Cardinal Joseph Zen Highlighting stories from around the world
The Orthodox Churches’ ‘Vatican II’ is imminent, a leading Orthodox cleric has said.
The ‘Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, drawing together the heads of the world’s 14 independent Orthodox Churches, will be held in Crete between June 16 and 27 after plans that have been underway since 1961.
The Bulgarian and Antiochene churches have talked of boycotting the council, leading the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, traditionally the ‘first among equals’ in the Orthodox world, to issue a June 6 call to all Orthodox leaders to show up and to uphold rules for the meeting agreed upon in January 2016.
According to Rev. John Chryssavgis, archdeacon and theological adviser to Constantinople’s Patriarch Bartholomew, the summit is going ahead no matter what.
“The council is still on,” Rev. Chryssavgis said in an interview ahead of his departure for Crete where he will serve on the drafting committee for the council’s first document, maintaining that, “If one or more Churches don’t attend, all the decisions made will still hold and be binding for all Orthodox Churches.”
Impact
Expressing a hope that the council would have an impact on Orthodoxy similar to that of Vatican II on Catholicism – especially in the press for unity within Orthodoxy and also with other Churches and the wider world, Rev. Chryssavgis conceded that “there are probably more differences than similarities” between the two councils.
Recognising that “unity is an objective, not a given”, Rev. Chryssavgis said, “It’s something we aspire to. It may be there spiritually and liturgically and sacramentally, but to make it visible is hard, painful, slow work and it takes time.”
In the meantime, he said, “We’re meeting precisely because we have differences. If there were no differences, what would be the point?”
Cardinal remembers Chinese victims
The victims of Chinese government oppression should not be forgotten, Hong Kong’s archbishop emeritus Cardinal Joseph Zen (pictured) has said.
Speaking before hundreds of Catholics gathered at the city’s Victoria Park before a candlelight vigil, the cardinal appealed to those gathered to remember the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, saying, “Do not forget the victims of the June 4 incident and their families; it is important to remember history and keep the memory alive.”
Maintaining that “the June 4 incident has not passed”, the cardinal said: “History has to be passed onto the younger generations. Until today, many people in mainland China still suffer from suppression, forced disappearance or ‘forced suicide’.”
He said even those who do not want to identify with the mainland Chinese should recognise the oppression that is “all the fault of a China-controlled system”.
New legislation threatens Catholic hospitals in Canada
The head of the Canadian bishops’ conference has warned that new assisted suicide legislation could lead to Catholic-run hospitals having to close.
The Canadian House of Commons passed Bill C-14, legalising physician-aided suicide for mentally competent adults with serious and incurable illnesses, by a vote of 186-137.
Permitting doctors and nurses to cause or facilitate the deaths of consenting, qualified patients without risk of criminal charges, the law does not currently allow assisted suicide for “mature minors” or patients with degenerative diseases such as dementia, though these issues will be revisited in coming months.
Hamilton, Ontario’s Bishop Douglas Crosby, said that the bill’s failure to provide explicit protection for health care providers could “potentially force the closure of hospitals operated under religious auspices, most of which are Catholic”.
Adding that the country’s bishops “absolutely” and “categorically” object to the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide, he told a parliamentary committee that “Bill C-14, no matter how it may be amended, is an affront to human dignity, an erosion of human solidarity and a danger to all vulnerable persons”.
Relic stolen from German cathedral
A relic of St John Paul II has been stolen from Cologne cathedral. A piece of cloth with a drop of the late Pope’s blood was reported missing by a tourist after being stolen on Sunday, June 5 from the city’s High Cathedral of St Peter.
The relic, present in the cathedral since 2013, had been intended as a reminder of the saint’s visit to the cathedral in 1980. It was kept in a glass capsule encased in a 40cm silver-plated bronze statue showing the saint holding a crucifix staff at the cathedral doors.
The cloth was a fragment of the cassock the Pope had been wearing on May 13, 1981 when he was shot in an assassination attempt.
“The material value is very low, but the non-material loss is much greater,” said cathedral provost, Fr Gerd Bachner, appealing for the relic’s return.
Myanmar military hamper progress
The new government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, is working for religious harmony but being frustrated in its attempts by the country’s military, Yangon’s Cardinal Charles Bo has said.
Measures planned by the government have two aims, according to the cardinal, who said in an interview that “one is to promote living harmoniously among religions, and the second is to take effective action against those who try to disturb harmony”.
Maintaining that the government “needs to buy time and room to settle tensions”, the cardinal said he was “sceptical about the contribution of the military and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)”.
The country’s previous military-backed government enacted laws “to protect race and religion” under pressure to regulate polygamy and conversions, targeting the Muslim minority.
In 2012, at least 300 people were killed and 140,000 displaced when sectarian violence broke out in the Buddhist-majority nation.
Brexit could cost aid agencies in Britain
European funding for UK-based Catholic aid agencies could be withdrawn following a British vote to leave the EU, an English bishop has said.
Birmingham’s auxiliary bishop William Kenney said groups such as CAFOD, the overseas aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and SCIAF, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, would lose grants following a June 23 ‘Brexit’ vote.
“Caritas Europa, to the best of my knowledge, always negotiates for funding from the EU, and the UK, should it decide to leave, will be outside of that, and it won’t get any of that any longer,” he said in an interview.
“In that sense it would no doubt affect CAFOD and others, but to what extent I don’t know,” said the bishop, who is the English and Welsh bishops’ spokesman for European affairs and a former president of Caritas Europa.
Explaining that he would prefer the UK to remain in a reformed EU, Dr Kenney said while the EU needs reform, “we have got to reform every organisation from the inside; you will never reform it from outside”.
Vatican opens new office for laity
A new Vatican office for laity, family and life will begin operating on September 1, the Holy See has announced.
Publishing the new office’s statutes on June 4, a Vatican spokesman explained that the office would be responsible “for the promotion of the life and apostolate of the lay faithful, for the pastoral care of the family and its mission according to God’s plan and for the protection and support of human life”.
Although Pope Francis has not named the new officers of the expanded office, the new congregation’s statutes specify that it will be headed by a cardinal or a bishop, and will have a secretary “who may be a layperson” and three undersecretaries who will be laypeople and who will lead the congregation’s three separate sections.