Author: cjrcdow

Chaplain to Gypsy, Roma, Travellers protests Channel 4 TV Documentary

Travellers' Mass Westminster Cathedral 2018 - image ICN/JS

Travellers’ Mass Westminster Cathedral 2018 – image ICN/JS

The Catholic Church has warned that last night’s Channel 4 Dispatches The Truth About Traveller Crime, risks stoking racism against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Fr Dan Mason, National Catholic Chaplain for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers said: “Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities make a valuable contribution to our society, yet face extraordinary levels of racism and discrimination. Almost every man, woman and child has suffered some form of hate speech or hate crime.”

Channel 4’s programme used sensationalist language, selective examples and dubious statistics which will only reinforce this prejudice. Such broadcasts would be dangerous and irresponsible at the best of times. Coming amid a national crisis, and a pandemic that’s hitting minority communities so hard, is particularly unacceptable.

Pope Paul VI reminded us that our GRT sisters and brothers are at the heart of the Church. We will continue to stand in solidarity with them.”

Earlier this month the Catholic Church in England and Wales called for solidarity with GRT communities during the COVID-19 pandemic: See: ICN 1 April 2020 COVID-19: Call for solidarity with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities www.indcatholicnews.com/news/39258

Donations Urgently Needed – Please help Caritas Westminster to help others through the extended Cardinal’s Lent Appeal

In April, Caritas Westminster sent £31,000 in emergency food vouchers to schools and parishes who will distribute them to those most in need during the Covid-19 pandemic. You can support this work by donating to the Cardinal’s Lenten Appeal which has been extended to address the on-going crisis: 

Link: https://bit.ly/CardinalsAppeal
Read more: https://bit.ly/2RXjdEf

Earth Day 2020

On Wednesday 22 April, the world will observe International Earth Day.

Leela Ramdeen writes:

Here are some things we can do to demonstrate our love for our earth:

1. Develop an environmental spirituality.

2. Assess our lifestyle and consumption. Practice these four ‘Rs’ for sustainable living: Reuse, recycle, reduce, restore.

3. Prevent pollution, reduce our carbon footprint, and become advocates for God’s Creation.

4. Promote sound environmental management practices e.g. energy efficiency, water conservation, waste avoidance, composting, using environmentally responsible products, and car-pooling.

5. Enjoy nature and live in harmony with it.

Full article in Independent Catholic News

Leela Ramdeen is Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, (CCSJ) and Director of CREDI

Have You Signed the Petitions?

Thank you to those who have signed the petitions for the UN Global Ceasefire and Jubilee Debt Campaign!

It only takes a short amount of your time but really does make a difference.

Colette Joyce, Justice and Peace Co-ordinator, says: “In these days of crisis, a great number of online petitions have been pouring into the Commission inbox and I have been signing and promoting as many as possible to beg for social change at home and abroad, but found it isn’t easy to keep current when policy is changing on an almost daily basis. We strongly encourage people to continue to put immediate pressure on governments to make urgent and essential policy improvements, but we decided we needed to look at the big picture as well, to see what large-scale changes need to be made in the longer term to move us away from daily fire-fighting.

The COVID19 pandemic is laying bare the staggering inequalities between human beings and the huge injustices that maintain our structurally unfair societies. At the same time, we have discovered that despite, maybe even because of lockdown, there is an increasing capacity for universal co-operation. Now is the time to harness it for the greater good!”

Fr Dominic Robinson, SJ, Justice and Peace Chair, writes: “Pope Francis is urging us to recognise how on a global scale now is the time to make choices which will build a new more human future. The current global crisis requires us to put aside our past divisions and to work together for the health of the whole human race. This requires us to cancel the debt of the poorer nations and to put an end to conflicts between peoples. It is our hope that this radical call will be heeded by those who have the power to bring this about.”

No-one is safe until everyone is safe!

Full report from Independent Catholic News

Migrants Mass moves online!

Each year, near to the Feast of St Joseph the Worker, the migrant communities of Brentwood, Southwark and Westminster Dioceses gather for a Mass that is full of song, vibrant energy and great joy.

The Mass should have taken place in Forest Gate this year, but as we cannot gather, we will celebrate by Livestream Mass at 10.30am on Saturday 2nd May.

The Mass will be streamed live on the Instagram by the Brentwood Youth Service. Follow these steps to join in:

Peace Groups tell government: We need medical supplies not weapons

First we pause… we stop… so that we can think…and judge properly… what will keep us safe from harm?

Justice & Peace in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster also welcomes this pause of the government’s Integrated Review and urges them to listen to the voices of peace campaigners before they establish new national priorities for Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.

Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and Pax Christi are among the organisations approving this decision and urging the government to change track completely. Read full report on Independent Catholic News

Pax Christi International joins Pope Francis and UN in call for global ceasefire

“We are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples … so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.” Pope Francis, 27 March 2020

Responding to the words of Pope Francis, Pax Christi International has joined the United Nations in calling for a Global Ceasefire. More…

An international peace-building process is now in place to arrange truces in every conflict zone.

A notable milestone was reached on 9th April 2020 when Pax Christi and 59 other organisations issued a statement in response to the announcement of a temporary ceasefire in Yemen. The cessation of hostilities is only a first step and the statement called for an immediate end to restrictions and interference to humanitarian aid to provide urgent medical care and measures to prevent the spread of COVID19.

yemen-ceasefire-statement-9-april-2020Download

The Westminster Justice & Peace Commission encourage you to add your voice by signing the Avaaz petition for a Global Ceasefire

Calais Migrants – More needs to be done

Barbara in Calais last year

Update from Barbara Kentish
Westminster Justice & Peace Commission lead on Migrants and Refugees:

Awaited for over a week, the Préfecture of Pas de Calais has finally designated six centres in the region to house migrants, estimated between 8-1200, living rough in the surrounding dunes and woods of Calais. On Friday, 3 April, around 100 were taken by bus to a requisitioned holiday centre in Merlimont, not far from the Normandy beaches. At the moment transfer is voluntary, with enforcement considered only as a last resort, the operation being envisaged to last over two weeks. In the centres, all in the Pas de Calais area, migrants will be subject to the same Covid 19 regulations as the rest of the country. Already two had tested positive for the illness earlier in the week, and were moved to flats designated for isolated care.

With 400 places identified so far, and a staggered process of transfer, Juliette Delaplace of Secours Catholique protested that this was not sufficient: “At this rate people will only be sheltered 12 days from now, when we have already been at stage 3 of the coronavirus epidemic for three weeks. It completely ignores the emergency, and sanitary needs. This neglect of exiled people on the North coast is inexplicable.”

The State-led operation aims to take control, for humanitarian reasons, of a ‘population without shelter’, whose presence around the outskirts of Calais poses ‘serious public health problems and challenges to the peace’. It is in the ‘national framework of public isolating policy’ according to the regional government.

Other NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Emmaus, Cimade and Doctors without Borders are also concerned. NGOs have been prohibited from circulating amongst the encampments so that hunger and lack of supplies has been reported. In Grande Synthe, Dunkirk, measures are also expected, but at the moment some voluntary agencies have managed to deliver supplies.

Original report on Independent Catholic News

UN Global Ceasefire Update

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres last month issued an appeal for a global ceasefire amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In a new update, he reports progress in a number of areas. Warning that gains are fragile, he pledges a strong diplomatic push for combatants to lay down their arms. The Secretary-General’s call has been endorsed by all United Nations Messengers of Peace and Advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals as well as more than a million other people around the world.

Well worth clicking on the video – it takes just 1 minute, 40 seconds of your time and is a stirring tribute to the possibility of ending armed conflict while we turn our resources to eradicating our invisible viral enemy.

Time to wash our hands of nuclear weapons

Christian CND writes:

The UK, like the rest of the world, is in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Health threats like this have been listed as ‘Tier 1’ threats to national security for some time, as the government acknowledged it is a genuine threat to our way of life. Despite this fact, funding for nuclear weapons has vastly outstripping funding given to preparing for a pandemic.

The threat of nuclear weapons from other states has not been listed as a top priority threat by the government. So why are we continuing to press ahead with the plans to replace Trident with a new generation of nuclear weapons as a cost of at least £205 billion.

The government must listen to the evidence regarding the threats we face. Their own assessment continually show that it is pandemic health outbreaks, cyber attacks, climate change and terrorism which threaten us. None of these can be tackled with nuclear weapons.

Our friends at CND have launched a new action for you to contact your MP and highlight these inconsistencies, calling for Trident to be scrapped and the money to be diverted to fighting real threats.

See also: Network of Christian Peace Organisations, which includes Pax Christi and Christian CND statement on Coronavirus ceasefire calls –

https://christiancnd.org.uk/2020/03/30/ncpo-statement-on-coronavirus-ceasefire-calls/

Article from Independent Catholic News