Quotes and news

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a British Cabinet ‘minister without portfolio’ and co-chair of the ruling Conservative Party, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Europe must counter the threat posed by a militant secularism that is on the rise by becoming “more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity”.

Baroness Warsi is a Muslim.

She wrote that this secularism is denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.

The minister had just led a delegation of the British government on a two-day visit to the Vatican. She said that the trip was about “recognising the deep and intrinsic role of faith here in Britain and overseas”.

Church guidelines to Mexican voters

The Archdiocese of Mexico City has issued a number of pastoral guidelines to Catholic voters in the run-up to the presidential election that will be held in July.

The guidelines urge Catholics not to “choose as a political option those who support or promote false rights or liberties that attack the teachings contained in the Holy Scriptures, tradition, and doctrine of the Church”.

The guidelines have a special word about the right to life, from the first moment of concep-tion, which is described as the foremost of all rights.

Catholics were told to be attentive to the commitment of candidates in this regard.

Obama loses Catholics

The most recent Rasmussen nationwide survey in the US found that 59 per cent of likely Catholic voters disapproved of President Barack Obama’s performance.

This presents a big change from the 2008 election position of Catholics. Exit polls had then showed that President Obama had won 54 per cent of the votes of self-identified Catholics.

The poll was conducted last week during a big controversy between the bishops and the Obama administration on mandatory coverage of contraception in all health-care programmes.

Religion back in Russia

Religious education is to become compulsory in Russian schools. Students will have to choose instruction in one of the four ‘traditional’ faiths of Russia: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism. Those who reject all four alternatives may still opt for courses on the ‘foundations of religious culture’.

This decision reverses the official policy taken during decades of official atheism.

Irish disagree over Pope

Irish Cardinal Sean Brady and Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin have taken different positions about the opportuneness of a papal visit to Dublin during the International Eucharistic Congress in June.

Mgr Brady said he still hopes Pope Benedict will travel to Dublin while Mgr Martin said the time is not ripe for a successful papal visit. Mgr Martin said “a papal visit will only have a significance when many of these issues of our past are addressed”.

Pope’s appeal for Sahel

Pope Benedict recently told members of the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel: “The Sahel was seriously threatened again in recent months by a notable decrease in food resources and by famine caused by a lack of rain and the resulting increase in desertification.”

He strongly appealed to the international community to help address the problems of poverty and malnutrition in the Sahel region where an estimated six million people live in five different countries.

He said that while Africa is often described as the continent of conflict and problems, for the Church, Africa “is the continent of hope”.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)