A French priest who founded an association dedicated to St Thérèse of Lisieux, was excommunicated latae sententiae for “abuse of persons and offenses against the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist”.
Bishop Jacques Habert of Bayeux and Lisieux said Fr Bruno Thévenin had been dismissed from the clerical state and banned from ministry after “extrajudicial criminal proceedings at the request of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith”. He may appeal to the dicastery but remains barred from all ministry, the bishop said.
In 2022, Bishop Habert withdrew canonical recognition from Thévenin’s Theresian Mission, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Lisieux, and decreed its suppression. That was one year after Bishop Habert took over the diocese and found “significant dysfunctions” in its management.
A diocesan spokesman said at the time there was “no question of sexual abuse within the framework of this association” and the problem concerned distinguishing “between [the] internal and external forum”.
The association promoted the sponsorship of priests or religious by families that prayed for them in the image of the Carmelite patroness of the missions. It eventually had a presence in more than 20 countries, notably in Belgium, Italy, Poland and the United States.
The Spanish health minister said the government would compile a draft register of medical professionals who object to abortion. Mónica García said this would “cover a loophole in the law” whereby most of Spain’s autonomous regions avoid legal obligations to provide abortion on the public health system.
According to recent government statistics, only two out of every 10 abortions in Spain take place in hospitals or medical centres belonging to the national health system.
“Many voices want to take Spain back to an earlier age,” said García, insisting that “the right to free, safe abortion is a fundamental right which we have won and there’s no going back. It is a challenge to enshrine this right in our public health system.”
Fr Cesar García Magán, secretary general of the Spanish bishops’ conference said: “Everyone has a right to conscientious objection and registers can be ambivalent.” He added he would support the register “if it is there to protect that fundamental right to conscientious objection”, but added that “if this is to keep a record of and control these doctors and nurses, that is a serious matter”.
Manuel Martínez-Sellés, president of the Colegio de Médicos of Madrid described the register as “a kind of blacklist”. He continued: “If a doctor for reasons of conscience does not want to conduct abortions, they should not face discrimination.” The number of abortions performed in Spain in 2023 increased by 4.8 per cent.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine gave Pope Francis a painting commemorating the Bucha Massacre at an audience at the Vatican.
They spoke for 35 minutes on 11 October, focusing on the Holy See’s mediation for Ukrainian prisoners and children held in Russia, before the president held further talks with officials at the Secretariat of State.
Writing afterwards on social media, Zelenskyy said that “the issue of captured and deported people remains incredibly painful”, while in his own statement Pope Francis said: “All nations have the right to exist in peace and security. Their territories must not be attacked, and their sovereignty must be respected and guaranteed through peace and dialogue.”
The previous day, speaking to the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Pope said he “will not let the world forget about Ukraine”. Shevchuk said his Church’s essential task was to “to resist the militarisation of religion”.
Large crowds joined “Environment Prayer Walk” against illegal gold mining in Ghana, known as “galamsey”, organised by the Archdiocese of Accra on 11 October.
Catholics carried anti-mining placards and sang Marian hymns during the walk, beginning at the Holy Spirit Cathedral and passing the capital’s key landmarks.
They presented a petition to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, before Archbishop John Bonaventure Kwofie of Accra celebrated a Mass where he urged the government to take immediate action to stop galamsey, and called on religious leaders and traditional rulers to ensure their people refrained from engaging in illegal mining.
The demonstration was part of a broader movement within Ghana opposing environmental degradation caused by illegal small-scale gold mining, which has depleted forest cover and caused water pollution. Cardinal Peter Turkson warned on Sunday that the country “risks becoming a failed state” if it cannot stop illegal mining.
Malawi’s Catholic bishops appealed for more local support for the training of priests and religious and the construction of infrastructure, as foreign aid dwindles.
“For the church to evangelise it is in need of a lot of money,” said a statement from the bishops for World Mission Sunday. “Many resources are used in training priests, sisters, brothers and other people who help in spreading the Good News.”
They emphasised the Church’s dependence on charitable support to continue its growth. “All the dioceses, institutions of the Church, even all the convents and [priests’] houses are the fruits of the mission month and the World Mission Sunday.”
The military government in Burkina Faso granted the Catholic Church legal status. The Vatican confirmed on 11 October that the junta, which seized power in 2022, had ratified an earlier agreement that came into effect five years ago.
“The Second Additional Protocol to the Agreement between the Holy See and Burkina Faso on the legal status of the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso was signed in Ouagadougou, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Burkina Faso,” said a statement from the Holy See.
It said the apostolic nuncio Archbishop Michael Crotty and the foreign minister Karamoko Jean Marie Traore signed the agreement with “regional cooperation and citizens of Burkina Faso abroad”.
The agreement followed wider efforts by the Burkinabe government to normalise its diplomatic relations, and came two years after a 2022 protocol “guaranteeing the Church the possibility to carry out her mission” under which both parties agreed “to work together for the moral, spiritual and material well-being of the human person and the common good”.
The latest agreement “further governs the procedure for issuing the certificate of legal personality in Burkina Faso law to public canonical juridical persons, thus facilitating their evangelical mission in the promotion of the common good”.
Indian police opened an investigation a Hindu nationalist politician after he demanded a DNA test of the relics of St Francis Xavier in Goa, claiming the remains are actually those of a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk.
Subhash Velingkar, from the far-right Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), also told a public meeting that the saint should no longer be revered as “Goencho Saib” or protector of Goa. Christians in the state, a former Portuguese enclave, consider the missionary its patron saint.
The RSS is a paramilitary organisation closely linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. St Francis Xavier’s relics, exposed once every 10 years at Bom Jesus Basilica in Goa, are scheduled to be displayed from 21 November until 5 January 2025.
Local reports said several complaints have been lodged with local police against Velingkar for “hurting religious feelings and insulting religious beliefs”, a crime under Indian law. After hiding for a week, Velingkar turned himself in and was released pending further investigation.
Indigenous Christians in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur voiced fears over the state government’s move to deny essential services to “unregistered” villages.
On 8 October Manipur’s Chief Minister instructed the authorities to halt water and power provided under various government welfare schemes, with reports suggesting he referred to villages in areas inhabited by the Kuki-Zo people.
“This move is yet another attempt to target indigenous Christians who are mostly from the Kuki-Zo community, living in the state’s five hilly districts,” said a Church leader, based in the state capital, Imphal.
Among the 3.2 million people in the state, 41 per cent belong to the indigenous Kuki-Zo and Meiteis peoples, the former largely Christian and living in the state’s hilly districts while the latter are largely Hindu and live in its valleys.
Manipur has suffered persistent ethnic violence since May 2023 after tribal communities protested against a High Court order granting the majority Meitei community certain benefits, including land ownership in protected areas and quotas in government jobs and college admissions.
The fighting has killed 200 people and displaced 70,000 others, while 100 villages and an estimated 400 churches have been destroyed.
The president of the Korean bishops’ Commission for Reconciliation warned that tensions between North and South Korea was at its worst in recent years. Bishop Simon Kim Ju-young of Chuncheon reported last week that “both sides view each other with a certain hostility and all channels are closed, even that of humanitarian aid, which was kept open in the past”.
North Korea cut off road and rail access to South Korea and its army announced that it would to “permanently isolate and block the southern border”, reinforcing fortifications as a “self-defence measure to prevent war”.
Bishop Ju-young said all Korean dioceses had a Commission for Reconciliation and Unification of the Korean People that prayed for peace.
Archbishop Peter Soon-Taick Chung of Seoul, who is also the apostolic administrator of Pyongyang, said he feared “many young people in the South are beginning to believe that reconciliation or reunification are not viable paths”, but he insisted that “it is appropriate to continue to dream of peaceful coexistence and to keep the light of hope burning in Korean society”.
Pax Christi International welcomed the award of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors who are also known as “Hibakusha”.
The group brings survivors together to share their testimonies of the devastation of nuclear weapons they experienced at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and demands the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons.
“One day, the atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki will no longer be among us as witnesses to history,” the Nobel committee said, praising the culture of remembrance Nihon Hidankyo serves as they pass on their message to future generations.
Pax Christi said the award brought hope for a world where there are “no more Hibakusha”. Both organisations belong to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
The Catholic Institute for Nonviolence in Rome began a series of four seminars on “The Power of Active Nonviolence”, supporting the General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality.
On 11 October, the theme was “Managing Conflict Nonviolently”, with Pat Gaffney, a vice-president of Pax Christi England and Wales, among the speakers.
“Nonviolent Defence: Beyond War and Cycles of Violence” was scheduled for 18 October, and “The Role of the Church in Nurturing a Global Nonviolent Shift” for 25 October, each streamed from Rome on Pax Christi International’s YouTube Channel on Friday lunchtimes.
Human rights activists in the Philippines urged Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, recently named a cardinal by Pope Francis, to continue his commitment to justice and to support poor communities suffering from political corruption.
The National Council of Churches in the Philippines – the largest alliance of mainline Protestant and non-Roman Catholic churches in the country – said they hoped Bishop David’s appointment would “serve as a powerful representation of the God of justice and compassion and as an inspiration all people”.
Bishop David, who heads the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, often denounced the extrajudicial killings of tens of thousands of mostly poor Filipinos from 2016 to 2022. His diocese alone suffered nearly 400 deaths in the first two years of the drug war launched by President Rodrigo Duterte. He faced death threats in 2019 and briefly went into hiding.
In a letter to the newly-appointed cardinals last week, Pope Francis said they should strive to embody attitudes attributed to St John of the Cross by the Argentine poet Francisco Luis Bernárdez: “eyes raised, hands joined, feet bare”.
A centuries-old church in the Chilean city of Iquique, on the northern coast, was destroyed by fire on 11 October.
The primarily wood-built San Francisco Church was the first Catholic church built in the country, according to the World Monuments Fund, constructed by Franciscan missionaries in the sixteenth century. It was designated a national monument by the government of Chile in 1994.
Regional officials said that there were no fatalities, and that the cause of the fire was under investigation. Videos showed its tower collapsing as 12 firefighting teams struggled to extinguish the flames.
President Nicolás Maduro declared the beginning of Christmastide in Venezuela on 1 October. During a broadcast on a government television channel, he referred to bishops as “some guys in cassocks” who dared to say “that there would be no Christmas if they didn’t decree it”.
Maduro, who was accused of fraud in the July elections, shouted during the broadcast: “No, mister in a cassock, you’re not decreeing anything here. Jesus Christ belongs to the people. Christmas belongs to the people and the people celebrate it whenever they want to celebrate their Christmas.”
Christmas trees began to appear in Caracas last week, after Maduro said the Christmas season would last until 15 January. The Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference issued a statement saying Christmas “should not be used for propaganda or particular political purposes”.
They added: “Christmas is a celebration of a universal nature that commemorates the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The manner and time of its celebration are the responsibility of the ecclesiastical authority, which ensures that the true spirit and meaning of this event of spiritual and historical richness is maintained, as it marks the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The bishops asserted that Christmas begins on 25 December and ends on 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany.
The Colombian Bishops and the Episcopal Conference of Latin America (CELAM) prepared a statement to present to the 10-day 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference – known as COP16 – meeting in Cali from 21 October.
The statement offered “joint reflections on the Church’s commitment to our Common Home” said Bishop Juan Carlos Barreto of Soacha, who heads Caritas Colombia.
COP16 will focus on countries progress in meeting targets agreed by nations at COP15 in 2022, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Diversity Framework which established goals concerning the planet’s biodiversity, most to be achieved by 2050. Pax Christi International and Columban Missionaries were among the Catholic groups set to participate.
“Columbans and the Faiths for Biodiversity network are monitoring how countries are updating their National Biodiversity Action Plans to be in line with the framework,” says Amy Echeverria, the Columban International Coordinator for Justice, Peace, and Ecology, ahead of attending the conference.
A Catholic school in Oklahoma appealed its request for state funding to the United States Supreme Court after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled such funding unconstitutional.
The St Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School claimed that the First Amendment of the US Constitution protects the right of religious individuals and organisations to participate equally in state programmes that serve the public, though Catholic schools have never received direct government aid. St Isidore’s, however, is a charter school, normally a form of public school that operates independently of local school boards.
Typically, charter schools offer specific curricula, such as in the arts or in science and engineering, and introduce a level of competition into school districts. Catholic schools are instead traditionally associated with particular territorial parish or a religious order. Most analysts expected the Supreme Court to uphold the Oklahoma court’s decision.
Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F Kennedy and matriarch of the Kennedy family, died on 10 October aged 96.
President Joe Biden called Kennedy “an American icon – a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service”. Kennedy was with her husband when he was assassinated at a Los Angeles hotel in 1968.
She raised her 11 children alone, never remarrying, and became matriarch of the Kennedy family after the death of Rose Kennedy, mother of President John F Kennedy, in 1995.
Throughout her life, Ethel Kennedy remained active in promoting gun control legislation and in human rights work. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 from President Barack Obama.
A lifelong daily communicant, Kennedy organised an annual Mass by her husband’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery on the anniversary of his death, which attracted hundreds of extended family and political friends.
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