Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish

CNA Staff, Nov 25, 2020 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona died Wednesday after suffering a heart attack at the age of 60. Maradona is regarded as one of the greatest soccer players of all time, and was recognized by FIFA as one of two Players of the Century. After Maradona’s death, one Argentine bishop has encouraged prayer for the athlete’s soul.

"We will pray for him, for his eternal rest, that the Lord offers him his embrace, a look of love and his mercy," Bishop Eduardo Garcia of San Justo told El1 Digital.

Maradona’s story is “an example of overcoming,” the bishop said, noting the humble circumstances of the athlete’s early life. “For many children who are in dire straits, his story lets them dream of a better future. He worked and reached important places without forgetting his roots.”

Maradona was captain of the Argentine soccer team that won the 1986 World Cup, and was a highly successful professional soccer player in Europe.

Despite his talent, substance abuse problems kept him from reaching some milestones, and kept him from playing in much of the 1994 World Cup tournament, because of a suspension from soccer.

He battled drug addiction for decades, and suffered the effects of alcohol abuse as well. In 2007, Maradona said that he had stopped drinking and had not used drugs for more than ywo years.

Bishop Garcia noted the work for the poor that occupied Maradona’s time in his later years.

Also on Wednesday, the Holy See’s press office said that Pope Francis remembered “with affection” meeting Maradona on various occasions, and had remembered the soccer superstar in prayer.

 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 25, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated Christian persecution in some places, according to a new report from the group Aid to the Church in Need International (ACN).

“The devastating and unprecedented impact of COVID-19 all over the world,” said the new ACN report, “had a direct bearing on trends concerning unjust detention.” Aid to the Church in Need International is a pontifical aid foundation with sectors in 23 countries.

A new report, released Nov. 25, focuses on the plight of Christian prisoners around the world. Titled “Set Your Captors Free,” the report details the kidnapping and detention of Christians by state and non-state actors.

“Around the world, militants, both those in sympathy with Daesh, and those with a very different outlook, including extremists from other faith traditions, target religious minorities with alarming regularity,” ACN’s report said.

Additionally, “there exists the disturbing trend of state actors unjustly detaining members of faith minorities,” the report said.  

An average of 309 Christians are “unjustly imprisoned” each month in the 50 worst-offending countries, and more than 1,000 are abducted, the report says, citing the group Open Doors. In prison they face sham trials, arbitrary detention, torture, and prison overcrowding.

When the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly through the world in the first months of 2020, state arrests of Christians fell as countries focused on combatting the pandemic, and some prisoners were released, the report said.

However, persecution of Christians increased in severity in some cases, both as the pandemic spread and as some countries reopened after lockdowns.

The spread of the virus meant that some courts shut down partially or completely, thus delaying trials for Christians languishing in prison on faith-based charges.

As churches stopped in-person religious services during lockdowns, and conducted them online, some governments have used the opportunity to increase their surveillance of Christians. For instance, footage reportedly showed police in China’s Fujian province raiding an underground church service in May, and dragging attendees out of the gathering.

States and militant groups have used local lockdowns and the global occupation with the virus, to conduct even more attacks against Christians, ACN found. In Nigeria, Fulani militants stepped up attacks Christians in their homes during lockdown.

China, for its part, increased its crackdown on underground Christian groups during the pandemic while the rest of the world was occupied with COVID, the report said.  

Once communities began to reopen after lockdowns, some governments restored their surveillance of Christian communities. In Iran, intelligence agents arrested a dozen Christians across three cities in July.

Almost one-third of arrests of Christians without charge, and for faith-based reasons, occurred in China in one 12-month period. From Nov., 2018 through Oct., 2019, Beijing imprisoned or detained without charge more than 1,100 Christians “for faith-based reasons.”

Christians face widespread kidnapping by jihadist militants in Nigeria, with more than 220 Christian captives per year. There has also been a “surge” in kidnappings of priests and religious, ACN reported.

In countries such as Pakistan and Egypt, Christian women are kidnapped and subject to forced conversions and forced marriages. In one Pakistani province, there were 1,000 cases of forced marriages of Christian and Hindu women in 2018 alone.

North Korea is known to be one of the worst persecutors of Christians, with more than 50,000 Christians imprisoned in harsh labor camps.

Eritrea, referred to by some as the “North Korea of Africa,” more than 1,000 Christians are reportedly detained and within only several months in 2019, around 300 unregistered Christians were arrested.

The report also highlights individual Christian cases, such as those of Asia Bibi who faced the death penalty in Pakistan for false blasphemy charges, and Eritrea’s Patriarch Antonios, under house arrest since 2007.

CNA Staff, Nov 25, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Kentucky’s four Catholic dioceses will not suspend public Masses despite the governor’s request that religious services be held online only until December 13. 

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) requested that houses of worship stop having in-person services in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Kentucky has been experiencing a spike in the number of cases and deaths. Beshear raised concerns that church services and related events, such as pot-lucks, could be contributing to the spread. 

Despite the request, public Masses will not be stopping in Kentucky. 

“At this time, we will not be suspending public liturgies but encourage all to act in a responsible way that respects the seriousness of this pandemic and the health and safety of all,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville in a statement on November 19. 

The Sunday obligation for Catholics to attend Mass, however, is still suspended in the state. Catholics do not have to attend Mass on Sunday if they think it is imprudent or unsafe to do so.

Kurtz said that his brother bishops in the commonwealth of Kentucky--the Dioceses of Owensboro, Covington, and Lexington--would not be suspending public Masses at this time either. 

"I join with the other three Catholic bishops of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in acknowledging the difficult circumstances Gov. Beshear is seeking to navigate, and I appreciate his concern for the common good," Kurtz said in the statement provided to WRDB News.

"The increase in cases of COVID-19 is indeed alarming and presents significant challenges,” said Kurtz, who “reiterated the importance” of following the guidelines that had been previously set by the dioceses following the resumption of public Mass.

“Our commitment to providing the opportunity to participate in the Church’s liturgies remotely will continue, as will the dispensation from the obligation to attend Mass,” said Kurtz. 

While Mass will continue to be in-person, other institutions have shut down for the time being. 

Schools in the archdiocese, both private and public, have shifted to remote learning until after the Christmas holiday. Gathering sizes for other events have been capped, and there will not be indoor dining or bars in Kentucky until mid-December. 

Other Christian groups have issued similar statements to Kurtz, saying that they will keep their congregations as safe as possible but continue to hold services in-person.

CNA Staff, Nov 25, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).-  

A ransomware attack crippled the websites of the Archdiocese of St. Louis last week, but data has not been compromised by the attack, the archdiocese told CNA. Several archdiocesan affiliated sites have been taken offline in response to the attack.

“On November 16th, our website hosting company experienced a coordinated ransomware campaign. To ensure integrity of our data, the limited number of impacted sites–including ours–have been taken offline,” the Archdiocese of St. Louis informed Catholics last week.

“Upon further investigation and out of an abundance of caution, our hosting company took down their entire system to ensure that we were not compromised. Our hosting security team are working diligently to eliminate the threat and restore our website to full capacity.”

Seven archdiocesan urls are impacted, among them archstl.org, stlreview.org, and pages for archdiocesan cemeteries and fundraising. A spokesperson for the archdiocese told CNA Tuesday “we do not have information regarding an expected timeline for the restoration of our website.”

“We have been told that none of the Archdiocese of St. Louis' information has been compromised, and the hosting company has taken down our sites to protect us,” the spokesperson added.

Ransomware is a kind of hacking measure by which websites are taken over unless a ransom is made. In some cases, hackers threaten to release confidential data gained from the attack unless the ransom is paid.

Maria Lemakis, archdiocesan multimedia manager, told CNA that because the attack happened with the company that hosts websites, a decision about whether to pay the ransom is not up to the archdiocese.

“Whether or not the ransom will be paid is at the discretion of the hosting vendor,” Lemakis explained.

 “It is our understanding that the vendor is working with federal authorities on the issue,” she added.

Denver Newsroom, Nov 25, 2020 / 12:20 pm (CNA).- A South Dakota priest has been sentenced to almost eight years in federal prison, after he was convicted of 65 felonies related to stealing donations from Catholic parishes. Ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution, the priest said he stole in part because he disagrees with Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.

The priest is also facing federal criminal charges related to child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.  

Fr. Marcin Garbacz, 42, was convicted in March of wire fraud, money laundering, and tax fraud — crimes he committed while serving as a chaplain and Catholic school teacher in the Diocese of Rapid City, between 2012 and 2018. Garbacz was ordained a priest in 2004.

Prosecutors said the priest stole more than $250,000 from parishes, spending some money on artwork, a piano, a Cadillac, liturgical items, and a $10,000 diamond ring.

In 2019, the priest was arrested at Seattle’s airport, shortly before boarding a flight to his native Poland, for which he had purchased a one-way ticket. He had more than $10,000 in cash in his possession, along with several chalices, diamonds, icons, pens, an expensive watch, along with cufflinks and other jewelery items.

He had withdrawn more than $50,000 from his bank account before the flight, according to court records.

According to prosecutors, the priest snuck into Rapid City parishes in the middle of the night to steal cash donations after Sunday Masses. He replaced the tamper-proof bags in which the cash was stored with new ones he’d purchased online, and told people that his mother sent him money each month. When he bought expensive chalices and other liturgical items, he told people they were gifts, and had false inscriptions engraved upon them as proof.

Before he was arrested, Garbacz had been suspended from ministry, apparently after he was caught stealing roughly $620 from a parish in 2018, and was convicted of misdemeanor petty theft. He was sent by the diocese for six months to a residential treatment program, but left early and then worked as a FedEx driver in Washington. He reportedly attempted to flee after becoming aware of the federal investigation against him.

At his sentencing Monday, Garbacz apologized to parishioners, and said he was angry with the Diocese of Rapid City and the Catholic Church. According to the Rapid City Journal, the priest said he was upset that Catholic doctrine considers homosexuality to be “intrinsically disordered.”

Garbacz, the Rapid City Journal reported, identifies as gay, and claims he was treated as a “second-class citizen” because of his dissent on the Church’s moral teachings.

After Garbacz was sentenced, the Diocese of Rapid City told CNA that “The diocese trusts in the judicial system and appreciates its dedication in making sure that justice is served in this case.”

Garbacz is also facing charges related to child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.

He has been indicted on sex federal charges, and is alleged to have engaged in sexual conduct with someone a boy under the age of 18 while in 2011 traveling in a foreign country. An FBI agent also discovered, while searching a thumb drive during the financial crimes investigation, that the priest was in possession of child pornography. At least one pornographic video involving a minor appears to have been produced by Garbacz, according to the Rapid City Journal.

It is not yet clear what canonical charges the priest is facing, or if he is expected to be laicized.

 

 

Rome Newsroom, Nov 25, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- On the same day that Pope Francis approved the beatification of 127 Catholics killed in Spain in hatred of the faith in the 20th century, a hashtag calling for Catholic priests to be burned was trending on Twitter in Spain.

Twitter permitted the hashtag #FuegoAlClero, meaning “Burn the Clergy,” to trend online in Spain Nov. 24, despite its message of hatred against Catholic priests. Twitter’s current user policy states that the promotion of violence on the basis of religious affiliation is not allowed on its platform.

Prominent tweets that used the hashtag included images of flames on priests’ heads and others that labeled priests as “pedophiles” and “thieves,” ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency, reported Nov. 24.

As of Nov. 25, these images of priests in flames with the hashtag #FuegoAlClero had not been removed from Twitter.

Users commented on the site that they were surprised that Twitter had not eliminated the messages in accordance with its hateful conduct policy. 

Spanish journalist Txomin Pérez Rodríguez wrote: “I thought that @TwitterEspana had put in place strict measures against posts that incite hatred. Then I see that #FuegoAlClero is TT [a Trending Topic] today and it is not clear to me that they have done something. Or do they only act against what interests them?”

 

Creía que @TwitterEspana había implantado estrictas medidas contra las publicaciones que incitan al odio.
Luego veo que #FuegoAlClero es hoy TT y no me queda nada claro que hayan hecho algo. ¿O sólo actúan contra lo que les interesa?@NathaliePicquot ... ¿por qué lo permitís?

— Txomin Pérez Rodríguez (@Txominperez) November 24, 2020  

Other Twitter users began using the hashtag #YoApoyoAlClero, which means “I support the clergy,” in response to the hateful posts.

 

Porque siempre están donde hace falta ayuda #YoApoyoAlClero pic.twitter.com/YxKh0TY0GJ

— Reyes Fdez-Villaverde (@ReyesFdez) November 24, 2020  

Some posts recalled that churches were burned and priests were executed during Spain’s Red Terror during the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939. 

On Nov. 24, Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of Fr. Juan Elias Medina and 126 companions, who were killed during the Spanish Civil War. Declared martyrs, they will now be beatified. 

Fr. Juan Elias Medina was 33 when he was imprisoned and executed in 1936. Medina, a priest of the Diocese of Córdoba, shouted “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” and forgave his executioners before he was killed.

Seventy-eight other priests from the Diocese of Córdoba were also recognized as martyrs this week, along with five seminarians, three Franciscan friars, and 40 lay Catholics who were killed for their faith in Spain in the 1930s.

Hate crimes against Christians and Catholic churches are once again on the rise in Europe. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe published data last week documenting more than 500 hate crimes against Christians in Europe in 2019.

Incidents in Spain included attacks against Catholic priests, arson attacks on Catholic churches, the destruction of images of the Virgin Mary, and the theft of consecrated Eucharistic hosts from tabernacles.

One priest was the target of an attempted physical assault while he was offering Mass April 2019. Another was punched in the face as perpetrators threatened to burn down his church in Sept. 2019.

A shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary was defecated in. The church’s walls and a statue of Jesus Christ were smeared with excrement.

A convent was the target of arson a few days after it was vandalized with paint in Sept. 2019. A statue of Jesus was set on fire in November and a church’s altar was set alight twice in two weeks among other arson attacks.

The participants in the Catholic bishops’ conference in Spain also received numerous threats of an arson attack in 2019, according to the OSCE.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Pope Francis at the Vatican last month.

In improvised remarks that were captured on video, the pope reflected on the vocation of politicians and highlighted the dangers of ideological thinking.

“It is very sad when ideologies take over the interpretation of a nation, a country, and disfigure the homeland,” he said.

Sánchez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, has previously clashed with the Church in Spain over religious instruction in schools and euthanasia, among other issues. 

Spain’s bishops have criticized the government over its efforts to remodel the education system in Spain. They argued that the Celaá Law, named after Education Minister Isabel Celaá, would undermine parental rights.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 25, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Archbishop Wilton Gregory announced in an interview yesterday that he will not deny Holy Communion to Joe Biden, and committed himself to working with the president-elect’s administration. But the soon-to-be cardinal’s pledge could put him in tension with the work of the U.S. bishops’ conference, as it tries to speak to the White House with a unified voice.

Last week, USCCB president Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles announced the formation of a special committee, tasked with coordinating the U.S. bishops’ response to, and work with, the incoming Biden administration. 

Recognizing the unique “challenges” presented by a Catholic president pledged to several policies in opposition to Church teaching, the conference under Gomez set out to ensure a collegial and consensus approach to national issues for the Church. 

But yesterday Gregory suggested he planned to dialogue directly with Biden on issues, without reference to the USCCB, raising the question: who will speak for the U.S. bishops at the White House, and with whom will President Biden choose to deal?

In his interview Tuesday, Gregory said he hopes to “discover areas where [he and Biden] can cooperate that reflect the social teachings of the Church, knowing full well that there are some areas where we won’t agree,” the very work the committee set up by Archbishop Gomez intends to do.

Gregory is not a member of the U.S. bishops' committee, but the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington is nonetheless a player: As the hometown cardinal, he may well receive a more ready audience from the president than, for example, the Archbishop of Los Angeles; especially so if he has publicly pledged to strike a balance in conversations between the Church’s support for areas of agreement with Biden, like comprehensive immigration reform, and points of opposition, like the immorality of killing unborn children.

“I hope that I don’t highlight one over the other,” Gregory said Tuesday. His stated aim of not “highlighting” one over the other itself appears to be at odds with the U.S. bishops’ official position that ending legal abortion is the “preeminent” social concern of Catholics, underlining the likely tension between Gregory’s personal contact with the incoming president and the conference’s efforts to represent to position of the bishops and Church at a national level.

As Gomez noted last week, a Catholic president committed to opposing Church teaching on a range of issues on the national stage presents a “difficult and complex situation.” It was for this reason that the conference formed its committee, to ensure coherence and collegiality in the bishops’ response. And it is for this reason that many may not warm to the idea of a soon-to-be Cardinal Gregory dialoguing on their behalf with a soon-to-be President Biden.

Gregory, who will be made a cardinal on Saturday, will be Biden’s diocesan bishop once the President-elect moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. As Washington’s archbishop, he is the local “pastor” who is responsible for sitting a Catholic like Biden down, in private, and addressing the president-elect’s various positions against Church teaching.

But, of course, as president, Biden will be more than just a local Catholic, and his actions and example are a national concern for the Catholic bishops. Gregory’s public statement could be seen by some as circumvention of efforts to work together in dealing with Biden and his administration.

While Gregory has every proper right to “dialogue” with an individual Catholic in his diocese about his individual status, it is less clear that the Archbishop of Washington is ex officio empowered to bargain with the head of state on behalf of the Church across the country. 

This tension is nothing new. The USCCB has in the past run into similar tensions with Washington’s archbishops over the White House. Those tensions have caused confusion. But since Biden is a Catholic, and the issues pertain not only to policy, but to pastoral decision-making, the issue could become more complex in a Biden administration.

While Gregory is Biden’s local bishop and has personal concern for Biden’s personal situation, it is the bishops’ conference that is charged with articulating the corporate voice of the hierarchy on Biden’s stances abortion, the Equality Act, and the HHS mandate as policy.

“These policies pose a serious threat to the common good, whenever any politician supports them,” conference president Archbishop Jose Gomez told the U.S. bishops on Nov. 17. “We have long opposed these policies strongly, and we will continue to do so.”

“But when politicians who profess the Catholic faith support them, there are additional problems. Among other things, it creates confusion among the faithful about what the Church actually teaches on these questions.”

Gregory, however, struck a markedly different tone yesterday, saying that there was no confusion among “informed Catholics” about the Church’s teaching on life issues.

“It’s not a matter of confusion,” Gregory said. “On my part, it’s a matter of the responsibility that I have as the archbishop to be engaged and to be in dialogue with him, even in those areas where we obviously have some differences.”

Many of his brother bishops would likely point out to Gregory that the confusion among “informed Catholics” like Biden is not about what the Church teaches, but whether it matters when they publicly and consistently dissent from it – and how the bishops should respond when a Catholic uses the machinery of government to threaten Catholic institutions and values, and the broader common good.

At the height of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger pointedly asked “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” to highlight the confusion that results from the absence of a common voice.

In theory, if the White House wants to “speak to the Catholic Church” it could – arguably should – call Gomez, who is the bishops’ elected president. But if Biden doesn’t like what he hears, Gregory’s is another number he might call.

CNA Staff, Nov 25, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Arkansas lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban nearly all abortions in the state in what lawmakers and pro-life advocates hope will serve as a new challenge to Roe v. Wade.

On Nov. 18, State Sen. Jason Rapert (R) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R) introduced Senate Bill 6, to create the Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act. The bill criminalizes abortions except when done to save the life of the mother, but does not carry charges or convictions for mothers of unlawfully aborted children.

Doctors who perform an unlawful abortion would commit a felony punishable by a fine of up to $100,000, or up to ten years in prison.

According to KUAR, the bill will be considered during the legislature’s January session.

Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas-based Family Council, praised the bill in a statement this week.

“Many people have been saying for almost 50 years that abortion should be illegal. The time has come for us to make it so,” Cox stated.

“This is an opportunity for Arkansans to be the real leader in the effort to end abortion in America,” he said.

The proposed bill also allows for the use of emergency contraceptives if a pregnancy has not yet been determined.

A federal appeals court upheld other Arkansas state abortion restrictions in August. The Eighth Circuit court allowed a 2017 state law to go into effect, which banned sex-selective abortions and the “dilation and evacuation” abortion method used in the second trimester.

Senate Bill 6 is not expected to survive in court—a similar measure in Alabama was struck down by a federal district court in Oct., 2019.

Nevertheless, Arkansas is also seeking to force a reconsideration of Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court. The state has already passed a law outlawing abortion if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, a “trigger ban” that has also been adopted by several other states. 

“It is time for the United States Supreme Court to redress and correct the grave injustice and the crime against humanity which is being perpetuated by their decisions in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” states one of the findings in the bill.

“New scientific advances have demonstrated since 1973 that life begins at the moment of conception and the child in a woman's womb is a human being.”

Arkansas and other states have passed various abortion restrictions in recent years. According to the Guttmacher Institute, five states in 2019 passed “heartbeat” bills, or bans on abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected. Other states, such as Missouri, have enacted abortion bans at different stages in pregnancy.

CNA Staff, Nov 25, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- A Swiss Catholic diocese that elects its own bishop from a shortlist drawn up by the Holy See has rejected all three candidates proposed by Pope Francis, according to local media. 

The Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported that the cathedral chapter of the Diocese of Chur failed Monday to choose a new bishop from the pope’s list. 

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, said it was unable to confirm reports that the cathedral chapter deemed the three candidates unsuitable. But it said that sources in the diocese accused other Swiss dioceses of attempting to interfere in the election of a new bishop.

Pope Pius XII established the present rules for the selection of bishops in Chur diocese in the 1948 decree “Etsi salva,” which accorded the cathedral chapter the privilege of electing a bishop from among three priests proposed by the Holy See. 

The 22 members of the cathedral chapter were due to elect a successor to Bishop Vitus Huonder, who retired in May 2019, on Nov. 23. The list of candidates was supposed to remain secret, but local media reported that the three people proposed for the vacant see were Msgr. Joseph Bonnemain, 72, a former episcopal vicar of the diocese, Abbot Vigeli Monn von Disentis, 55, and Abbot Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, 61, the former Cistercian abbot of Hauterive and current General Abbot of the Cistercian order.

Observers noted that Bonnemain, a member of Opus Dei, was the only candidate with a direct connection to the ancient diocese, which today covers seven of the 26 cantons of Switzerland, including the canton of Zürich. But at 72, Bonnemain could only serve for three years before reaching the age at which bishops must tender their resignations to the pope.

CNA Deutsch reported that Bonnemain was seen as a supporter of greater independence from Rome for the local church and as an advocate of the church tax system, which is controversial within the diocese. 

According to CNA Deutsch, a source in the diocese familiar with the process said that the cathedral chapter saw the list of three candidates as an “attempt at interference” by the neighboring dioceses of Basel and St. Gallen, as well as the abbot of Einsiedeln, in the canton of Schwyz.

CNA Deutsch quoted an insider as saying that the three names indicated that “the voice of the diocese of Chur, which has previously deviated from the social mainstream, is being silenced” -- a reference to the diocese’s reputation as a bastion of conservative Catholicism. 

A spokesman for Chur diocese declined to comment. 

Vatican City, Nov 25, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has written a note to women in his homeland who asked him to help make known their opposition to a bill to legalize abortion introduced to the legislature by Argentina’s president last week.

Eight women signed a Nov. 18 letter to Pope Francis expressing fear that the abortion bill targets poor women and asking him “to help us by making our voice heard.”

The Argentine daily La Nacion published Nov. 24 the full letter of the women, together with the pope’s Nov. 22 response, which was sent through the national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires, Victoria Morales Gorleri.

In the handwritten note, Pope Francis said that abortion “is not a primarily religious issue but one of human ethics, prior to any religious confession.”

“Is it fair to eliminate a human life to solve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to solve a problem?” he said.

He expressed his gratitude for their letter and said they were women “who know what life is.”

“The country is proud to have such women,” he added. “Please tell them for me that I admire their work and their testimony; that I thank them from the bottom of my heart for what they do, and that they keep going,” he said.

Fulfilling a presidential campaign promise, Argentine president Alberto Fernández introduced a bill to legalize abortion into the country’s legislature Nov. 17. The bill is expected to be debated in December.

In their letter to Pope Francis, the Argentine women, who come from three shanty towns in Buenos Aires, said that the introduction of the bill “once again puts us on the alarm about the future of our families.” 

They noted that they began to meet in 2018 amid a national debate to legalize abortion. The women organized demonstrations, made statements to congress, and conducted surveys among their neighbors with results of “more than 80%” opposing abortion.

“Today we are women who work side by side to take care of the lives of many neighbors: the baby that is in gestation and her mother, as well as the one who was born is among us and needs help,” they said.

The women told Pope Francis about being filled with “cold terror” after the abortion bill was introduced to the legislature last week, “just thinking that this project is aimed at adolescents in our neighborhoods.”

“Not so much because in the villa [shanty town] culture abortion is thought of as a solution to an unexpected pregnancy (Your Holiness knows well our way of assuming motherhood between aunts, grandmothers and neighbors),” the women wrote, “but because [the law] is oriented to cultivate the idea that abortion is one more possibility within the range of contraceptive methods and that even the main users must be poor women.”

“This is why we turn to Your Holiness,” they said, “with the desire to ask you to help us express to public opinion that we feel imprisoned in a situation where our own family, our adolescent daughters and future generations are compromised with the idea that our life is the unwanted one and that we do not have the right to have children because we are poor.”

Fernández said Nov. 22 that he hoped Pope Francis would not be angry because of his introduction of the bill to legalize abortion. 

Speaking to the Argentine television program Corea del Centro, Fernández, a Catholic, argued that he had to introduce the bill to solve “a public health problem in Argentina.”

The president’s reference to a public health crisis seemed to refer to unsubstantiated claims from abortion advocates in the country, who claim that women in Argentina die frequently from so-called “clandestine” or unsafe illegal abortions in the country. In a Nov. 12 interview, Bishop Alberto Bochatey, who heads the Argentine bishops’ conference healthcare ministry, challenged those assertions.

When asked if the pope would be angry about the initiative, Fernández replied: “I hope not, because he knows how much I admire him, how much I value him and I hope he understands that I have to solve a public health problem in Argentina.”