BRUSSELS: The European Union will defend the International Criminal Court against attempts to undermine it, a spokesman for the bloc said on Thursday after Washington slapped sanctions on the Hague-based tribunal’s top prosecutor.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced sanctions against ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another senior court official, Phakiso Mochochoko, over a war crimes probe into US military personnel in Afghanistan.
Washington has long rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction over US citizens, but the court’s investigation into allegations of atrocities in Afghanistan has seen President Donald Trump’s administration turn low-level opposition into a concerted campaign against the institution. “The International Criminal Court is facing persistent external challenges and the European Union stands firm against all attempts to undermine the international system of criminal justice by hindering the work of its core institutions,” Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, told reporters.
“We are committed to strengthen our support to the ICC because this is key factor in fighting against impunity. We are standing by the ICC and we are not happy to see steps which are going against the activities of the ICC.
“Pompeo has dismissed the ICC as a “kangaroo court” and the US insists it has its own procedures for investigating allegations against its troops.
The European Union has added lithium, used in batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), to a list of critical materials as part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on imports.
The group of 27 nations will need about 60 times more lithium and 15 times more cobalt for EV batteries and energy storage by 2050, analysts estimate. The EU’s demand for rare earths, used in high-tech devices and military applications, is predicted to increase 10-fold over the same period.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic had highlighted the world’s increasing reliance on electronics and technology for remote work, education and communication.
As a result, shortages of the key elements needed to manufacture those items threaten to undermine critical industries and expose the bloc to supply squeezes from China and other resource-rich countries, the Commission said.
“We have to drastically change our approach,” vice-president Maros Sefcovic said in a statement. “We cannot allow to replace current reliance on fossil fuels with dependency on critical raw materials.”
The E.U. imports around 98% of rare earths from China. Turkey supplies 98% of its borate and Chile meets 78% of Europe’s lithium needs. South Africa provides 71% of its platinum, and Brazil supplies 85% of its niobium, a crucial part of steel alloys used in jet engines, girders and oil pipelines.
“We cannot afford to rely entirely on third countries,” European industry commissioner Thierry Breton said. “By diversifying the supply from third countries and developing the EU’s own capacity for extraction, processing, recycling, refining and separation of rare earths, we can become more resilient and sustainable.”
The Belgium-based body, which first drew up an inventory of critical raw materials in 2011, in response to soaring commodity prices, also added bauxite and titanium — used in aerospace and for orthopaedic implants — and strontium — an ingredient for EV magnets — to the list. The body also eliminated helium from the group of 30 materials.
As part of the strategy unveiled on Sept. 3, the European Commission vowed to create a raw-materials alliance by year-end.
The coalition will include industry members, investors, the European Investment Bank, E.U. countries and others that can help secure raw mineral supply chains.
The Commission also plans to promote the recycling of vital elements, particularly rare earths. It said that while recycling works well in Europe, less than 1% of products containing the components are actually recovered.
The activity would drive investment and innovation within Europe, it noted.
The commission also said it wants to start a partnership with Canada and interested African countries next year.
(Photo: Albin Hillert / LWF)Church of Sweden Archbishop Dr. Antje Jackelén in 2017.
In the Church of Sweden, part of the Lutheran communion, there is no issue about having female priests with women outnumbering men in the role.
It is a different story in the Roman Catholic Church though and the matter has not yet been fully debated.
The archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse, has called for an open debate on the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, America, the Jesuit Review reported.
“One has to be permitted to think about and discuss the issues,” the German archbishop said on Aug. 19.
He argued that document “Ordinatio sacerdotalis,” St. John Paul II‘s 1994 letter that stated the church cannot ordain women as priests, was positioned as a response to those who considered women’s ordination “open to debate.”
In it he affirmed the male-only priesthood “in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance.”
Archbishop Hesse said new arguments had emerged in the conversation around women’s ordination that needed to be addressed. “The historical perspective is one thing—but it isn’t everything,” he said.
The news agency AFP meanwhile reported on Aug. 28 the Church of Sweden may be the world’s first to have more female priests than male ones, according to estimations shared by the World Council of Churches.
Female priests outnumbered males in Sweden 50.1% to 49.9% in July, and there are already more women in the country studying to become priests than men.
The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran church with 6,1 million members and it has a female archbishop, German-born Antje Jackelén in a country of some 10.3 million people. There are 3,500 churches in Sweden, with 13 dioceses.
The tally of women priests comes 62 years after women were allowed to be ordained in the Swedish Lutheran Church and over a hundred years after Anna Howard Shaw, an American Methodist suffragist pastor, first preached in Sweden, in 1911.
‘HERE TO STAY’
In the Church of Sweden women “are here to stay”, said Rev. Sandra Signarsdotter.
She was ordained in 2014; in the same year Jackelén became the principal bishop of Sweden.
Despite changes in the church’s demographics, Signarsdotter noted that women “have not yet achieved equality” in the Swedish church.
They earn on average 213 euros ($334) less a month than their male counterparts, according to the specialist church newspaper Kyrkans Tidning.
Also, women hold fewer top jobs than men. Only four bishoprics are led by women of 13 in total.
“The way is still long,” Signarsdotter said “One day, a colleague told me ‘You have a beautiful butt'”.
“Even being a priest, I am first seen as a body,” she regretted, as she hoped the church would one day rid itself of “the patriarchal structures of society”.
The Guardian newspaper did some comparison between the Lutheran church in Sweden and its Anglican counterpart in Britain, the Church of England
“From a historical perspective, this parity happened faster than we earlier imagined,” said Cristina Grenholm, the secretary for the Church of Sweden, when the former State church announced that 50.1% of its priests are female.
A report in 1990 had estimated that women would not make up half the total clergy until 2090.
The UK newspaper report also focused on the male-female wage gap noting the differences cited by Kyrkans Tidning.
Grenholm said this was due to more men being in more senior positions.
The Church of Sweden allowed female priests from 1958 and first ordained three women in 1960.
In 1982, Swedish legislators scrapped a “conscience clause” allowing members of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with a female colleague.
Now, many parishes have both a man and a woman presiding over Sunday services, said Grenholm.
“Since we believe that God created human beings, both men and women, in God’s image, it is essential that we do not only speak about it, but that it is also shown.”
In 2017, the church urged clergy to use gender-neutral language, saying God was “beyond our gender determinations”.
Church of Sweden is the largest Lutheran group in Europe. But church membership, especially among young Swedes, has sharply declined in recent years.
The church separated from the State 20 years ago.
The Guardian report says that one in three active priests in the Church of England is female, although 51% of deacons ordained last year were women.
The church’s general synod, its ruling body, voted to allow female priests in 1992.
Children’s shoes and toys are seen on a sidewalk in Dublin Aug. 25 as part of a demonstration against clerical sex abuse in Dublin. Pope Francis met privately for an hour and half with eight Irish survivors of clerical, religious and institutional abuse. (CNS photo/Clodagh Kilcoyne, Reuters)
VATICAN CITY — In reporting historical and recent abuse of minors, the media should broaden its focus to include portrayals of survivors as active agents of reform, one survivor said.
Interviewing survivors about their abuse and the emotional impact of it brings an important “human face” to the crimes, said Mark Vincent Healy, an advocate in Ireland for safe spaces, care and services for survivors of child sexual abuse.
But reporters also should be asking them “the bigger questions” about ongoing injustices, unnecessary hurdles and the kind of response and care that would truly help, he said.
In some media portrayals, “your whole life can be frozen in time” to that specific span of events in the past, he said; such treatment casts survivors “in a pretty tight narrative.”
“They don’t have to just be victims. They can contribute, be given ownership as participants and instigators of change, (as) people who are building something out of their pain,” he told Catholic News Service by Skype in late August.
Healy has used his skills and experience to push for justice and redress decades after his own abuse as a young student at a Spiritan-run school in Dublin. He works with other survivors and advocates for more effective and broader changes, designed to promote greater accountability and care by all sectors, including government and the European Parliament, to help all victims of child sexual abuse.
“I found catharsis” in working with other survivors, he said, and by dedicating himself to advocacy work, “everything that seemed a negative made me even more positive.”
Highlighting more of the inspiring aspect of survivors’ lives is something Healy and Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a safeguarding expert, would like to see explored more deeply by the media.
Media could be more proactive in reaching out to survivors to know what they have been doing, what they found helpful, where justice was done and what made them feel safe, respected and “dignified,” Father Zollner, who is a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, told CNS.
Healy said that by asking survivors, “What do you want” and need, people also would see a totally “different world” from the “battlefield” they face in litigation, lawsuits and struggles for compensation and care.
The way out of that “nightmare,” he said, would be a world of immediate and ongoing “charitable therapeutic support” in which people acknowledge that survivors, too, have “a dream like everyone else has, to function and attain independence.”
By being a space where survivors air current concerns and propose solutions, the media “could change the game, change the focus” of how the church responds in general, he said.
Healy said the church has to “stop pretending they’re doing it right by saying, ‘Meet us in court.’ This is not an option if the outcome is so damaging.”
The church must recognize its purpose is not to worsen the state and situation of people who were harmed, he said; “Behave as Jesus Christ would. Care for them. Don’t bring them to this arena (of litigation); it is ungodly and not the place of Christ.”
It is not about inviting survivors back to Mass, he said.
“It is a mission. There is real work to do, a new order to go out to meet with survivors, children of the faith who have been scattered, who have either grown in anger or resentment or indifference toward the representatives of the Catholic faith, with but a few who clung on, needing not to lose a faith community despite the challenges of doing so,” said Healy, who was one of six survivors invited to meet privately with Pope Francis in 2014.
The work that needs doing is to help to bring reconciliation and alleviate the pain and distress in victims, in their families and in their community, he said.
Father Zollner said the church “could reach out actively and invite survivors to come forward” to a safe space to talk about their experience; however, it hasn’t been easy to make that work.
For example, the bishops in the Netherlands made that kind of invitation in 2002, right after the huge media coverage of widespread abuse and negligence in the Archdiocese of Boston.
But only few people came forward, Father Zollner said, and it wasn’t until there was a second wave of allegations hitting central Europe in 2010 when “many more victims of abuse came forward in the Netherlands.”
One of many reasons for the delay in coming forward, he said, was people “first need to feel that they are really being listened to, that they are really respected, and that this is not some kind of ‘deal’” or manipulation where they can come forward but are then expected to keep quiet.
Survivors need to feel it is safe to tell the truth about what they experienced, and “they speak out once they come to know you and they come to trust you,” which can be very difficult after their trust has been so shattered, he added.
“People in the church, across all countries, need to listen to the voices of survivors toward developing a ministry with survivors and for survivors. The ‘with’ is important. You cannot, as a church that has harmed these people pretend that you knew (then) and know now what to do. This has to be found out with a group of survivors; survivors — without question — must be instrumental to healing the church,” he said.
The church also should recognize the many skills and the potential survivors have, not just in safeguarding, the Jesuit said; they also should be encouraged to be active participants in everything from parish life to schools and social ministry, even be advisers to bishops and other church leaders.
“They have truly carried the cross; their stories and witness can help priests, seminarians, religious and laypeople who may be associated with the scandal in the church. Many survivors yearn to pass on their faith; the church would be a better church if there were more opportunities for survivors to be part of the evangelization that Pope Francis calls for,” he added.
The measure for knowing whether systems and responses are working, Healy said, is asking, “Are survivors better off? Are there less stressors?”
The redress and rehabilitation they need must cover “all aspects,” like assistance with education, employment and ongoing therapy and support.
“We’re not just here to survive. Your life needs to be made fruitful; there is in you a fruitful, purposeful life to live and this is part of the responsibility of those who caused the abuse to help restore,” said Healy.
On July 9, 2020, the Swiss anti-cult associations JW Opfer Hilfe (Aid to the Victims of Jehovah’s Witnesses) and Fachstelle infoSekta (Center for Information on Cults) issued a press release, announcing that a 2019 decision of the District Court of Zurich had become final, which acquitted Dr. Regina Ruth Spiess, a former employee of infoSekta and current representative of JW Opfer Hilfe, from criminal charges of defamation brought by the Swiss Jehovah’s Witnesses, (JW Opfer Hilfe and Fachstelle infoSekta 2020).
On July 17, 2020—the two events are not related but, as we will see, they came to interact with each other—the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) published a document on the anti-cult ideology (USCIRF 2020). The USCIRF is a bipartisan commission of the U.S. government, whose members are appointed by the President and designated by the congressional leaders of both political parties, Democrat and Republican. The document focuses on anti-cultism in Russia, but goes beyond it, to identify the anti-cult ideology in general as one of the most serious threats to religious freedom internationally. Parenthetically, we would emphasize that the German word “Sekte” should not be translated into English as “sect” (a neutral word, without derogatory implications in the English language) but as “cult.” Similarly, “anti-sekten” should be translated as “anti-cult,” and vice versa.
On July 23, 2020, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, answered during her periodic briefing the USCIRF Report, which was highly critical of Russia and, in particular, of the Russian’s decision to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist organization.” She confused two different documents—the annual yearly report of the USCIRF and the USCIRF document on anti-cultism of July 17—but she intended in fact to answer the latter.
Zakharova stated that, “Regarding the Jehovah’s Witnesses—perhaps the United States is simply unaware of this, so I would like to enlighten our partners about a court decision recently enforced in Switzerland, one originally issued in July 2019. The court recognized some of the methods used by the local group of Jehovah’s Witnesses as violating fundamental human rights. Don’t you know this? I am referring to the practice where persons who choose to leave the sect or who fail to follow its instructions, are boycotted by their families and friends, children are boycotted, and psychological and social pressure is put on dissidents using various manipulative methods to influence consciousness, punishments, as well as unpunished cases of sexual violence. The sect’s members are actually denied the right to freedom of opinion and conscience, and this is what warranted the attention of Swiss justice” (Zakharova 2020).
There are two problems with Zakharova’s statement… (continued)
VATICAN CITY, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Roman Catholic bishops urged Belarus’s leader Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday to let its most senior cleric come back into the country.
Minsk’s archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, who has angered Lukashenko by defending the rights of anti-government protesters, was stopped at the border on Monday as he was returning home from a ceremony in neighbouring Poland.
Lukashenko, who is facing the biggest challenge to his 26-year rule, told reporters the prelate had been barred because he had “dragged Catholic believers” into politics. “We do not care who he is,” Lukashenko said.
In a statement, the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE), called on Thursday for Kondrusiewicz’s “immediate return home” and a commitment to dialogue to resolve the crisis in Belarus.
A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter that Kondrusiewicz should be allowed to return home “so he can tend to his flock during the ongoing protests”.
Kondrusiewicz, 74, is the most senior Catholic prelate in Belarus and is a citizen of the former Soviet republic.
Last week, the archbishop issued a statement criticising riot police for blocking people from seeking refuge in a church in Minsk. On Aug. 19, he prayed outside a pre-trial detention centre where anti-government protesters were being held.
Lukashenko has been trying to strengthen his grip on power after weeks of mass protests and strikes following a disputed election. On Thursday he promoted hardline loyalists to top posts in his security apparatus. He blames the unrest on foreign aggression.
In a message read out during a service in Minsk cathedral on Thursday, Kondrusiewicz said he was praying “for the solution of the socio-political crisis in our country … and my speedy return to my homeland”.
Pope Francis has called for respect for justice and a rejection of violence in Belarus.
The Switzerland-based CCEE represents the Catholic Church in 45 European countries. (Additional reporting by Matthias Williams in Kyiv; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
