A Nigerian Catholic bishop has assailed President Michael D Higgins for suggesting climate change played a role in the massacre of 40 people at a Pentecost Sunday Mass in his diocese, describing the claim as rubbing salt into the wounds of the victims.

In a statement, Bishop of Ondo diocese, Jude Ayodeji Arogundade, described President Higgins’ statement as “incorrect and far-fetched”.

“To suggest or make a connection between victims of terror and consequences of climate change is not only misleading but also exactly rubbing salt to the injuries of all who have suffered terrorism in Nigeria”.

He added: “Alluding to some form of politics of climate change in our situation is completely inappropriate.

“Such comments associating banditry, kidnapping and gruesome attacks on innocent and harmless citizens of Nigeria with issues concerning climate change and food securities are deflections from the truth.”

The bishop said that it is “the responsibility of every one of us to take case of our earthly home,” but added that he appeals to “those who are trying to take advantage of this horrific event to project any form of ideological agenda to desist from such opportunism”.

Portugal’s parliament voted for the third time in just over a year to make euthanasia legal, though the country’s Constitutional Court or president could yet prevent the change from becoming law.

A bill that would permit euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide introduced by the governing center-left Socialist Party passed on a 128-88 vote, with five abstentions. Three other similar bills, from smaller center-left parties, carried by almost identical margins.

The four bills next go to a committee stage, where they likely will be blended into one, before being voted on again and sent to the head of state. That process could take months.

Portugal’s top court blocked a previous bill in March 2021, saying its wording was “imprecise.” In November, the president vetoed a second parliament-sanctioned bill.

He said further clarification was needed about whether the proposed law would apply only to incurable illnesses or whether it could be extended to fatal or serious illnesses.

But none of the four new bills addresses Rebelo de Sousa’s specific concerns. Instead, they attempt to simplify circumstances where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are justified by referring to “a situation of intolerable suffering, with a definitive injury of extreme seriousness or a serious and incurable disease.”

Commentators say that omission is unlikely to assuage the president’s concerns.

Isabel Moreira, a Socialist lawmaker who championed the legislation, said the law “is an invitation to understand others: When in doubt, show tolerance.”

Children may be born into a “stateless legal limbo” if proposed legislation regulating donor-IVF does not include a legal framework enabling international surrogacy, a solicitor specialising in the field has said. Almost no country in Europe allows commercial surrogacy on the grounds that it leaves low-income women open to exploitation and commodifies babies.

Annette Hickey warned the Joint Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy yesterday that the State “cannot run that risk”. The committee has heard almost entirely from people who favour the practice and from almost no critics.

Ms Hickey recommended the inclusion of a regulated statutory framework for international surrogacy in the legislation as well as inserting retrospective recognition of parentage in the Bill for all existing children born through surrogacy, both domestic and international.

Muslim teachers in Scotland face discrimination after being forced to take unpaid leave to observe holy days, a union claims.

School holidays are “heavily orientated towards a western Christian background” so teachers enjoy Christmas and Easter off, but minorities must take unpaid leave for holy days such as Eid in some council areas.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the largest teaching union, backed a motion at its annual general meeting to investigate schools that deny teachers time off for religious observance.

James McIntyre, a member of the EIS anti-racist subcommittee, said school policies on religious observance were not routinely published, but those whose policies were transparent revealed “time off for religious observance wasn’t regarded as a normal holiday”.

He said: “If you wanted to do it you would have to take it off unpaid. If you play a sport to a particular level, or like me you are a qualified national referee, I can get time off to go and referee at an event and I will get paid for it.

“The last I checked being a referee or a sportsperson was not a protected characteristic [under the Equality Act], so why do I get favourable treatment over someone who has a right to be able to celebrate their religion?”

Families of the dead from last Sunday’s church massacre in Nigeria are suffering grief and trauma in the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack.

One woman, Theresa Ogbu, took two of her five children to mass on Sunday to celebrate Pentecost, a joyful occasion for a devout Catholic, but the boys came home without a mother.

Ogbu, 51, was shot in the head as she tried to escape from St Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Nigeria, where the congregation came under attack from unknown assailants firing guns and hurling explosives.

“I miss my mother so much,” said Victor Ogbu, 13. He and his brother escaped unharmed, only to discover later that their mother lay dead in a pool of blood in a church aisle.

Inside the church, streaks of blood on the floors and walls, broken furniture, shards of glass, plaster debris and abandoned shoes testified to the violence of the attack.

At the family home, Benedict Ogbu was grieving for his wife and wondering how he was going to face life as a single father of five.

“It is just like somebody have two hands and they cut one hand,” he said. “Something that the two hands is carrying, you try to use one hand to carry it. In fact it is very heavy.”

A Catholic bishops’ commission has criticised a resolution before the European Parliament on the U.S. Supreme Court’s possible overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In a statement, Father Manuel Barrios Prieto, the secretary general of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), expressed “surprise” that the European Union’s law-making body intended to discuss “the impact of a leaked draft opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court concerning abortion.”

“This is an unacceptable interference in the democratic jurisdictional decisions of a sovereign state, a country that is also not a member state of the EU,” he said.

“The adoption of a resolution by European Parliament that endorses this interference will only discredit this institution.”

President Miloš Zeman said he would veto a bill that would redefine marriage in the Czech Republic to allow same-sex couples avail of it.

The lower house of parliament received a bill amending the Civil Code to that effect with support from five deputy groups.

The motion was not supported by Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), though parties generally allow their MPs a free vote on such matters.

However, President Zeman opposes such changes. “Same-sex couples are entitled to all the benefits of a registered partnership, “but a family is a union of a man and a woman. Period,” he said.

Instead, the president would support a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman – an amendment some Christian Democrats are currently pushing for.

Reports vary on the number killed with some putting the total at more than 50, with the local hospital starting to run short of supplies needed to treat survivors.

Assailants attacked the congregation with guns and explosives during a mass to celebrate the feast of Pentecost.

In a statement, President Higgins said that such an attack was made in a place of worship “is a source of particular condemnation”. He also condemned “any attempt to scapegoat pastoral peoples who are among the foremost victims of the consequences of climate change”.

Authorities have given no information about the identity or motive of the attackers. Many attacks on Nigerian Christians are carried out by Islamists.

Some Owo residents and one Catholic bishop have suggested that the attack may be linked to conflict between nomadic ethnic Fulani herdsmen and local farmers over land use.

Fulani terrorists are regarded as responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Nigeria since 2009, most of them Christians, but also Muslims from farming communities in Nigeria’s northwest.

The violence has moved further south in recent years, with the Pentecost attack – if it was perpetrated by Fulani terrorists – being one of the southern-most acts of Fulani terrorism.

In recent months, other Nigerian churches have been attacked by Fulani terrorists, with parishioners either being kidnapped or shot by terrorists.

Making the word “women” less prominent in NHS health advice risks harming patients, an expert has warned.

The main NHS web pages on ovarian, womb and cervical cancers no longer refer to women. They have instead been “desexed”, using gender-neutral language that includes people who have female body parts but do not identify as women, such as transgender men.

England’s NHS website used to introduce ovarian cancer as “one of the most common types of cancer in women”. Now it says: “Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer, but it mostly affects those over 50.”

Campaigners said they worried that less literate people, including those without English as a first language, may not realise the health messages applied to them.

Dr Karleen Gribble of Western Sydney University, lead author of a recent review on the importance of sexed language in birth and childcare, said: “I think that the changes to desex language are well intentioned, but we are seeing that they are making communications less clear and when it comes to critical health issues that has great potential to place the health and wellbeing of individuals at risk.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bdfde88a-e5b6-11ec-aa87-2eea7c6e5b01