News from around the Catholic world for the week ending 15 August.
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• Papal envoy joins persecuted Christians in Iraq as the crisis continues
• Pope Francis arrives in South Korea
• Tennessee upholds ban on same-sex marriage
• Advocacy group uses the case of baby Gammy to push for commercial surrogacy in Australia
• Caritas Australia celebrates its 50th birthday.
TRANSCRIPT
BOBBIE: Pope Francis has sent a Papal Envoy to Iraq to help support persecuted Christians in the region.
The Holy Father has named Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, as his personal envoy to work with local authorities to ensure safety for Iraqi Christians. Cardinal Filoni was previously Apostolic Nuncio to Iraq from 2001 to 2006.
In a statement, Cardinal Filoni shared Pope Francis’ desire to be in solidarity with the people of Iraq. Cardinal Filoni said that the Holy Father [quote]“would have liked to have been himself [in Iraq]amongst these poor people.”
Also in the region, current Papal Nuncio to Iraq, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, spoke to Vatican Radio about the suffering of Christians on the ground. In the interview, Archbishop Lingua highlighted the witness of the persecuted Christians to their faith.
ARCHBISHOP LINGUA: What can we hope for? I pray that the Christians who have left the villages in these circumstances do not lose their faith… They are giving us a very great testimony of their faith that they did not accept to convert to Islam – this would have saved their lives immediately. So they are giving us a great testimony of faith.
BOBBIE: Christians are currently fleeing their homes in droves as the Islamic State sweep through the region brutally killing those who refuse to convert and join them.
International leaders have acknowledged that we may be facing genocide, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week suggesting that military intervention is being considered.
Earlier this week Mr Abbott also announced that Australia will take in 4000 refugees fleeing Iraq and Syria, although this number will be taken from Australia’s existing humanitarian intake of 13,700 refugees nationally.
More on that story at Vatican Radio
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Pope Francis touched down in the South Korean capital of Seoul yesterday to commence his five-day visit to country.
The Holy Father arrived at 10:30am Thursday local time and was greeted by South Korean president Park Geun-hye with a delegation of South Korean Catholics and two North Korean defectors. Also present were families of victims of last April’s ferry disaster, which claimed over 300 lives.
Pope Francis has made the trip to the Asian nation to celebrate the 6th Asian Youth Day, to beatify 124 18th and 19th Century Korean martyrs, and to call for peace between North and South Korea, which has been officially split since 1953.
It was reported that North Korea fired three short-range rockets into the Sea of Japan shortly before Pope Francis’ landing. The North had been invited to send a delegation to attend the event, but the invitation was declined.
Pope Francis is expected to speak about reconciliation between the two nations throughout the visit, and especially at his Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul on August 18. He is also expected to meet with a group of Korean women forced in to sexual slavery during the Second World War.
This current trip marks the third papal visit to South Korea, with St John Paul II visiting the nation in 1984 and 1989.
More on that story via news.va
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The US State of Tennessee has had its ban on same-sex marriage upheld following a constitutional challenge in court early last week.
US Judge Russell Simmons of Roane County Circuit Court, Tennessee, ruled in favour of the ban on same sex marriage in a court case involving two men married in Iowa four years ago. The men, who are now seeking a divorce in Tennessee, require a brief recognition of their marriage in order to begin proceedings.
The argument used to support Judge Simmons’ decision was that “marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival for the race … the promotion of family continuity and stability is certainly a legitimate state interest.”
The decision centers on the State not recognising pre-existing same-sex marriages that have been legalised in other states.
The details of this ruling were sent to lawyers defending gay marriage in Louisiana, where district judge Martin Feldman is yet to make a decision on a similar case.
This ruling in favour of the ban follows the success of thirty-six court challenges against the ban. It is the first ban to withstand a challenge since June last year and will have an impact on similar challenges in future.
More on that story via Scotus Blog
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Australian advocacy group Surrogacy Australia has called for commercial surrogacy to be legalised in Western Australia following backlash over Gammy, the baby boy born to a Thai surrogate and abandoned by his Australian parents.
The WA 2008 Surrogacy Act is currently under its four-yearly review by the state Department of Health, with findings delayed to allow a late submission from Surrogacy Australia.
In its submission the organisation have recommended that services be established to match people with surrogates, that Australian surrogates be allowed to receive compensation, and that surrogacy is opened to same sex couples. WA’s current state laws allow for International commercial surrogacy, and altruistic surrogacy within Australia.
Mr Stephen Page, the lawyer who drafted the submission, claims that Australia’s current laws are forcing people offshore.
“Unless politicians in Perth do something, then we are going to continue to repeat the failure of our mistakes to date. We’re going to have more baby Gammy-type cases,” he said.
Liberal MPs Nick Goiran, Graham Jacobs, Peter Abetz and Frank Alban have refuted the argument in another submission, stating that commercial surrogacy exploits mother and child and should be completely banned.
“I believe that commercial surrogacy is in principle wrong,” Mr Abetz told the ABC.
“I think that is going down the wrong path as a society if children become a commodity that you can buy,” he said.
The review is expected to be completed by the end of September.
More on that story via WA Today and ABC.
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Australia’s Catholic international aid & development agency Caritas Australia is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Caritas Australia was founded in the early 1960’s by a group of lay Catholics who wanted to assist those in need overseas.
It began in 1964 as the Catholic Overseas Relief Committee, collecting funds from parishes to assist a priest working in Peru. In the same year the Newman Institute ran a Lenten appeal in Adelaide raising nearly 1000 pounds to support Indigenous communities off Bathurst Island.
Now, in 2014, Caritas Australia is part of one of the largest humanitarian networks in the world, Caritas Internationalis, which boasts 165 national organisations around the world and over a million volunteers and staff.
Caritas Australia has assisted communities in over 120 countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific.
Caritas Australia CEO Paul O’Callaghan said that Catholic schools and parishes across Australia have been instrumental in achieving significant change with partner organisations.
“For over 50 years, our volunteers, supporters, partners and staff have worked alongside some of the world’s poorest communities,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
“All human beings are part of God’s family and each of them are worthy of respect and dignity,” he said.
The story of Caritas Australia will be celebrated in a special Mass at Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney on 26 November.
More information is available at www.caritas.org.au/50years.
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Music Credit: Waking Up by Dexter Britain.
