The Catholic bishops of Nigeria are asking the President of the country to resign. They said Christians are feeling “abandoned and betrayed” after 19 people, including two priests, were killed in a church.

The bishops said: “If the President cannot keep our country safe, then he automatically loses the trust of the citizens and he should no longer continue to preside over the killing fields and mass graveyard that our country has become”.

President Muhammadu Buhari was told that “whether this failure is due to inability to perform or lack of political will, it is time for him to choose the part of honour and consider stepping aside to save the nation from total collapse”.

For more than two years the bishops have been reminding the President, who is a Muslim, to improve security in the country.

Korean summit was emotional – Bishop

Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik, of the diocese of Daejeon, South Korea, said he “was deeply moved while watching on television the meeting of the two Korean leaders. God works surprising great wonders.” He described the event as deeply emotional and brought with it an air of great optimism and hope. He said that great merit “must be attributed to President Moon, who is a Catholic, and he believed deeply in this possibility and worked hard for this result”.

‘Heaven is not boring!’

During a Mass homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis said heaven is the place of eternal joy in the face-to-face encounter with Jesus, not just some boring place as some imagine. 

“When asked where we are heading, we say, ‘Towards heaven!’ ‘So what’s heaven?’ some ask. There we begin to be unsure in our response. We don’t know how best to explain heaven. Often we picture an abstract and distant heaven… And some think: ‘But won’t it be boring there for all eternity?’ No! That is not heaven. We are on the path towards an encounter: the final meeting with Jesus. Heaven is the encounter with Jesus.”

German bishops to meet Vatican officials

A delegation of German bishops is visiting the Vatican for talks with top officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to discuss the policy of the German bishops’ conference that would allow non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive Communion under some circumstances. The German delegation will be led by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who approves of the policy, as well as Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, who criticised it.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)