Bishop Luis Quinteiro
Photo: SANTI M. AMIL Migrants ‘enrich us’ and are ‘not a danger’ – bishop
The head of the migration commission for the Bishop Luis Quinteiro emphasised that love of neighbour is essential for Christians, and this includes care for migrants and refugees.
“We don’t love God if we don’t love our brothers,” stressed Bishop Luis Quinteiro of Tuy-Vigo in a presentation on the bishops’ preparations for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
Bishop Quinteiro called migration “a decisive issue” and said he hopes that the World Day of Migrants and Refugees will help remind people that foreigners are “not a danger, but help to enrich us”.
Miscarried children registration bill gains support
The Panamanian bishops expressed their support last week for a bill that would allow parents to register their children who were miscarried, as this would help “the parents alleviate the pain and make more bearable their mourning over the loss” of their baby.
The bishops made the statement in a communiqué titled “The right to registration of identity of the child in the womb” regarding Bill 18 on “Identity of child who was miscarried”.
This law would create at the national level “a book of deceased persons who were conceived but not born” and would amend Article 60 of the Civil Registry to include “those that occur in the mother’s womb whatever the cause of death, gestational age, or weight that it had at the moment of death”.
Cardinal Dolan slams online money scam in his name
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York issued a statement last week clarifying that he will not and has never used social media to privately solicit donations. The cardinal made the statement in response to an online scam operation being conducted using his name to solicit funds.
“I’ve heard from some of you you’ve received Facebook or Twitter messages from an account pretending to be me,” said the archbishop on Twitter. “Please know I will never reach out privately on social media to ask for donations.”
Cardinal Dolan encouraged anyone who had been asked to donate money by an account purporting to be him on Twitter or Facebook to report it to the archdiocese.
Theologian backs out of German synodal path
A member of the International Theological Commission has announced that she is no longer available to participate in the “binding synodal path” undertaken by the bishops’ conference of Germany. Marianne Schlosser, a member of the International Theological Commission, cited concerns over both the approach and methodology of the “synodal path” when she announced that she could no longer participate.
Saying she could not identify with the intermediate report of the preparatory group, Schlosser raised a number of issues, in particular identifying a “fixation on ordination” of women.
This “fixation” was neither theologically and historically nor pastorally and spiritually justified, she told news agency KNA.
One-year anniversary since priest kidnapping in Niger
One year ago, Fr Luigi Macalli was abducted in the middle of the night, from his parish Church in Niger. The priest remains missing, and his friends and family say they have no idea where he is.
“We commemorate the first anniversary of the abduction of our Italian SMA confrere, Fr Pier Luigi Maccalli,” the Society of African Missions, Fr Macalli’s religious community, posted online last Tuesday.
“It is a sad day for the Society of African Missions, for his missionary brothers, his family and especially for the people of Niger whom Fr Luigi served with great faithfulness and love.” Fr Macalli was kidnapped from his parish in remote Bomanga, near the border between Niger and Burkina Faso, in western Africa.