France, Ukraine, Portugal

France: prayer vigil against blasphemous pièceA prayer vigil will take place on December 8 in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, simultaneously with and in response to the debut of the play “Gólgota Picnic” at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, ongoing until December 17. The Archdiocese of Paris and Archbishop André Vingt-Trois, President of the French Bishops’ Conference, have decided to take action against the staging of the play that is the object of vivid protests across the country, notably by France’s Catholic community. The play by director Rodrigo Garcia recalls the scandal caused by the production by Italian Romeo Castellucci, “On the Concept of the Face of the Son of God”. In explaining the decision, the Archbishop said: this play “is intentionally offensive and injurious of Christ and His suffering. We deemed it natural for Christians to be able to express their personal and ecclesial attachment to the person of Jesus through prayer and adoration of Christ through the Passion”. During the Bishops’ latest plenary meeting in Lourdes Card. Vingt-Trois had invited the ecclesial communities not to raise the tone of the polemics when addressing “blasphemous” artistic productions, so as not to be “closed within a debate whereby the Church is a minority that defends herself from a hostile plural society”. In the case of the play directed by Garcia that is being staged in Paris, the Archbishop explained that the reaction could depend “on the nature of the play and its content. And on the basis of the content that I have personally seen, I assure that it is particularly violent”.Ukraine: in remembrance of the victims of the HolodomorAt the end of November each year, Ukraine pays homage to the memory of the victims of the Holomodor, a terrible famine that caused the death of millions in the 1930s. For president Viktor Yanukovych, “the terrible years of totalitarianism have also been a spiritual catastrophe. Many churches were torn down, hundreds of thousands of farmers, workers and intellectuals were physically eliminated or deported to Gulags. No Ukrainian family was spared from suffering”. On the day of the commemoration of the victims of the Holodomor, the head of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ukraine, Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, called upon the faithful to pray for the innocent victims of the tragedy. “I call upon you to cover with your prayers all those that appreciated a piece of bread more than gold and died of starvation. At the same time, I call upon all individuals to ensure that nobody dies of hunger today. The normal Christian gesture of feeding the hungry and quenching the thirsty doesn’t go beyond our possibilities”. Holodomor (whose literal translation is “death by starvation”) was a tragedy of unprecedented proportions which took place in Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. It was caused by the Soviet government, at the time headed by Stalin. Portugal: solidarity revolution from parishes Starting with the dioceses of Beja and Aveiro, the Portuguese Church has launched a formation program directed to social-assistance workers, aimed at the creation of a social action service throughout the country’s parishes. Caritas president Eugenio Fonseca, said it is the first step of a “necessary revolution, so that Church solidarity may become the expression of the entire community”. He explained that once the formative stage is over, operators “will be available in all dioceses, to transmit their know how to the people that will create solidarity parish groups”. The new service, that involves over 4300 parishes in the country, stems from the proposal presented past September by the bishops’ Commission for Social Pastoral Care, that identified in the realm of “charismas, services and different ministries” the possibility of “providing the right answers to people’s needs” in the ongoing serious economic crisis. According to the director of the national Secretariat of social pastoral care, the existence of this kind of service in each community “will enable the harmonious integration of the intervention of the parish priest with the professional and cultural skills present in each parish for the needy, seeking better results in problem resolution”. “Instead of inventing external or superior bodies, the articulation takes place starting with the peculiar features of each parish” added Fr José Manuel Pereira de Almeida: “In addition to an updated formation, critical to the existence of workers capable of addressing this task whilst grasping the signs of the times, it is to be hoped that the social action of the Church will be rejuvenated, with the involvement of all those people who, with their specific skills, will give their contribution to the project”.