A trial got underway on Wednesday morning at the Tribunal of the Vatican City State in a case involving two defendants: Fr. Gabriele Martinelli and Fr. Enrico Radice, the former rector of the St. Pius X Seminary.
Fr. Martinelli (who is represented by lawyer Rita Claudia Baffioni) is accused of sexual abuse allegedly committed between 2007 and 2012 against someone at the pre-seminary.
Fr. Radice (who is represented by lawyer Agnese Camilli Carissimi) is accused of obstructing the investigation into these matters.
The hearing began at 9:35 AM with the reading of the charges, and was adjourned until Tuesday, 27 October at 2:00 PM.
At that session, according to Giuseppe Pignatone, president of the Tribunal, the reservation on some evidence presented by the defense will be lifted, and the accused will be questioned.
According to new estimates from UNICEF, 40 per cent of the world’s population – or 3 billion people – do not have a handwashing facility with water and soap at home. The number is much higher in least developed countries, where nearly three-quarters of the population lack such facilities.
Kelly Ann Naylor, Associate Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF, said that it is “unacceptable” that the most vulnerable communities are unable to use the simplest of methods to protect themselves and their loved ones.
“The pandemic has highlighted the critical role of hand hygiene in disease prevention. It has also stressed a pre-existing problem for many: Handwashing with soap remains out of reach for millions of children where they’re born, live and learn.”
“We must take immediate action to make handwashing with soap accessible to everyone, everywhere – now and in the future,” she urged.
The situation is also alarming at schools: 43 per cent of schools globally (70 per cent in least developed countries) lack a handwashing facility with water and soap, affecting hundreds of millions of school-age children, according to the estimates.
Against this backdrop, UNICEF, along with the UN World Health Organization launched the “Hand Hygiene for All” initiative to support the development of national roadmaps to accelerate and sustain progress towards making hand hygiene a mainstay in public health interventions.
This means rapidly improving access to handwashing facilities, water, soap and hand sanitizer in all settings, as well as promoting behavioural change interventions for optimal hand hygiene practices, said UNICEF.
The initiative brings together international, national, and local partners, to ensure affordable products and services are available and sustainable, especially in vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
The estimates were released on Thursday, coinciding with Global Handwashing Day, which serves as a platform to raise awareness on the importance of handwashing with soap.
Ahead of October 31 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia, hierarchs from the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) are taking a visible role in political campaigning, while politicians have also increased their visits to churches and meetings with religious figures.
Although in theory church and state are independent, according to the Caucasus Barometer’s 2019 survey, 90 per cent of Georgians consider religion important in their lives, with the GOC the most trusted public institution. This means that Georgian politicians have long courted the GOC to gain votes and legitimacy.
During previous election periods, both Transparency International and the Tbilisi-based Tolerance & Diversity Institute have reported cases of increased funding and the gifting of land to the GOC.
Levan Sutidze – editor in chief of Georgian political journal Tabula and a religious affairs analyst – told IWPR that the church’s privileged position in public life did not always support democratic processes.
IWPR: Do the 2020 elections stand out from previous ones concerning the involvement of religious actors in political processes?
Sutidze: During each election period, the GOC always dedicates special attention and energy to the country’s ruling party, unless it realises that the party is losing power. Consequently, every election period in Georgia is a shockingly anti-secular process. The 2020 elections stand out from the rest, however, with the massive participation of hierarchs of the GOC in Georgian Dream’s campaign presentations. Representatives of the GOC actively attend Georgian Dream’s campaign presentations, whereas they don’t attend the presentations of other political parties. This makes it crystal clear that, at this point, the GOC supports the current government. The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy watch-dog has made a statement about this, urging religious actors to restrain from attending political campaign presentations.
How does this benefit both politicians and religious actors?
Both sides look for short-term rather than long-term gains and results. The GOC has mercantilist goals… [and] similarly, for the current politicians, short-term votes are more tangible than their long-term achievements – especially in the 2020 elections [the country’s first with proportional elections and a one per cent threshold] when every vote counts. When our political class cannot solve economic problems, or when they are unable to make any realistic changes, they offer people the unrealistic and the irrational. In a way, this is pragmatic – on the one side, they have virologists in white coats and on the other priests in robes, to create a perception that these two important authorities in our society support them.
How effective is this relationship for the political class?
If we look at research from the NDI, we can see that the rating of the GOC has fallen by 25 per cent in the past five years. Although the GOC is still significant, it should be less pragmatic for the political class to capitalise on it as much as they did before.
In general, people make their choice based on what is inside their fridge rather than what’s inside the heart of a specific politician. Elene Khoshtaria’s campaign [an opposition candidate known for supporting minority rights] for example, is proof that you can openly and freely defend transgender rights and still not have a low rating. This reflects on the attitude of at least a part of our voters.
Still, I assume that the involvement of religious actors in politics works for around 15 per cent of the voters – those who weekly attend religious services. Some people still need this explicit demonstration of proximity between the two institutions.
How do religious actors justify their participation in politics?
They have used two justifications for the involvement in campaign presentations – firstly, that attendance does not mean endorsement and secondly that by attending, they are showing their respect to the state. To begin with the latter, it is saddening that the GOC cannot differentiate between the state and the party, which partly points to their Soviet mentality. The former argument that attendance does not mean endorsement is clearly absurd.
Do the close church-state relations break the principle of secularism guaranteed by the Georgian constitution?
In general, Georgia is more or less a secular state. It would be far-fetched to say otherwise.
Legally, the attendance of political campaign presentations by religious actors breaks the electoral code according to which religious organisations cannot take part in pre-election “agitation”. Still, since we don’t want aggressive secularism where religious actors cannot demonstrate any sympathy or support, I wouldn’t call this specific involvement unconstitutional or not secular.
I would say, however, that the secularism principle is broken when the GOC has informal veto power over certain laws that are not essential [for the government’s pro-West direction]… In addition, the church is obviously privileged in comparison to other religious institutions with exemption from certain taxes, not being bound to the rule of law [over Covid-19 restrictions] and so on. This clearly breaks with the principle of secularism.
Although the attendance of political campaigns by religious actors per se may not be unconstitutional, it fits into this puzzle of a privileged and empowered GOC that gives us a picture of a very ugly relationship – judicially speaking – between the church and the state.
How can this change?
I believe the solution is for the public to be completely informed about what the GOC represents and why the current relationship between church and state is harmful for both sides. The media should become much more active in this, and I salute the fact that there is progress in that direction, especially in the opposition media. An informed public will lead to the political class getting a firm signal that they can no longer get away with close relations with the GOC. I do not believe that the situation is too pessimistic. It is tough but not hopeless, and we can clearly see that the wind is blowing in the right direction. Also, in five to ten years, change will naturally come to the GOC when a change of Patriarch [who is now elderly] may halve the GOC’s authority.
Will the political class ever risk breaking this “marriage” with the Georgian Orthodox Church?
It is obvious that they are already risking it. The current opposition is different from the previous government’s opposition since they do not capitalise on the GOC as much – although attempts, of course, remain from some parties.
Today, it is important to have the liberal class on your side in order to be considered a good politician – supporting the involvement of the GOC in politics and being on the [anti-secular] side is relatively harder than it was. It is also important for politicians to get positive attitudes from the people/sources who have influence on the electorate – ie liberal media, NGOs, and donor organizations. These groups do not represent a small percentage and being positively perceived by them is important and instrumental for many.
Brussels [Belgium], October 14 (ANI): Talking about the role of Islamabad in “illegally” occupying a part of Kashmir and dethroning its erstwhile ruler Maharaja Hari Singh, Member of European Parliament Fulvio Martusciello has urged the international community to hold Pakistan accountable for the ongoing turmoil in the valley.
In an opinion piece for EU-Chronicle on Wednesday, Martusciello called out Pakistan’s attempt to distort history by observing October 26 as a “Black Day” to commemorate the war fought in Kashmir in 1947-48.
Calling out Islamabad’s deceptive ways, he said that on one hand, Pakistan remembers its losses with great pain on its Black Day, on the other, it doesn’t remember the “thousands of lives taken during their ethnic cleansing persecution during that invasion of Kashmir, wherein one town alone, Baramula, 14,000 Kashmiri Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were slaughtered.”Pakistan is a country, which laments only its failures, he added.
He also wrote, “Under directions of the political leadership, Pakistan’s military invaded and illegally occupied Kashmir and dethroned ruler Hari Singh in order to annex Kashmir. The move was part of its grand design to enhance its power, territory, and influence in the region – Pakistan’s political leadership and Pakistan’s military failed.”He urged the international community to recognise that the Jammu and Kashmir issue has been concocted by Pakistan for its own gains. “Islamabad must be held accountable for the ongoing turmoil inflicted in Kashmir,” he said.
He even questioned the citizens of Pakistan who “do not deplore the rape of Kashmiri women and girls, nor the horrors and atrocities inflicted by the Pakistani military and its tribesman on innocent Kashmiri citizens”. “And Pakistanis do not regret the illegal activities of their government or military…, nor the nihilism they imposed in (Pakistan-occupied) Kashmir,” Martusciello went on to write.
He further wrote, “The people of Jammu and Kashmir have been mired in campaigns of disinformation and deception by Pakistan for decades, and now the youth need to know the truth to be empowered to follow their own destinies…”Martusciello also talked about a former Pakistani Army General who made some revelation in a book regarding the strategy implemented by its military under the direction of the political leadership.
According to the European parliamentarian, (Rtd) Major General Akbar Khan had described the desperation and machinations of the Pakistani political establishment to obtain the Kashmir region.
“Akbar Khan confirms how intimidation and threats of the Pakistan regime forced the ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, to be left with no option but to ask for protection and support from the Indian government – this request then led to the accession of Kashmir to become a part of India under the internationally recognised agreement, The Instrument of Accession, which was accepted under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act, 1947,” he said.
“I stand by the people of Kashmir and laud their resolve to oppose relentless Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the region,” he finally said. (ANI)
For nearly 200 years, the portraits of leaders at Harvard Divinity School were all of white men. Not until 2005 was the portrait of a woman included in the collection that hung on the mahogany-paneled walls of a vaulted-ceiling room with shields emblazoned on the windows, a room that exuded masculine tradition.
That first woman was Constance Buchanan, who was director of the school’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program for two decades and built it into an influential center for research on faith, gender, race and sexual orientation.
“Women students came to her office and said, ‘I don’t feel like I belong here — all I see on the walls are portraits of white men,’” Dr. Ann Braude, the current director of the program, said in an interview.
“Connie’s the one who made that an issue and did something about it and made sure women were represented in scholarship, in the curriculum, in the syllabus, in publications and had a voice,” Dr. Braude said. “She was the pioneer in advancing women’s voices at Harvard Divinity School.”
Ms. Buchanan died on Sept. 16 at her home in Manhattan. She was 73.
The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to Al Bingham, a longtime friend.
With her women’s studies program, which accepts five scholars a year to teach and work on books, Ms. Buchanan nurtured a nascent field of academic inquiry that focused on women as religious scholars and as the subject of religious scholarship. These scholars have gone on to teach at universities around the country and the world.
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Students listening to a lecture at Harvard Divinity School. Behind them is a painting of Ms. Buchanan, the first woman included in portraits of the school’s leaders.Credit…Harvard Divinity School
Ms. Buchanan was brought to the Harvard Divinity School in 1977 by Krister Stendahl, then the dean, who fought for the ordination of women, gay men and lesbians, and fought against the use of sexist language in Scriptures.
At the time, women divinity students were protesting the exclusion of women from theological studies and from religion in general.
“She was hired to be a bridge between the righteous anger of the young radical feminists in the divinity school classrooms, and the millennia of theological education that had been exclusively in the hands of men,” Dr. Braude said.
Ms. Buchanan gave permanent shape to the women’s studies program as an arena for credible feminist scholarship. She also ensured that the program would exist into the future by reaching out to philanthropists to build an endowment.
Harvard Divinity School, founded in 1816, did not accept women students until 1955, long after they had been accepted at other divinity schools and at many of Harvard’s other professional schools. Only when the school celebrated the 50th anniversary of admitting women in 2005 was Ms. Buchanan’s portrait displayed along with those of the men.
Speaking at the dedication of her portrait, Ms. Buchanan said: “I wanted the portrait to encourage women of different races, religions, classes and cultural backgrounds to boldly claim the school’s rich legacy, mission and authority as theirs too.”
Constance Hall Buchanan was born in Northampton, Mass., on June 19, 1947. Her father, the Rev. Albert Brown Buchanan, was head of the religion department at the Northfield Mount Herman School in Massachusetts before moving the family to New York City, where he served as rector at various churches. Her mother, Barbara (Masten) Buchanan, helped start the Women’s Talent Corps, which trained women for jobs in their low-income neighborhoods in the 1960s; it is now the Metropolitan College of New York.
Ms. Buchanan attended the Spence School, graduated from Barnard College in 1969 with a major in history, and received her master’s degree in history from Brown University in 1971.
She taught history at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Mass., a unit of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. After studying at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., for two years on a Rockefeller fellowship, she was hired at Harvard Divinity School.
The Women’s Studies in Religion Program was founded in 1973, but Ms. Buchanan helped define it. She served as director until 1997, during which time she was a member of the divinity school faculty and associate dean. She also served for six years as special assistant to Harvard President Derek Bok.
She was the author of “Choosing to Lead: Women and the Crisis of American Values” (1996). The book examined the cultural barriers that have limited women’s participation in public life and argued that if they could break free of these strictures, women had the potential to create a more democratic vision of work and family that would include financial compensation for motherhood.
She left Harvard in 1997 to become a senior program officer in religion at the Ford Foundation, where she stayed until she retired in 2007.
Ms. Buchanan is survived by a niece, Katherine Tytus, and a nephew, John Tytus.
… Paul II Center for Ethics, Religion, and Culture (CERC), thanks … questions related to ethics, religion, and culture in today’ … Paul II Center for Ethics, Religion, and Culture,” said Elms … on topics related to ethics, religion and spirituality, health, and …
(RNS) — There are few people in the Jewish world that I respect more than Ron Wolfson. He is that rare creature in Jewish circles — a true visionary; a thought leader whose insights have helped transform the way that synagogues operate and/or should operate. Few people have done more to help American Jews reimagine what Jewish institutional life could look like, and to create those programs that would make those changes real and enduring.
That is why I encourage you to read Wolfson’s recent article in the Forward.
Because, whether he knew it or not, Ron just figured out the biggest problem that synagogues are now facing.
Wolfson lauds the worship offerings of synagogues during the pandemic. Many of them were, to use his term, “extra-ordinary.” Deftly produced, visually exciting, aesthetically powerful — to a fault.
What is the problem?
Almost every synagogue in that article is affluent and/or urban and/or urbane and/or large and/or richly staffed.
Those large-ish, urban and urbane congregations can afford the spectacular production values. Every rabbi can tell you about their own members who chose not to “attend” their services, because they were too busy “shul surfing” to see what the huge synagogues were doing.
I not only respect Wolfson; I also respect the rabbis in those larger synagogues. Many of them are my friends and teachers. Their vision is appropriately large.
But, what about the rabbis who are running one- or two-person operations?
Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that many synagogues are now encountering more than the usual financial stresses. Add to those stresses the costs of running what has basically become a television studio.
If Jews are looking for the big productions out in the cyber world — and if they can find those productions without even leaving their couches — how can those smaller shuls possibly “compete”?
Are we now experiencing synagogue social Darwinism, where only the strongest will survive?
Worship in the age of COVID could increasingly fall under the sway of the rampant consumerism of American life. Years ago, Reginald Bibby, a Canadian sociologist, wrote: “(Religion) has become a neatly packaged consumer item — taking its place among other commodities that can be bought or bypassed according to one’s consumption whims …”
The danger of online worship is that the individual worshipper abandons his or her own community and becomes a browser via the browser for spiritual audiovisual experiences — the way I often surf through Netflix.
Synagogue life cannot simply be about “market share” or “hits.” That is a form of idolatry.
It needs to be about a sacred community that commits itself to increasing “social capital” among its members.
What does it mean to increase “social capital” during these dark times of a pandemic?
We don’t know — yet.
Two things seem certain.
First, we cannot abandon kavannah, sacred focusing and intention, as a goal of worship. That, and not the shiny aspects of production, should be our goal.
Second, in the time of COVID, above all, effort counts. Congregants appreciate the efforts that their clergy made so that the Days of Awe could be meaningful. Moreover, they were remarkably forgiving of the predictably unpredictable technical glitches. They knew that we had thrown ourselves into the arms of the capricious gods of Zoom and Wi-Fi.
There is such a thing as “good enough,” and the overwhelming majority of American Jews accepted it.
That says a lot about who we Jews really are.
But, as for synagogue Judaism: To quote the Buffalo Springfield: “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Or, it might be becoming increasingly clear. Synagogue life will not go back to the way it once was.
The future belongs to those synagogues that can make the changes stick.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett has done a fine job of acting at her confirmation hearings to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. She has played the role of a reasoned jurist who is not the extremist anti-choice zealot that we all can plainly see she is.
But the Oscar for Best Supporting Bad Actor will likely go to Senator Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, the youngest and arguably most dangerous member of the U.S. Senate. Hawley is on the short list of 2024 candidates to carry the mantle for the Republican Party’s fanatical right wing.
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The hearings had barely begun when Hawley spewed outright lies about how the Democrats were on a mission from hell to denigrate and ridicule Barrett’s Roman Catholic faith.
In a moment for the ages in the annals of straw-man demagoguery. Hawley falsely accused Democrats of anti-Catholic bigotry in advance of their questioning of Barrett. Hawley, an Evangelical, conveniently ignored the fact that five of the Supreme Court’s justice are practicing Catholics (and a sixth, Neil Gorsuch, was raised as one).
“This pattern and practice religious bigotry by Democrats on the committee must stop!” bellowed Hawley, ignoring the detail it hadn’t started. In fact, no Democrat went anywhere near the subject of Barrett’s religious views, nor did they intend to fall into the clumsily placed trap Republicans were trying to set.
That didn’t prevent Hawley from earning a state-TV victory tour, where no less than Tucker Carlson, the Grand Guru of Grievance, wept along with Hawley’s passionate pleas for the Devil Democrats to call off their unholy crusade to bring down God. The irony of doing the dirty work of heathen Donald Trump in the name of the Divine, went unnoticed.
Hawley validated Esquire Magazine’s January description of him as “the thirstiest man in Washington D.C.” As that article had noted, “the most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”
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The fiasco was rooted in Barrett’s 2017 Senate hearings to become a federal appeals-court judge. Among her unapologetic instances of publicly associating faith and law, Barrett had co-authored a 1998 law review article “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases.”
Since Barrett was passionately and publicly an anti-choice extremist, it wasn’t exactly a stretch for senators to wonder how her faith might inform her judicial temperament. That felt mostly to pro-choice Democrats, but there also was a skeptic from the other side–Republican Senator Ted Cruz–who worried allowed that her faith not impede the death penalty. That one escaped Hawley’s notice.
This time, Hawley had the chair pulled out from him in the Senate. He attacked Democrats in advance for something they had no intention of doing.
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In a normal world, Hawley would have been roundly chastised for that rubbish. We don’t reside in one of those, however, so Howley raked in precious political capital for 2024, his only sincere concern.
It’s a little-known but notable fact that this is not Hawley’s first rodeo when it comes to distorting reality shamelessly when it comes to a judicial nominee. Last year, Hawley derailed the nomination of Michael Bogren to a federal judgeship using some of the most twisted illogic on record. Ironically, he twisted Catholicism on this one, as well.
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Bogren had represented the city of East Lansing, Michigan when it was sued for banning a couple from participating in its farmers’ market after they refused to allow their orchard to be rented for same-sex weddings. That seems reasonable enough, unless you’re a homophobe like Hawley.
Bogren had argued that “the First Amendment does not create an exception to anti-discrimination laws based on religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be,” the Detroit News had reported. Bogren used an analogy that a KKK member couldn’t hide behind the First Amendment to deny service to an interracial couple.
Shamelessly, Hawley pounced on the analogy with some unbelievably twisted illogic. Hawley claimed Bogren didn’t merely defend his client, but “denigrated” the orchard owners’ Catholic faith:
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“To say that this family following the teachings of their church and the Scripture, that there’s ‘no distinction’ between them and the KKK, that, I think, is really beyond the pale.”
Ed Whelan, a conservative legal scholar writing for the National Review, argued that Bogren — respected on both sides of the aisle — was doing his job as a lawyer, adding that it’s wrong to hold him personally responsible for his legal advocacy.
“Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer?” Whelan asked. “That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.”
The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized Hawley three times in three months, arguing he set a “precedent conservatives will regret.”
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But guess what? Hawley was successful in killing Bogren’s nomination. He learned his lesson about the benefit of exploiting emotions irrationally when it comes to religious faith.
The larger question is whether Americans will learn any lessons from watching Josh Hawley ply his craft.
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In their efforts to thwart the spread of a virus that has killed more than a million people, world leaders should not override religious freedom, Latter-day Saint apostle David A. Bednar told a global gathering of scholars and officials from diverse faith traditions Wednesday.
“The ongoing pandemic has demonstrated that some government officials fail to understand how and why religion is fundamental to the lives of billions of people,” Bednar, one of the top leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said at a virtual meeting of the G-20 Interfaith Forum. “COVID-19 regulations have often distinguished between ‘essential’ and ‘nonessential’ activities and then treated religious activities as ‘nonessential.’”
To do so, “completely misconceives how vital religion is to people’s lives,” Bednar said, echoing themes he addressed in a June speech during a conference sponsored by LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University.
(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks during the Religious Freedom Annual Review, hosted by the Brigham Young University law school. The livestream was broadcast on Wednesday, June 17, 2020. Bednar also spoke about religious freedom during COVID-19 in a G-20 Interfaith Forum on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020.
Governments obviously have “a crucial role to play in protecting people from the coronavirus,” the apostle said, given that “no one has a right to spread a dangerous virus.”
The question is how they do it, he said, and whether they recognize the “centrality of faith to human dignity.”
Severing people from their religious communities, he warned the assembled leaders Wednesday, “threatens people’s spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health. Experts are documenting the rise in depression, physical and emotional abuse, suicide and other tragedies during times of social lockdown and isolation.”
Bednar called for “respect, accommodation and cooperation — for creative solutions that mitigate the threat of COVID-19 while not cutting people off from an essential part of their lives.”
Instead of governments seeing religion as opposing efforts to solve the crisis, he said, it “can be a powerful font of legitimacy and practical assistance in a time of crisis.”
The Utah-based faith has urged its members around the world to be “good citizens” during the pandemic and heed public health advice and government guidelines. Latter-day Saint leaders halted all worship services and temple operations around the world for long stretches and now have begun slowly resuming their meetings and reopening their chapels and temples.
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“As with secular activities, religious activities should be carefully limited when truly necessary to keep people safe,” Bednar said. “But that is not the end of the matter. How secular officials understand religion and religious people deeply influences how they treat religious institutions and believers in a time of crisis. The deeper and more respectful the understanding, the more legitimate and effective public policy responses can be.”
The 68-year-old church leader blamed at least part of the “crisis of legitimacy in the response to COVID-19” on policymakers’ failure to recognize the central role faith plays in the lives of believers.
Bednar also pointed out that religious institutions can be a powerful and influential ally in the battle against the pandemic.
“Misinformation is a major obstacle in a health crisis,” he said. “Faith communities can debunk rumors, calm fears and facilitate accurate information.”
Sharon Eubank, first counselor in the general presidency of the women’s Relief Society and president of Latter-day Saint Charities, addressed the forum the past two years, according to a news release, and is scheduled to do so again Saturday.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/sltrib/DIUYHIBX3BDK3KDXEQ6USCQNZY.jpg?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "Religion is essential, even during a pandemic, Latter-day Saint apostle David Bednar tells global forum")
