Holy Thursday by Ermes Dovico

Religious Freedom


Left-wing tilt: a secularist threatened by jihadists
BELGIUM

Left-wing tilt: a secularist threatened by jihadists

Nadia Geerts, a Brussels-based philosophy teacher, militant atheist and radical secularist, wrote an article for Marianne magazine, expressing intellectual solidarity with Samuel Paty, a history professor beheaded by Islamists in France for having shown cartoon drawings of Mohammed in his classroom. Now, she is the one under threat. Who will the left stand with? Will a  multicultural Belgium come to her defence?


340 million Christians persecuted: Islam the prime culprit
THE OPEN DOORS REPORT

340 million Christians persecuted: Islam the prime culprit

The annual World Watch List was presented last week: in 2020 there were 340 million Christians persecuted because of their faith, 309 million of them very severely. The number of Christians killed increased by 60%: from 2,983 to 4,761, an average of 13 per day. 4,277 believers were arrested without trial and 1,710 kidnapped. Islam remains the main matrix of persecution. Religious nationalism and, especially in China, communism, also weigh heavily. North Korea is still the worst performer. Among the factors responsible for the greatest difficulties for Christians, especially where they are a minority, Open Doors identifies Covid.


Catholics and government "Fight over right to attend Mass" in Ireland
CHURCH FREEDOM

Catholics and government "Fight over right to attend Mass" in Ireland

Even if Masses in Ireland have just resumed after a six-week ban imposed by the government, some bishops and laity have accused the government of acting unconstitutionally.  To avoid further attempts to impose new closures, an appeal has been made to the High Court. The sentence is now in the waiting.


Christmas Masses under attack in Europe and USA
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Christmas Masses under attack in Europe and USA

The European Commission's anti-Covid guidelines recommend EU Member States limit the celebration of Christmas Masses with the faithful and encourage religious ceremonies on TV. At the same time Christmas masses have been prohibited in Belgium, in France the government and the bishops are engaged in a tug-of-war and in Italy an obligation to anticipate midnight masses has been imposed. This amounts to an unprecedented attack on the freedom of the Church. We now await a response from Pope Francis. Until now he has openly supported government-imposed lockdowns and his addresses are used in the United States by Jeffrey Sachs, for years one of the principal advisors of Santa Marta, to support church closures.


China shuts its doors to foreign religious
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

China shuts its doors to foreign religious

China is becoming increasingly closed, especially with regard to religions. The draft of the new bill regulating "foreign religious activities in the People's Republic of China" spells further crackdown measures. New rules make entering China  even more difficult. Whoever doesn’t respect the spirit of  “sinicization” of religions in China is treated as a spy.


North Korea: Auschwitz rebooted against Christians
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

North Korea: Auschwitz rebooted against Christians

While the West is isolated at home out of fear, Christians in North Korea prefer freedom of the soul to physical safety. A document of the Korea Future Initiative is really an interview of about a hundred former inmates of labor camps, narrating the atrocities committed against women, elderly persons and children, but also offering the response of believers, who do not fear their persecutors, before whom they pray and smile.


Only Benedict XVI defended the West
AFTER ISLAMIST ATTACKS

Only Benedict XVI defended the West

The violent Islamist attacks in France over the last few days and confirmed by the ones in Austria, constitute a broadside against the West. The Catholic Church, which doesn’t even name Islam or use Islamist, reveals its unwillingness to defend the West. Just the opposite of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.


The lives of the Nice martyrs is what can save Europe
THREE STORIES

The lives of the Nice martyrs is what can save Europe

The tears and anger in front of a mother killed while praying, a beheaded elderly woman, a man stabbed while serving God with love, serve to understand that keeping silent about the differences between the Christian God of life and the Islamic God of death is a source of conflict. Only the proclamation of the faith witnessed by these martyrs can bring peace to the world. As one wrote shortly before his death, citing Psalm 91: "I will rescue him, for he acknowledges my name... I will show him my salvation.”


Attacks in Chile “a blow to the hearts of Catholics”
INTERVIEW/BISHOP AÓS BRACO

Attacks in Chile “a blow to the hearts of Catholics”

"The burned down churches are a blow to the hearts of Catholics: protestors draw blasphemous graffiti and incite violence" the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile spoke to the Daily Compass following the Sunday fires. "It would be foolish to deny that the inspiration for these attacks on the Church and religion are the errors of our Church and the sins we have committed and are ashamed of."


Totalitarian Spain cancels Francoism, expels monks
HISTORICAL MEMORY LAW

Totalitarian Spain cancels Francoism, expels monks

Spain’s government has given the go ahead for a new “Historical Memory Law”. In Orwellian language, this means establishing a system of "democratic pedagogy" by adapting history to anti-Francoist ideology. This also means an attack on Christianity, with the expulsion of the monks from Basílica de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, a  Civil War sanctuary-mausoleum, and placing restrictions on other state cemetery chapels. Spain’s Observatory on Religious Freedom has denounced the situation to the Daily Compass as an act of “barbarism” which calls for the“bishops to take a stand.”


Abortionists, LGBT groups in Brussels move against religious freedom
EU

Abortionists, LGBT groups in Brussels move against religious freedom

The September 14 letter, addressed to EU Commissioner Margaritis Schinas and published exclusively by the Daily Compass, bears the signatures of 48 European Parliamentary Forum MEPs (including three Italians). It is proof of ongoing plotting against the confirmation of Jan Figel as Special Envoy of Religious Freedom or Belief and against EU diplomatic efforts to promote religious liberty in general. For the liberal signatories, religious freedom is an obstacle to abortion and LGBT rights and its protection should be subordinated to them and, thus, delegated to the tasks of the EU’s Special Representative for Human Rights. This is a policy position that coincides with the one expressed by Brussels last June 4 and which undermines European credibility.
- THE INTEGRAL LETTER


The cardinal tortured who opposed Vatican compromises
ANNIVERSARY

The cardinal tortured who opposed Vatican compromises

The Hungarian Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who today has been declared Venerable, opposed the Nazi regime, so he was captured, stripped, and beaten. He was then liberated by insurgent soldiers in Budapest, but he had to take refuge in the American embassy because he was also hostile to communism. When the Vatican began to make compromises with the regime, as it is doing today in China, the primate opposed it.