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Tej Francis
NAIROBI, KENYA
BISHOPS FROM KENYA, UGANDA, ETHIOPIA CALL FOR DISARMAMENT OF HERDERS
Catholic leaders in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia are calling for coordinated and peaceful disarmament in a common border region, where an estimated 8 million illegal small and light weapons can be found among the herder communities.
The border triangle is the homeland of the Turkana and the Pokot of Kenya, the Karamoja of Uganda, Daasanach of Ethiopia and Toposa of South Sudan, who have for many centuries raided each other’s cattle as part of an age-old tradition. In mid-May, the leaders converged at the St. Teresa Pastoral Center in Lodwar for the interdiocesan conference on cross-border peace and evangelization. This is a Catholic Church initiative launched in 2011.
“We will no longer remain silent. We will no longer remain indecisive, and we will no longer be fearful. We are committed to highlighting the suffering which small arms have caused in the daily lives of our people,” said the church leaders.
“Disarmament has to begin now,” they said. “Peaceful disarmament begins with the transformation of the individual and disarming the mind and the heart. It can be done in an environment of trust, collaboration and commitment,” the leaders said in a statement released after the conference.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.,
PENNSYLVANIA CATHOLIC CHURCH VANDALIZED WITH PRO-CHOICE GRAFFITI
(CNA) A Catholic church in Pennsylvania was vandalized with pro-choice graffiti over the weekend as the abortion debate escalates around the country, following the passage of a major abortion law in Alabama. Parishioners at Notre Dame de Lourdes parish in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania were greeted at Sunday Mass by messages that had been spray-painted on the church’s doors and outside walls, according to CBS Philly. A message painted in black on the front doors read: “You do not have the right to decide how others live.” Another message on the side of the church read: “#ProChoice.”
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia told CBS Philly in a statement that security footage of the incident had been found and handed over to police, who were investigating the incident. “…the parish will cooperate with law enforcement as it investigates the incident. This afternoon, parishioners successfully removed the graffiti,” the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said. The graffiti incident comes after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a bill that will outlaw nearly all abortions in the state. The law is intended to directly challenge Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared it unconstitutional for states to prohibit abortions.
WASHINGTON D.C
‘THE EUCHARIST IS ONLY IN THIS CHURCH’- HOW ONE 2019 CONVERT FOUND, AND EMBRACED, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
(CNA) While at a conference in Salt Lake City, Amez-Droz, 24, met someone who was converting to Catholicism, which surprised her, she said. A native of Switzerland, Amez-Droz said the only Catholics she knew in her home country were not very devout. “I was shocked that, clearly, he loved Christ, and I could see it,” she said. “But it just puzzled me that he was joining what I thought was a dead faith.” Amez-Droz was raised an Evangelical Christian, and said that in her youth she had no thoughts of leaving her childhood faith.
But in graduate school, she struggled. “I started really wondering about the purpose of life. It was a really rough time for me,” said Amez-Droz. She started to feel as though her life was suddenly without purpose, she said. In Salt Lake City, she decided to join her new friend for Mass – the first Catholic Mass she had ever attended. “My first thought was ‘well, it’s not as heretical as I thought it was [going to be],’” she said.
She kept in touch with her friend, and asked him questions about converting and why he was becoming Catholic. After she moved to Washington, DC, she made many Catholic friends, and noticed “how good all these people were,” and that they practiced virtue, “without having an incentive to do it.”
She initially found their virtue “annoying,” and was “really struggling” with how nice her new friends seemed to be. Still, she decided to learn more about the Catholic faith. In 2018, she entered RCIA.
The Eucharist was another major factor for Amez-Droz, and was the reason she decided to stick with Catholicism even amid the “summer of scandal” that plagued the Church. “It helped me understand how Catholics were taking it,” said Amez-Droz. “It’s true that every time I would hear ‘but where else would we go? The Eucharist is only in this Church,’ and I thought that was true.”
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