St Oscar Romero 
Philippine bishop chides govt over church gatherings ban
The Philippine government should have consulted Church leaders before trying to ban religious gatherings, Manila Archdiocese’s apostolic administrator Bishop Broderick Pabillo said March 24.
His comment came in a pastoral letter in which he questioned a March 20 government order banning religious gatherings for two weeks to curb a surge in Covid-19 cases.
He also re-affirmed his intention to defy the ban despite a government threat to enforce it.
The ban from March 22-April 4 effectively prohibits churches in Manila from conducting services during Holy Week.
Earlier this week Bishop Pabillo said he would defy the ban by allowing churches to remain open but said they should not admit more than 10 percent of their total seating capacity.
El Salvador gathers to remember St Romero
Hundreds of devotees of St Oscar Romero, martyred by a single bullet as he celebrated Mass in 1980, packed the cathedral in San Salvador, March 24, before heading down to the crypt to touch the tomb where the saint is buried.
Some rubbed the mitre on the bronze work of art that covers his tomb, kneeled and cried in front of it as they asked for the saint’s intercession in liberating the world from the pandemic and El Salvador of the different social ills it faces today.
Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas of San Salvador said in a homily that if St Romero were alive today, he would “advocate for an El Salvador free of impunity, corruption… a country free of violence and one of peace”.
US bishops welcome Virginia death penalty abolition
While standing outside the prison that housed Virginia’s execution chamber, Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state.
Legislators and anti-death penalty advocates joined the signing ceremony outside Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, where 101 people have been executed since 1991.
“Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people,” said Gov. Northam. “(Today) we join 22 other states in saying the government will not take a life, the government will no longer execute people.”
Bishop Michael Burbidge and Bishop Barry Knestout, Virginia, welcomed the new law, as did Archbishop Paul Coakley, the chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. He called it “a bold step toward a culture of life”.
Fear Canada’s assisted suicide law will harm indigenous peoples
A Canadian suicide prevention group is raising alarms that the country’s new assisted suicide law could especially harm indigenous peoples.
The Embrace Life Council, based in Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut, says that the proposed expansion of assisted suicide, Bill C-7, was crafted without proper input from indigenous voices and may exploit deficiencies in the territory’s mental health system.
“More research is required to determine the relationship between mental health and the current public health emergency of suicide in Nunavut,” said a letter sent to Nunvaut Senator Dennis Patterson from the Embrace Life Council, reported by the CBC.
The group said that mental illness creates a “significant impact on productivity, morbidity and mortality” in the territory.
The majority of the Nunavut’s population is Inuit, a group of indigenous peoples.
