monday, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco – Ms Pelosi’s home diocese – said that the Vatican actually supported “dialogue” between bishops and pro-abortion Catholic politicians “to help them understand the grave evil they are helping to perpetrate and accompany them to a change of heart”.
The Vatican also acknowledged the possibility of denying politicians Holy Communion if they persist in their cooperation with legal abortion, Archbishop Cordileone said.