RUSSIA
Welcome for World Cup decision
Jonathan Luxmoore
A SENIORVatican official has welcomed the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia, despite controversy over last week’s decision by the International Federation of Football Associations (Fifa). “I think this will certainly spur ever greater national pride in a country again playing an important role not just in the political arena, but also in sport,” said Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Vatican’s nuncio in Moscow. “From an economic and social viewpoint, this decision will significantly assist the develop- ment of many regions, something very important when we bear in mind that much of the infrastructure, beginning with the roads, isn’t in the best state.” The Vatican official was speaking after the vote by Fifa to give the tournament to Russia, which beat off rival bids from Britain, Spain- Portugal and Holland-Belgium. In a Vatican Radio interview, he said the World Cup would be an “impulse for rulers” to present a new
image of Russia, which remained a “secretive” place for many Westerners. However, he added that it would also give
local Christians an opportunity “to develop and assert moral values”, while promoting closer Catholic-Orthodox relations, particu- larly in work with young people. “It will be an occasion to discover this coun-
try’s authentic values, such as its openness and hospitality –as well as its solidarity, which still exists in opposition to consumerism, materialism and individualism,” Archbishop Mennini said. Russia’s bid to host the 2018 Cup was approved in a secret ballot on 2 December to scenes of jubilation across the country, whose Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, told journal- ists in Zurich, where the announcement was made, that Russia “had everything [neces- sary]” to conduct the competition “at a very worthy level”. The controversial Fifa decision coincides with a recent upsurge in inter-denominational tensions over the government handover of a historic Catholic church and 14 Protestant places of worship in Kaliningrad to the local Orthodox diocese. Russia’s Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Council warned last week that steps could soon also be taken to stop the work of Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity because of irregular- ities in its legal status. The order was invited into Russia in 1988 by the then Communist Party general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev.
AUSTRALIA Church stands by Iraqi Christians
AUSTRALIA’S CATHOLICbishops, prompted by two of their number representing Middle Eastern Catholics, have expressed solidarity with Iraqi Christians and urged Government to do all it can to respond to the suffering of Christians and other minorities in Iraq, writes Mark Brolly. The bishops, at their plenary meeting in Sydney at the end of last month, heard a presentation on the recent Synod of the Middle East by Australia’s Melkite Catholic leader, Bishop Issam Darwish. Following the presentation and at the request of Archbishop Jibrail Kassab, Eparch of St Thomas the Apostle of Sydney of the Chaldeans, the bishops issued their statement following the murder of worshippers in the Syrian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Deliverance, Baghdad,
■HUNGARY: Hungary’s Communist strongman János Kádár, who championed atheism and repressed the Catholic Church during 32 years in power, asked to see a priest on his deathbed, according to a former colleague, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.
on 31 October. “We join in sorrow with all Iraqi people who live in Australia who mourn the deaths of loved ones,” the bishops said. The bishops also spent considerable time
on two contentious issues in the public arena: an attempt in the Federal Parliament, led by the Greens, to recognise same-sex marriages in law, and a push in the national and several state legislatures to legalise euthanasia. On same-sex marriage, the bishops pro- duced an agreed wording of a petition for parishioners in response to a motion in Federal Parliament that MPs consult constituents. And the Bishops’ Conference president, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, said an emphasis on high-quality palliative care, not euthanasia, was what was needed.
“Kádár’s wife called me:
‘My husband wants a priest’, she said,” Miklós Németh, Hungarian Prime Minister from 1988 to 1990, told the Reuters news agency. “I still remember the Catholic priest whom I found–he was a short man, and I think he was called Biro.”
The 62-year-old made the disclosure in an interview about events surrounding the 1989 collapse of Communist rule in Hungary. He said the incident occurred in late May or early June 1989, a month before Kádár died in Budapest.
IN BRIEF
Traditional marriage affirmed Pope Benedict XVI has warned that Europe would be finished if heterosexual marriage were no longer the norm. “Europe would no longer be Europe if such a basic cell of the social construct were to disappear or to be substantially changed,” the Pope said in a 2 December message to Hungary’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Gábor Gyoriványi. He said traditional marriage was being threat- ened by the increase in divorces and cohabitation as well as by “different types of unions that have no foundation in the history of European culture and law”. The Church could “not approve legislative ini- tiatives” that legitimised “alternative models of coupled life and the family”. (See Elena Curti, page 8, and News from Britain and Ireland, page 33.)
Help for flood victims
Caritas Colombia has called for solidarity with the one-and-half million affected by flooding in the South American country. Weeks of heavy rains and subsequent land- slides have killed scores and displaced thousands. Working with the National Secretariat for Social Pastoral Care of the Catholic Church, Caritas has reached at least 11,300 people in need. A state of emergency has been called in affected parts of neighbouring Venezuela.
Visitation ‘provoked hurt’ Rome must acknowledge the “depth of anger and hurt” provoked by a visitation of American nuns, the Vatican’s number two official for religious life has said. In a 6 December interview with the US’s National Catholic Reporter in Rome Archbishop Joseph Tobin, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said that he does not expect any “punitive” fallout from the visitation, and that before any decisions are made, women’s communities should have a chance to know the results and to respond.
Bishops forced into meeting The Chinese authorities forced bishops to attend this week’s meeting of the state- run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (PA), which last month ordained a bishop without Vatican approval. Clerics and civil servants taking part in the meeting in Beijing were to elect new presidents of the PA and the Council of Bishops. According to AsiaNews, some bishops and priests registered in the state-approved “open” Church and also loyal to Rome went into hiding to avoid having to par- ticipate, while others were taken to the meeting against their will.
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