Spanish parliament orders investigations into abuse in Catholic Church

News in brief.

Spanish parliament orders investigation into abuse in Catholic Church. This week the Spanish parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into sexual abuse within the Spanish Catholic Church. This follows considerable frustration among the Spanish public about the Church’s reluctance to acknowledge its role in abuse. At the end of 2021, the conference of Spanish Catholic bishops rejected an independent investigation into historical sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. The president of the bishop’s conference also appeared to minimize the extent of abuse, insisting it could be addressed by the Church at local level.  

Polish Lutheran church supporting refugees on border. The Lutheran church in Poland, the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland (ECACP) is sending support packages of food, medical supplies, and clothing to the thousands of refugees stuck on the border between Poland and Belarus. The church is working with Lutheran border guard chaplains, leadership of detention centres, local NGOs, and the hospital at Hajnówka on the border that is treating some of the refugees. Read more. 

Cyprus Orthodox Church suspends priests for refusing vaccination. The Orthodox Church in Cyprus has suspended 12 priests because they have refused to have Corona virus vaccinations. Archbishop Chrysostomos II  was one of the first people to get vaccinated in December 2020 when vaccinations started in Cyprus. Read more. 

Spotlight on Cadiz.

Cadiz Cathedral (Pl. de la Catedral) was built during the height of Cadiz’s power as a trading port with the Americas, and perhaps rightly therefore, the imposing cathedral looks out over the Atlantic Ocean. Two neoclassical towers (one can be climbed for views over the city) stand each side of a gold-tiled dome. Inside, the cathedral contains many fine examples of baroque-era adornment, including a spectacular wood-carved choir. The movements of Atlantic Ocean waves can be felt through the walls of the oyster stone crypt. 

Iglesia del Oratorio de San Felipe Neri  ( C. San José, 36 ) a characteristically ornate baroque Spanish church, featuring many paintings (including the last work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo) and plenty of gold ornamentation. In 1812, the church was the location of the signing of the progressive, liberal constitution for the congress or Cortes of Cadiz, establishing universal suffrage and a legislature that included delegates from the whole of Spain as well as the Americas and the Philippines. 

Saint of the week: Saint Valentine.

In the third century, Bishop Valentine from Interamna (in what is now Italy) travelled to Rome where he was imprisoned, perhaps for secretly performing Christian weddings, allowing the husbands to escape conscription into the army. Emperor Claudius had ordered Valentine’s arrest, and while Valentine is said to have initially won some favour in the emperor’s court by performing healing miracles, his attempts to convert Claudius led to his execution. One early account of Valentine’s life says that he gave “hearts cut from parchment" to persecuted Christians to remind them of God’s love, perhaps establishing the tradition that continues till today.