Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in his native Germany for a four-day state visit and is scheduled to speak to the Bundestag, the German parliament. Around 100 parliamentarians said they would boycott the pope’s speech, claiming it is inappropriate for a religious leader to address the German parliament.
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Organizers expect some 20,000 demonstrators to gather in the overwhelmingly secular capital to protest the pontiff’s visit.
By Nick Squires, The Telegraph
The Pope will be met by protests, marches and a “kiss-in” by gays and lesbians when he arrives in Spain on Thursday for a four-day visit to a festival expected to attract up to 1.5 million young Catholics.
Benedict XVI will fly from Rome to Madrid but his attendance at the World Youth Day festival will be overshadowed by anger over the 50 million euro cost of the event – excluding security and policing.
Protesters said it was “scandalous” that Spain was being asked to foot the bill for such an “ostentatious” event when the country was mired in an economic crisis, with unemployment running at 45 per cent among people under the age of 25.
More than 100 groups opposed to the 84-year-old pontiff’s visit took to the streets of Madrid last night (wed), including gay rights advocates, secularists, Catholic priests and members of the “indignados” movement against economic mismanagement and political corruption.
They united under the slogan “The Pope’s visit – not with my taxes” and claimed the true cost of the celebrations could come to more than 100 million euros.
“We criticise this scandalous show at a time of such a terribly distressing economic situation, with entire families unemployed,” said Evaristo Villar, of Redes Cristianos (Christian Networks).
“This ostentation is causing a lot of damage and distancing a lot of people.”
A kiss-in by hundreds of gays and lesbians will be held to protest against the Roman Catholic Church’s “moral condemnations of sexuality”, according to one of the groups organising the event.
Benedict was confronted by a similar protest when he visited Barcelona in November.
On Tuesday police arrested a Mexican chemistry student suspected of planning a gas attack against the protesters. Police did not say whether the man, named as Jose Perez Bautista, had the capability to carry out an attack.
Investigators who searched his flat in a wealthy area of Madrid said he had tried to recruit people via the internet to help him in the plot.
The Pope will be welcomed today (thurs) in Madrid’s Cebeles Square, where a huge white stage has been constructed, as he tours the city in his white “pope-mobile”.
He will hold a prayer vigil on Saturday evening at an airbase southwest of the capital, before celebrating Mass on Sunday morning in front of a huge crowd.
Around 200 sail-shaped white confessionals have been opened in the city’s Retiro Park, where priests will take confessions in 30 languages from pilgrims who have converged on Madrid from around the world.
The priests have been given special dispensation to welcome back into the Church women who admit to having had an abortion – a sin normally punishable by excommunication.
“This is to make it easier for the faithful who attend the World Youth Day celebrations to obtain the fruits of divine grace,” the Madrid archdiocese said in a statement.
The Pope himself will sit in one of the booths on Saturday to hear confessions from three pilgrims.
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican moved Thursday to make its new financial watchdog agency more independent by relieving its president of his other job running the Holy See’s administration. There had been questions about possible conflicts of interests when Cardinal Attilio Nicora was named president of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority earlier this year, given his dual roles. The oversight agency, designed to be fully independent, began work in April to ensure all Vatican financial transactions comply with EU and international anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing laws. It was created amid an investigation by Rome prosecutors into suspicious financial transactions at the Vatican bank. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Ciro Benedettini said Thursday that “common sense” dictated that as chief watchdog of the independent authority, Nicora couldn’t be responsible for checking compliance of his other office, which administers Vatican personnel and other Holy See assets. Nicora asked to be relieved of his administration job to focus exclusively on the financial authority, and Pope Benedict XVI agreed, the Vatican said. In May, a Dutch liberal member of the European Parliament, Sophie in ‘t Veld, formally asked the European Commission to look into whether the Vatican’s financial authority can be truly independent given Nicora’s jobs and whether there wasn’t a conflict of interest. The authority was created as the Vatican issued new laws to fight money laundering and terrorist financing in a major effort to comply with EU norms and shed its image as a tax haven mired in secrecy and scandal. The Vatican had pledged to pass such legislation by when it entered into a monetary agreement with the EU in December 2009, but the effort went into high gear following the money laundering probe at the Vatican bank, which greatly embarrassed the Vatican and its bank chairman, economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Rome prosecutors seized euro23 million ($33 million) and placed Gotti Tedeschi and his deputy under investigation, alleging the bank broke the law by trying to transfer money without identifying the sender or recipient. The two men have not been charged and recently prosecutors released the money.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/07/2303289/vatican-seeks-to-make-new-watchdog.html#ixzz1RmyiHDVd
On the 15th of June, the European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics heard the case of the Italian Judge Luigi Tosti.
Mr Tosti refused to work in an Italian courtroom where a crucifix was hanging. After several lawsuits, Mr Tosti was removed from the judiciary by the state’s Supreme Court in March 2011.
Mr Tosti is preparing to lodge an appeal under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the basis of violation of his right of religious freedom (both negative and positive) and the violation of the right of equality and non-discrimination on the basis of religion.
During the Brussels meeting, Judge Tosti stated that freedom of religion is a fundamental right. Everyone is free to adhere to any religion, and free not to choose a religion. A state based on the rule of law needs to have an unbiased judiciary, therefore any biased appearance (such as a crucifix being a religious symbol) needs to be avoided.
As is laid down in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, every member state has the duty to be neutral and impartial. The compulsory presence of a crucifix in every Italian courtroom is obviously in conflict with this fundamental requirement. Mr Tosti proposed the Italian Minister of Justice to allow him to place other religious and non-religious symbols alongside the crucifix, in order to restore neutrality. This however was not allowed by the Italian state. Hereafter, Mr Tosti refused to do sittings and was eventually removed from the Italian Magistracy in March 2011.
During the meeting, it was pointed out by Mr Tosti and his lawyer that within the European Union, there is increasing cooperation on police and legal matters. This increasing mutual confidence in each other’s legal systems implies an important mainstreaming of certain standards, particularly with regards to neutrality.
A national legal system needs to be neutral and not dominated by one specific religion.
The European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics will follow Mr Tosti’s lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights closely and will give him all the support he needs.
Press: RNW (in English / in Spanish)
Read also (in French): “Le « décrocheur de crucifix » retrouve un poste dans l’école publique : Le libre-penseur Valentin Abgottspon, licencié en raison de son combat pour la laïcité, a été engagé dans une école publique. » more
by Evelyne Leopold, The Huffington Post, 13 June 2011
World leaders gathered at the United Nations to mark the 30th anniversary of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and put out a 102-paragraph declaration. Adrienne Germain, the president of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), has been working on women’s issues all her adult life and was active in the 1994 Cairo conference on women, also known as the CPD (International Conference on Population and Development). In an interview with the Huffington Post, Germain and Alexandra Garita, an international policy program officer at IWHC, discuss the declaration and the controversies that arise whenever sex is on the agenda. The declaration, produced every five years, gives U.N. agencies a mandate for their programs and advises governments where best to spend monies.
Q: What about access to family planning, to birth control?
AG: We lost reproductive rights and reproductive health language from the 1994 Cairo document and from early drafts here. Reproductive rights, for example, also includes the right to freely and responsibly decide on the number and spacing of one’s children. If you lose that and you have no reference to family planning services in the document, then you basically have no reference to contraception for women. You also don’t have protection for women living with HIV who are sterilized without their consent and who are forced to have abortion. It is not a rare occurrence in southern Africa (including South Africa).
Q: Who opposed rights for adolescents or women?
AG: Some people have referred to this as a perfect storm created by a combination of the Holy See and Egypt (less so Iran). Read more…
Adrienne Germain
Location: Arlington, United States
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