In today’s round up, we cover the news we missed during the first week of August.
- Argentine Catholic Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta will go on trial on sexual abuse charges in October. The public prosecutor’s office of the Argentine province of Salta announced on Aug. 6 that the trial would take place on Oct. 12-15.
- A Catholic diocese in India has announced that it will offer cash incentives to families who were married from the year 2000 onward and have five or more children. The Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Diocese of Palai in Kerala state said it will pay 1,500 rupees (about US$21) monthly to the families and will provide free education to the fourth and the subsequent children.
- An Aug. 3 statement by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said that the mini drones could attack the wrong target in urban settings.“A specific potential challenge that this delegation wishes to underline relates to the possibility of the use of swarms of ‘kamikaze’ mini-drones, that is, swarms of weapon systems endowed with autonomous capabilities,” it said, alluding to Japanese kamikaze pilots who launched suicide attacks in World War II.“The use of swarms in urban areas could lead to high risks for civilians. If functioning without any direct human supervision, such systems could make mistakes in identifying the intended targets due to some unidentified ‘bias’ induced by their ‘self-learning capabilities’ developed from a limited set of data samples.”
- The board of directors of the Cuban Conference of Men and Women Religious reported Tuesday that following the July 11 protests of the island’s communist government “there are still detainees awaiting trial, under investigation and others punished with very severe penalties.” The conference has been offering legal advice to detainees and spiritual and psychological support for their families members in the wake of the crackdown by Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel. CONCUR called for “the cases to be dismissed of people who were exercising their constitutional right to peacefully demonstrate (which is protected in Article 56 of the Constitution).” In addition, the conference called for “compliance with the law, the rules of due process and consideration for the age and social background of the participants in the events.”
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In a letter sent to priests on Aug. 3, Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin Ireland expressed “profound regret” that there had been “no engagement” with Church representatives over revising the guidelines.
“Understandably, many have been concerned and disappointed that current guidelines restrict celebration of the sacraments on the apparent grounds that they may lead to family gatherings, which may breach public health guidelines on households mixing,” he wrote, according to the Irish Times.
“This is perplexing, as no such prohibitions are applied to other events, such as sporting or civic events, or other family occasions, such as the celebration of birthdays and anniversaries, or indeed to weddings or funerals.”
“Many have concluded that, in the absence of appropriate justification, these guidelines are discriminatory.”
