Caritas volunteer helps in flood rescue mission
A 52-year-old Caritas volunteer helped rescue more than two dozen families from a recent flood in Karachi, Pakistan. Francis Javed, a father of six who works as a cobbler, told ucanews.com that he received a phone call from Caritas Pakistan Karachi at 11am on July 30. They warned him about an overflowing dam not far away.
“I shifted my family to a relative’s house, alerted the community members and made announcements in the local mosque requesting people to evacuate or climb on to their rooftops,” he said.
Javed’s announcement helped people prepare for the flood waters, which reached his district about three hours later. When the army arrived, Javed helped them rescue people trapped in their homes over the next five hours.
Guam archdiocese faces multiple lawsuits over abuse
The Archdiocese of Agaña is facing dozens of lawsuits related to clerical sexual abuse, and is encouraging any other alleged victims to contact the archdiocese before the deadline to file lawsuits expires this month.
More than 220 former altar boys, students, and boy scouts are suing the archdiocese over sexual assaults by 35 clergy, teachers and scoutmasters, the Associated Press reports. The last day to file a claim against the archdiocese is August 15.
In 2016, Guam’s territorial legislature eliminated the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits involving child sexual abuse. Former Archbishop Anthony Apuron was found guilty of some of several abuse-related charges by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last year.
Majority of US Catholics sceptical of ‘real presence’
A new study about the level of Catholic belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist showed that a majority of Catholics do not believe that the bread and wine used at Mass become the body and blood of Christ.
The Pew study showed that 69% of all self-identified Catholics said they believed the bread and wine used at Mass are not Jesus, but instead “symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ”. “Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the Church holds that transubstantiation occurs,” said Gregory Smith, associate director of research at Pew Research Center in Washington.
Racism has many faces says bishop after US shootings
Three mass shooting incidents in the US in the span of a week are now showing that “their emotional impact is resonating, understandably, across the nation”, said Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, chairman of the US bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism. “The effects of the evil and sin, we are all impacted by it.”
Bishop Fabre said many people think of racism as being a matter for blacks and whites, “but I think there are many, many faces to racism, so I think it resonates with the pastoral letter”, assembled by his committee and approved by the bishops last year, “when we say that this evil affects everyone”.
New Zealand 20-week abortion bill on the cards
The government of New Zealand proposed a bill last week that would lift a law stipulating that abortions before 20 weeks may only be performed for medical reasons.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the bill last Monday and was introduced to the New Zealand Parliament on August 8 for a preliminary vote.
Currently, a woman seeking an abortion must have two doctors’ referrals stating that the pregnancy poses a danger to her physical or mental health.
If the bill passed, women would be able to undergo abortions up to 20 weeks into pregnancy without a doctor’s referral or medical reason. After 20 weeks, they would need a doctor to assess that the pregnancy poses a threat to their physical or mental health.