Nigerian Cardinal John Onaiyekan, was shot at by gunmen while travelling in the country’s Edo state last week.
The cardinal, the Archbishop of Abuja, and those in the vehicle with him, were not injured in the incident that occurred on Friday. It is currently unclear who carried out the attack.
According to the Daily Trust website, the vehicle that the cardinal was travelling in was attacked by gunmen as he was returning from Benin, where he attended the 10-year anniversary of the installation of Archbishop Augustine Akubueze.
The driver said the cardinal was asleep when the attack began.
“I saw a big pothole and decided to slow down the vehicle,” he said. I would have passed the spot with speed but because the cardinal was sleeping, I decided to slow down the vehicle so as not to wake him up.”
“Suddenly, three men came out of the palm-tree plantation by the roadside and started shooting at the vehicle. I looked ahead of me and saw that two of them were firing from a distance at the vehicle and I looked behind me – another one was firing at the vehicle from behind so I decided to use reverse gear.
“Drivers of the other vehicles who saw me coming with reverse started clearing off the road and when I got to a safe distance I decided to stop and people started running towards us to see what had happened.
It was then we realised that the bullets shattered the left passenger window glass and made huge holes on the panel of the door.” Archbishop Akubueze said: “We are using this opportunity to appeal to the president to provide adequate security to the people of Edo state.”
Hans Küng ‘overjoyed’ at Pope’s reply to open letter
Theologian Fr Hans Küng has said Pope Francis replied to his proposal of an open discussion of the dogma of infallibility.
Fr Küng wrote an open letter to the Pope asking for “an open and impartial discussion on infallibility of pope and bishops”. He said the Pope replied in a letter dated March 20. Fr Küng refused to disclose the contents of the reply, except that the Pope had not “set any restrictions”. He did not say the Pope had encouraged a debate.
But in a statement published by the National Catholic Reporter, Fr Küng said he was “overjoyed” to receive a personal reply, and one that began “Lieber Mitbruder” (“Dear brother”).
Fr Küng said Francis had “clearly read the appeal … most attentively”. He added that the Pope had been “highly appreciative of the considerations that had led me to write Volume 5 of my complete works”. That volume deals specifically with infallibility, a dogma which Fr Küng challenged in the 1970s.
Fr Küng’s licence to teach Catholic theology was withdrawn in 1979. He continued at the University of Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology until 1996.
Joe Biden: Francis gave me hope
Medical research must strive to serve “higher values” such as “fraternal and selfless love”, Pope Francis said last week.
The Pope was speaking to an audience of people attending a conference on adult stem cell research. US Vice President Joe Biden, whose son died from brain cancer last year, told the summit that a private meeting with Francis “provided us with more comfort than even he, I think, will ever understand”.
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