What happened?
The White House has overhauled its strategy for helping persecuted Christians, promising to give money to organisations which work directly with Christians and other vulnerable minorities in the Middle East. Until now, the US State Department has given money to the UN, but vice president Mike Pence said this was ineffective, and the money would now go to “faith-based groups and private organisations to help those who are persecuted for their faith. This is the moment, now is the time.”
What aid agencies are saying
Andrew Doran, vice president of In Defense of Christians (IDC), told the National Catholic Register that Pence’s announcement was a “game changer”. Everyone working with religious organisations to defend vulnerable populations, especially those who worked with Christian groups, must feel “enormously encouraged”. An IDC report had found that at least a third of UN aid targeting Christian areas was not reaching Christians.
His enthusiasm was echoed by Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, who said the announcement was an important action against genocide. For two years, he said, the Knights had “warned that Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East have been falling through the cracks in the aid system”.
What commentators are saying
Don’t celebrate just yet, said John Allen at Crux. It remains to be seen whether the administration will follow through – and whether it can do so quickly enough. To begin with, the White House must issue detailed guidance on how the direct funding of church groups (and others) will work. “Based on church/state concerns and other issues, such a step is often a stretch for the federal bureaucracy, and this isn’t a case in which institutional inertia or ambivalence can be allowed to take hold.”
The Atlantic’s Emma Green wrote that the Trump administration “hasn’t necessarily backed its words with dollars”: former Republican congressman Frank Wolf said recently that “US government assistance has not been forthcoming to Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities”.
✣Benedict XVI ‘full of esprit’ despite black eye
What happened?
Benedict XVI met the journalist Peter Seewald and Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau, Germany, last week. They told the Vatican correspondent Edward Pentin that the Pope Emeritus was “dazzling, full of esprit” – despite a fall that had left him with a black eye. The two men were presenting Benedict XVI with a book about his life.
Why was it under-reported?
Benedict XVI lives away from the public eye and details about his fall have not been made public. Also, the timing is awkward. A week earlier Archbishop George Gänswein, the Pope Emeritus’s personal secretary, dismissed a rumour that Benedict XVI’s health was fading. He told the Austrian media outlet kath.net that a quote attributed to him – that Benedict could no longer walk or celebrate Mass – was “pure invention”. Archbishop Gänswein said he had received many messages from people worried by the rumour.
What will happen next?
Those who visit the Pope Emeritus say that, while he looks frail, his mind is sharp. The economist Karl Steininger, who attended Benedict XVI’s 90th birthday party in April, said that his “eyes sparkle on” and that “when he asked us anything, he was fully there”. Archbishop Gänswein said the Pope Emeritus no longer plays the piano so much, but listens to music more instead. Two weeks ago the former pope’s brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger, visited him. “Both had a good time,” Archbishop Gänswein said.
✣The week ahead
Next Friday a Mass will be held at Salford Cathedral to commemorate the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele. Half a million people died during the three-month battle. The Mass will be celebrated by Bishop John Arnold and marks the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the 8,000 men from the diocese who died during the war.
Today in St Peter’s Basilica the Pope will celebrate a memorial Mass for cardinals and bishops who have died in the past year. Requiem Masses for priests will be held in Birmingham next Thursday and at Westminster on Friday.
Callista Gingrich, the US’s new ambassador to the Holy See, is expected to arrive in Rome this week after being sworn in by President Donald Trump. It is not known when she will present her credentials to the Pope. Gingrich, a Catholic, was key to the conversion of her husband, Newt, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives.
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