Comece: appeal to the EU for Iraqi refugeesAfter the appeal made last November by the Bishops of Comece (Commission of the EU Bishops Conferences) for the Iraqi refugees, and after the recent attacks in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, the president of Comece, mgr. Adrianus van Luyn, wrote to the Slovenian presidency of the EU, asking it to put the matter on the agenda of the next meeting of the Council for Justice and Internal Affairs. In a letter published yesterday night, mgr. Van Luyn reminds Dragutin Mate, the Slovenian Minister of Internal Affairs and president of the Council for Justice and Internal Affairs, “of the fate of the 4.4 million Iraqis who have been forced to leave their country”, “the most serious humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East since 1948”, according to the Unhcr (UN High Commission for the Refugees). Of these refugees, “the non-Muslims (Christians, Mandeans and Yazites) are especially vulnerable”, because “they are considered and treated as irreligious by part of the Muslim population in the countries where they have taken refuge (Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey)”.”Before such a inhuman situation, destination countries overwhelmed by the arrivals and the risk of a proliferation of illegal immigration chains”, mgr. Van Luyn asks “the EU to take action”. “As when the Vietnamese boat-people were taken over by Europe in the Seventies”, the president of Comece proposes that “the EU Governments take over the minorities of non-Muslim Iraqi refugees, a contingent of 60 thousand Christians, Mandeans and Yazites”. In addition, mgr. Van Luyn asks that “the Governments of the countries neighbouring on Iraq be politically and practically supported in their efforts to accommodate these flows of refugees”. Copy of the document was also sent to Franco Frattini, deputy president of the European Commission in charge of Migration. England: practicing Catholics on the increaseFor the first time in the past three years, the number of Catholics who attend mass has increased, although the overall number of Catholics decreased. According to the data- referring to the year 2006 – collected in the 2008 edition of the “Catholic Directory of England and Wales”, in the year 2006 10,000 more Catholics regularly attended Mass compared with the previous year, although there have been 4000 less christenings and the Catholic Church has 170,000 faithful less. Two years ago, 927.154 faithful regularly attended mass on an overall population of 4,118,966 Catholics. Recent data also confirm that for the first time practicing Catholics are more numerous than Anglicans. For years this had been expected to happen, and it did for the first time in 2006. According to the Catholic weekly “Tablet”, this increase in the number of Catholics attending Mass is due to the arrival of one million Polish immigrants in the United Kingdom, since the EU opened its doors to Poland in 2004. Despite minor differences, the news was also confirmed by “Christian Research”, Ecumenical Centre for Statistics Studies.Germany: more criticism of the mediaThere should be a more critical attitude towards the media as relates to their impact on society. This position was expressed by Msgr. Robert Zollitsch, archbishop of Friburg. “The stronger is the truth in the media, the more different is the quality of programs , the more present are the media in our daily lives, the more important it is to know how the media operate”, he claimed. “Children and youth mustn’t learn today’s lifestyle from soap-operas and tv-movies”, he added. “Helping the youth to have a responsible relationship with the media is a challenge that should not be underestimated, also for the future.” The archbishop pointed out that the media portray “only fragments of reality and these are often irrelevant to the public, since only selected perspectives are conveyed often dictated by time and cost factors”. “The logic of the media and the dynamics of talk-shows fosters an embitterment which is inconsistent with a closer examination of facts”, he explained. Msgr. Zollitsch warned against the “catastrophism” of the media and encouraged “criticism, which is one of the basic traits of democracy”. “We need passionate journalists who probe into events, take on their responsibilities and inform in a responsible manner”, declared the archbishop who also took a stand on a topic which is being debated in the framework of the Bishops Conference: to create a Catholic television network. The archbishop maintains that :”it would be a niche network which would lead to a ghetto”. “The real and true challenge goes further than the creation of a Tv channel for the Church”, since “our task is the human and intelligent development of our entire media system. We cannot leave the field open to those who are interested only in the financial aspects exploiting people’s need to get distracted and enjoy themselves”.
