A Government TD has criticised the uncertainty caused by “substantial delays” in processing applications for visas for overseas clergy and other religious workers who want to come here and work as missionaries or pastoral assistants, usually at the invitation of local churches and religious congregations. They are often needed to make up falling numbers of home-grown clergy or cater ot the growing number of Christian immigrants into Ireland.

Even they get here, they are usually limited to six years, unlike many other foreign workers.

Fianna Fáil’s Brendan Smith told The Irish Catholic that there are “substantial delays” in getting the Minister of Religion visas and said it causes hardship on the person applying.

“These are people who are needed, where bishops or missionary societies have asked them to come and help,” he said.

The Cavan-Monaghan TD also believes that there should not be a time limit of six years for people coming to Ireland to work as a minister of religion. The current legislation allows for a three-year visa, with three possible one-year extensions.

“The timeframe of six years needs to be reviewed and removed I believe,” he said. Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, is resisting this.

Deputy Smith commented: “Over the years we have seen people come from Eastern European countries and from Africa to minister in the different religions. And they have been a welcome addition for the churches.”

He added that they are not a burden to the state, they are contributing “through their different work, important pastoral work, important education work as well”.

A young Spanish priest decided to stay with his parishioners in Ukraine rather than flee for safety despite the Russian invasion and a growing litany of serious war crimes against the civilian population.

Father Pedro Zafra is a 31-year-old priest from Córdoba, Spain, who arrived in Kyiv in 2011 for priestly formation. He was ordained last June and is a member of the Neocatechumenal Way. The priest serves the parish of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Ukrainian capital.

“It was an inner battle,” he said, adding that he found the answer in prayer with a passage from the Gospel which “spoke of the mission and the support of God’s grace to carry it forward,” and that’s why he decided to stay.

“We have several elderly people in wheelchairs, families with their small and adolescent children, and some young missionaries,” Fr. Zafra told the Spanish daily ABC, and stressed that living through this situation in community “helps us a lot to cope with it.”

“I’m not a hero. I couldn’t handle this situation by myself. It’s God who gives me strength through prayer and the sacraments,” he said.

Italy has moved closer to the legalisation of assisted suicide.

The lower house of parliament voted for a new law — by 253 votes to 117 with one abstention — which would permit “voluntary medically assisted death” for terminally ill patients.

To qualify, patients would have to be suffering from an irreversible illness with an “unfortunate prognosis” which causes “absolutely intolerable physical and psychological suffering”.

The law does not have popular support, even though there is an active and vocal euthanasia lobby in Italy. In 2019, Italy’s Constitutional Court in 2019, ruled that assisted suicide should not be punishable in certain cases. It left it up to Parliament to draft a law setting out the details.

In February the court blocked an attempt to hold a euthanasia referendum, insisting that it was Parliament’s job to decide.

A columnist for L’Avvenire wrote: “in our legal system there can be no room for a right to death, not even an implicit one. The choice to help a person die or not must remain with individual doctors so that it continues to be a tragic exception as much as possible, and does not flank other therapeutic and care offers, as if appropriate therapies and death were equivalent choices.”

The latest abortion guidelines from the WHO declared that conscientious objection, “continues to operate as a barrier to access to quality abortion care … If it proves impossible to regulate conscientious objection in a way that respects, protects and fulfils abortion seekers’ rights, conscientious objection in abortion provision may become indefensible.”

Therefore, it recommends a series of restrictive measure to counteract its operation. These include: ensuring the health care systems employ sufficient abortion providers; regulating CO and penalising non-compliance; banning institutional claims of conscience; requiring doctors with CO to refer patients to doctors who will do abortions; banning CO in urgent or emergency situations.

Furthermore, WHO paints a dark picture of the supposedly toxic effects on women, on doctors, and on health systems. They say: “Where there are many objectors, non-objecting health workers have an increased workload, abortion provision is often stigmatised, and those who do provide abortion care may experience career limitation or discrimination”.

A Finnish court has upheld the right to free speech of Christians quoting scripture-based beliefs by dismissing all charges against Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola.

In a unanimous ruling the court concluded that “it is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts”. The prosecution was ordered to pay more than 60,000 EUR in legal costs and has seven days to appeal the ruling.

The former Minister of the Interior had been charged with “hate speech” for sharing her faith-based views on marriage, sexual ethics and homosexuality, in a 2019 tweet, a 2019 radio debate, and a 2004 pamphlet. The bishop faced charges for publishing Räsänen’s pamphlet for his congregation over 17 years ago. Their case has garnered global media attention this year, as human rights experts voiced concern over the threat this case posed to free speech in Finland.

“I am so grateful the court recognized the threat to free speech and ruled in our favour. I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders after being acquitted. Although I am grateful for having had this chance to stand up for freedom of speech, I hope that this ruling will help prevent others from having to go through the same ordeal,” said Päivi Räsänen after her victory.

MPs have voted to make ‘DIY’ at-home abortion permanently available in England.

The amendment to the Health and Care Bill making the change passed by a narrow margin of 27 votes (215:188).

This result will overturn the Government’s decision last month to end the temporary provision that has allowed abortions to take place entirely outside of a clinical setting.

Results from the Department of Health and Social Care’ consultation on ‘DIY’ abortion showed overwhelming support for the Government’s decision to wind down the services and make sure no more women are put at risk due to the temporary provision from 30 August 2022, with 70% of respondents saying the policy should end immediately and only 22% saying it should remain permanently.

Since that announcement, the Conservative Peer, Baroness Sugg, launched a bid to make ‘DIY’ abortion a permanent feature of the law in England by amending the Government’s Health and Care Bill. Her amendment was passed by 75 votes to 35 in the House of Lords amid confusion among Liberal Democrat Peers about whether or not they had a free vote.

American sisters who ended their lives at a Swiss assisted suicide clinic after becoming “tired of life”, were advised by the campaigning group Exit International.

The group, which has an active branch in Ireland, advocate for a legislative model whereby all mentally competent adults over 18 could choose to die regardless of their physical or mental well being. It also provides information and guidance to those seeking to end their lives.

Sisters, Dr Lila Ammouri, a palliative care doctor aged 54, and Susan Frazier, 49, first contacted Exit International in September 2020: “The explanation was that they weren’t 100 per cent well. They were complaining about what you might call frustrations. Collapsed discs, chronic back pain, chronic insomnia, vertigo,” Director, Dr Philip Nitshke told The Independent.

“They had both decided they were tired of life and it was time to go”.

They became members of Exit in October 2020, which provided them with DIY handbooks on how to take their lives.

But Dr Nitschke said the sisters were worried that the procedure may not succeed, and he placed them in touch with Pegasos, a Basel-based assisted suicide organisation which does not require proof of terminal illness.

Pegasos does require that a patient must come in with a third party in order to identify them after death, but the rule can be waived if the patient is also a member of Exit International.

The US state of West Virginia has banned abortion of foetuses if they have Down Syndrome or other disabilities.

The “Unborn Child with Down Syndrome Protection and Education Act” prohibit patients from terminating a pregnancy based on the possibility that the foetus may develop a disability. The law goes into effect on June 10 of this year.

Abortion providers will have to ask each patient if they are choosing to terminate a pregnancy based on a potential disability. Providers will then have to submit a statement to the state confirming that is not the reason. Medical practitioners which do not comply with this law could lose their licences. Patients would face no penalties.

West Virginians for Life said that the law would protect the lives of those with Down Syndrome.

The US state of Oregon will no longer limit medically assisted suicide to the state’s residents after a lawsuit successfully challenged the restriction as unconstitutional.

In a settlement on Monday, the Oregon Health Authority agreed to stop enforcing the residency requirement and to ask the Legislature to remove it from the law.

Laura Echevarria, a spokeswoman for National Right to Life, which opposes such laws, warned that, without a residency requirement, Oregon risked becoming the nation’s “assisted-suicide tourism capital.”

Enacted in 1997, Oregon’s first-in-the-nation law allows terminally ill people deemed to have less than six months to live to end their lives by voluntarily taking lethal medications prescribed by a physician for that purpose.

Since the law took effect, 2,159 people have used it to end their lives, according to data published last month by the Oregon Health Authority.

National Right to Life is concerned that people might be able to travel to Oregon without having much of a relationship with a doctor in the state, thus chipping away at protections limiting the use of the law, Echevarria said.

Several priests in the Diocese of Armagh have pledged to offer accommodation in their parishes to house Ukrainian refugees.

Fr Paul Byrne is one of a growing number of priests in the diocese who have registered with the Irish Red Cross to offer his spare room in the Parochial House in Termonfeckin, Co Louth.

The diocese has some 120 priests across 61 parishes who have been asked by Archbishop Eamon Martin to consider offering any spare rooms or accommodation for use by refugees.

Fr Paul is a member of the Diocesan Council of Priests who met last Thursday to discuss the situation and hear reports from the National Bishop’s Council which confirmed that all bishops had offered to take the lead on offering their homes to help refugees.

“We have to take a lead in this to encourage others to free up any empty properties or holiday homes for short term use by the Red Cross for refugees,” he said.