News from the Holy See News from the Holy See
Christus Rex Information Service
"1. John Paul II's pastoral visit to Colle di Val d'Elsa and Siena programmed for March 19, has been postponed to Saturday, March 30, the eve of Palm Sunday.
"2. The Wednesday, March 20, General Audience: the Pope will greet and bless the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square from the window of his study.
"3. Due to the weather forecasts, the ceremony for the Beatification of the Servants of God Daniele Comboni and Guido Maria Conforti will be held tomorrow in the Vatican Basilica and not in St. Peter's Square. The Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State. Depending on the doctor's opinion, it is hoped that the Holy Father will go down to the Basilica for the moment of the Beatification Rite itself".
At the end of this statement, Navarro-Valls added a short note giving the history of the beatification rite, of which we offer excerpts:
The first solemn beatification celebrated in St. Peter's was that of Francesco di Sales, beatified by Pope Alexander VII on January 8, 1662.
Up to 1969, the rite took place in two parts: in the morning, the Beatification Brief was solemnly made public, after which the image of the new Blessed was uncovered above the altar of the Chair of Peter and the Te Deum was sung: this was followed by a Pontifical Mass at the Altar of the Chair officiated by the Chapter of St. Peter's.
This was the rite of Beatification properly called. In the afternoon, the pope descended to the basilica to venerate the Blessed and took part in a short function with the Eucharistic Blessing to honour the Blessed.
A radical transformation in the rite of Beatification took place recently, during Paul VI's pontificate, with the unification of the two moments in one solemn Eucharistic liturgy and the Pope presiding personally. This formula continues today.
"The texts for the 1996 Via Crucis have been composed by Cardinal Vinko Pulkic, Archbishop of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo). The texts follow the traditional outline. The meditations reflect a dramatic experience of our times: Christ's passion is mysteriously prolonged in the fratricidal wars and racial conflicts which disseminate death and offend man's dignity".
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II is recovering from a "digestive" problem and still needs a few more days rest, the Vatican said Friday, adding that the pontiff's condition was improving.
But the brief statement did not specify the pope's illness, which struck him Tuesday night and has forced him to cancel all public engagements so far this week. It is the latest in a series of ailments in recent years that have raised concerns over the 75-year-old pope's overall health.
The Vatican said it would decide Saturday whether the pope would go ahead with his next public activities: a beatification ceremony on Sunday and a pastoral visit to the Tuscan town of Siena on Tuesday.
John Paul canceled a general audience Wednesday after coming down with a fever of about 100 degrees.
His temperature was back to normal Friday morning, when the pope celebrated a private Mass, Navarro said. Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro said the pope was taking very little medicine and eating lightly.
The pope's health has been a subject of particular attention since Christmas Day, when an illness forced him to halt his holiday greetings before a worldwide television audience. The Vatican said the pontiff was suffering from influenza and food poisoning.
John Paul underwent surgery in July 1992 for removal of what the Vatican said was a benign tumor in his bowel. In April 1994, he broke his right leg when he slipped in his bathroom, an injury that forced him to delay a trip to the United States.
HAVANA (Mar 16, 1996 12:51 p.m. EST) - Cuba's Roman Catholic bishops on Saturday strongly criticised the shooting down of two small private U.S. planes last month, saying it was an "excessive and violent" response even if the exile group that operated the aircraft had been acting imprudently.
A statement issued by the bishops said the effect of Cuba's downing of the planes on Feb. 24 was "destructive for those who believe in moderation as a solution to crises."
The statement also regretted that authorities had thwarted a planned meeting last month by a coalition of dissident groups, Concilio Cubano, by detaining many would-be participants.
But the bishops also criticised legislation approved last Tuesday by President Bill Clinton to tighten the longstanding U.S. embargo against communist-ruled Cuba. The move was part of Washington's response to the plane downings.
Situations such as the current one favoured the most intransigent positions both in Cuba and the United States, and called into play old Cold War vocabulary, the bishops said.
Their statement, issued after a Church meeting and the latest in a series of critical comments by the Catholic Church over the past two years, described the attack on the planes and the thwarting of the Concilio Cubano meeting, planned for Feb. 24, as "sad events."
The downing of the planes, operated by Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, was "all the more lamentable since it included the deaths of the four crew," it said.
"While the repeated air incursions may have been imprudent and may have increased tensions, the reply was excessive and violent and its effects destructive for those who believe in moderation as a solution to crises," the bishops said.
Cuba has said it shot down the planes in legitimate defence of its airspace, and following repeated violations of its territory by Brothers to the Rescue.
On the Concilio Cubano meeting, the bishops said they were concerned to promote dialogue. "The common good of our nation is reached with the participation of everyone," they said.
"The contribution of different ideas and initiatives constitutes a richness and is a recognised right of all citizens," they added.
More than 50 dissidents were taken in for questioning ahead of the Feb. 24 meeting. Dissident sources said this week that nine people were still being detained.
Havana has argued its one-party system allows for plenty of debate and views the island's scattering of small human rights and opposition groups as illegal. In recent weeks, Cuban authorities have repeatedly charged that dissident groups are fostered and encouraged by the United States.
The Catholic bishops, who are led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, said the new U.S. legislation against Cuba, which targets third country firms doing business on the island, risked increasing the suffering of the Cuban people as well as lessening the chance of better relations.
"We reiterate our rejection of any toughening of economic measures against our country," the statement said.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (Mar 16, 1996 4:33 p.m. EST) -- Thousands of southern Sudanese children, captured by northern Arabs in Sudan's long running civil war, have been sold into slavery or forced to convert to Islam, according to clandestine Christian groups working for their release.
According to documents obtained by The Times, and interviews with victims of slavery, the practice has been quietly condoned by the Islamic regime in Khartoum.
Most of the slave children come from the Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk tribes, nomadic pastoralists who have been traded for centuries as slaves by their northern neighbours. But since the Khartoum regime armed ethnic Arab tribes like the Bagara of Kordofan and Dhafur, the practice of slavery has increased dramatically. The Nuba from central Sudan and the Toposa from the remote south close to Kenya have also fallen victim to the trade in human beings.
Using a network of undercover Dinka chiefs posing as labourers in Kordofan and neighbouring Dharfur provinces, the church groups have managed to smuggle 1,000 children away from their "owners" and reunited them with their parents. The undercover agents against slavery said that they estimated at least 3,000 other children remain to be released.
"The slavery is obviously racially based. Black people are considered slaves by this regime, whatever its claims to adhere to the Koran's teachings on the equality of men," said a cleric behind the anti-slavery operation.
Testimony from southerners in Juba, close to the border with Uganda, shows that while cargoes of arms head south as part of Khartoum's war efforts, barges and planes return to the north carrying children. Those like "Sarah," taken by officers, end up as unpaid domestic workers.
"I am well treated here," she said. "I look after the officer's children, and they feed me every day." Others have been found in Wad-el-Hanan village, 200 miles southeast of the capital. They are well fed, taught the Koran, but drained of a pint of blood each week which is then sent to the front line.
The older children, under cover operators said, were given weapons training and sent to fight against their Christian and animist tribesmen in the south.
This week a church group has sent a team of lawyers and undercover workers to try to rescue 21 children. whose lives are much worse. They have been found working in fields owned by Arab landlords after being sold into slavery by the Bagara in South Dharfur.
In addition, a lawyer has been hired to sue for the release of Abuk, 14. She was captured from her parents in South Dharfur four years ago and sold to a man called Ali.
"He treated her brutally and she managed to run away. She was taken in by another Arab, called Ahmed in Fardos -- a small village close to el-Fasher, capital of the province. He took over ownership of the child," said her case worker.
Abuk's new owner was tracked down by the man who bought her. The two quarreled, and then took the case to their chief. The elderly local leader referred Abuk and her rival owners to the police, who demanded bribes. They appealed to the local Sharia court which, rather than end Abuk's nightmare, opened another chapter of horrors.
Having been converted to Islam by her first owner, Abuk is now called Amasha Ali. The court has ruled that she cannot therefore be released into the care of "infidel" Christians, even if they are her parents.
Treated with as little regard as an animal, someone has also raped Abuk, who is now four months pregnant.
"Her parents are desperate, and so are we. We are having to fight in the courts for the freedom of a girl kidnapped from her own parents," said her case worker.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Mar 16, 1996 4:33 p.m. EST) - The head of Ireland's Roman Catholic Church said Saturday that Irish Republican Army guerrillas would be shunned forever if they did not end a new anti-British onslaught.
Cardinal Cahal Daly, in one of his strongest denunciations of IRA violence, gave the warning as a furious row hit the fragile Northern Ireland peace process.
Protestant Unionists, who favor retaining links between the province and Britain, accused London of relaxing pressure on the IRA for speedy disarmament at the start of June peace talks.
Daly said Irish nationalist and U.S. support for a seat at the peace talks for Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, had been based on its renunciation of the violence that has riven the province for a quarter-century.
It still depended on the renewal of a 17-month truce that the IRA, which wants to end British rule in Northern Ireland, broke with a wave of London bombings which began on February 9, Daly said.
"That support will disappear totally, and perhaps irreparably, if the cessation of violence were seen to be definitively at an end," he said.
"If that support is lost, republicans will once more be isolated, wandering alone in a political wilderness, talking only to themselves," Daly said in an address in the central English city of Coventry.
Daly, the leader of four million Catholics in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, was speaking on the eve of St Patrick's Day. St Patrick is Ireland's patron saint.
Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring added his voice to the calls for a renewed cease-fire when he spoke at a St Patrick's Day Ball at the Irish Club in London.
Britain and Ireland had important roles to play, he said.
"The other essential ingredient of this St Patrick's Day is that the IRA must respond now to the demand of the Irish people and the friends of Ireland everywhere -- that they restore the cessation of violence."
Britain and Ireland have named June 10 as the start of all-party peace talks on the British province's future but IRA commanders have resisted intense pressure from London, Dublin and Washington to restore their cease-fire of September 1, 1994.
The IRA resumed hostilities last month, citing frustration at the failure to start full-scale peace talks.
Unionists said Saturday that the biggest stumbling block to such talks -- Britain's insistence that guerrillas hand over their weapons beforehand -- appeared to have slipped down the agenda.
The British and Irish governments proposed in a consultation document published Saturday that as well as tackling the disarmament question, parties should draw up "a comprehensive agenda" for the June talks.
Irate Unionists argued this would tie them to discussing the future of British rule with republicans while the vexed question of the IRA handing over its arms remained unresolved.
The Ulster Unionist Party, the biggest group supporting continued rule from Britain, accused London of backtracking from the position that arms "decommissioning" should top the agenda at the June talks.
KIEV, Ukraine (Mar 15, 1996 4:09 p.m. EST) - President Leonid Kuchma pledged Friday to help settle conflicts between two rival Orthodox churches in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine and rejected calls for the establishment of a state church.
Ukraine's 35 million Orthodox faithful remain gripped in a struggle between the long-established church subservient to Moscow and a breakaway branch created after the collapse of Soviet rule but unrecognized by the world Orthodox movement.
The dispute re-entered the spotlight this month when the Russian church suspended ties with Orthodox leaders in Istanbul to denounce recognition extended to another church breaking free from Moscow's control - in the Baltic state of Estonia.
"Appeals are again being heard for the government to set down a policy on religion," Kuchma told a gathering of leaders of all confessions in Ukraine.
"Behind this are attempts to press for a state church, to create divisions between one church that is ours and another that is alien. Our policy is to create equal conditions for all churches and ensure peace between all confessions."
Ukraine's first post-Soviet president Leonid Kravchuk backed the breakaway church as an attribute of the country's newly-won independence. But Kuchma has enraged nationalist politicians by refusing to give the church special status.
His government rejected the church's demands last year to bury its patriarch inside Kiev's most sacred cathedral, prompting mourners to lower the coffin into a hole smashed in the pavement outside. It remains there, by a bus stop.
Government officials told Friday's gathering that disputes between the two churches had sparked periodic clashes over the past four years in 300 towns and villages throughout Ukraine.
Most disputes center on property - monasteries and cathedrals revered by all Orthodox believers in Ukraine, the starting point in the 10th century for the faith in the region. The pro-Moscow church retains the allegiance of about three times as many parishes as the breakaway wing.
Patriarch Filaret of the breakaway church urged Kuchma to take measures to make religion more a part of day-to-day life in post-Soviet Ukraine.
"In the constitution, there must be no reference separating the church from schools," he said. "Our children, whether they like it or not, must undergo religious education."
In a rambling speech, he also denounced an influx of foreign, mainly Protestant, missionaries, and television programs "continuously showing an invitation to lust."
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