Cabinet ministers have been told constitutional changes to the definition of the family could result in more people seeking reunification with relations who emigrated to Ireland.

A cabinet committee examining the wording for next year’s referendums received official advice on the proposal to redefine the family in the constitution as being based on “marriage or another durable relationship”, in the context of immigration and the reunification of families.

Documents prepared by senior officials for a high-level meeting said: “In the specific area of immigration, it is likely that the amendment will give rise to an increase in the number of persons asserting family relationships.”

However, it added: “The State can continue to define ‘family’ for immigration purposes, but there would likely need to be an additional layer of consideration of Article 41 constitutional family right in immigration decision making.”

Protestant, Muslim and Catholic representative all opposed assisted suicide proposals at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying on Thursday.

A Church of Ireland submission said “we must surely, as Christians, never concede that life is anything other than sacred, a gift of God from beginning to end, never to be thrown away as though it were personal property”.

Former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Rev Dr David Bruce, told the committee that “killing is wrong”.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri of the Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council, said that “in Islam, the unambiguous prohibition against suicide or assisted dying is unequivocally expressed in the Holy Koran”.

Islam was opposed “to euthanasia, assisted suicide and assisted dying, categorically denouncing these acts as tantamount to murder”, he said.

Legalising assisted dying “may lead individuals to choose death without addressing the underlying causes of their health issues, including mental health. Moreover, there is a concern that vulnerable populations, such as people with disabilities or the elderly, may feel pressured to opt for assisted death to avoid being perceived as burdensome,” he added.

The South African parliament has passed new legislation broadly criminalizing “hate speech” despite international warnings against it.

The new law imposes criminal penalties on broad categories of expression without clear definition of the subject matter, leading to potential prosecution and penalties for peaceful expression, according to the law firm ADF International.

The law states that any person who communicates with the intention to “be harmful or to incite harm” and to “promote or propagate hatred” is guilty of “hate speech”. Both “harm” and “hatred” are defined with vague and subjective criteria. The penalty for the offense is a fine and/or up to 5 years imprisonment.

South African national and human rights expert Dr. Georgia Du Plessis, Legal Officer with ADF, stated: “Our country has a complex and hard-won history of human rights protections, having endured vast and all-encompassing censorship efforts in our recent past under apartheid. This legislation violates international legal protections for free speech, and likely will lead to innumerable human rights abuses by censoring free speech, including peaceful expression, with criminal penalties.”

A contested development launched by a Jewish businessman threatens the Armenian Christian presence in Jerusalem, according to the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in the Holy Land.

Armenian-Christians have had a presence in Jerusalem since the fourth Century and occupy one quarter of the Old City. There is also a Jewish Quarter, a Muslim Quarter and a Christian Quarter of non-Armenian Christians.

November saw radical armed Jewish settlers aided by dogs and bulldozers disrupt a long-running sit-in at a site known as the ‘Cow’s Garden’, where Australian-Israeli businessman Danny Rothman plans to build a hotel.

“The provocations that are being used by the alleged developers to deploy incendiary tactics threaten to erase the Armenian presence in the area, weakening and endangering the Christian presence in the Holy Land,” the statement of all the Christian Patriarchs in Jerusalem said.

Mr Rothman’s Xana Capital Group reportedly made a secret deal in 2021 with the Armenian Christian patriarchate for a 99 year lease of a swath of the Armenian Quarter, which includes part of the Armenian Theological Seminary and several family homes.

When the deal became public, the local Christian community reacted with outrage.

The Armenian Patriarchate has since repudiated the deal, declaring it null and void.

The call was made at a session of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying from the perspective of religious, faith based and other philosophical groups.

Outlining their basic stance, the Bishops’ representatives said death is a natural part of the human condition.

“We do not propose the use of extraordinary or aggressive treatments to prolong life in a way which conflicts with reason, or with the dignity of the person.  Our focus is on how people might be helped to experience a good death.  We are opposed to the deliberate ending of human life, both for reasons of faith and for reasons connected with the defence of the common good”.

They said people across Ireland are already helped, ethically and legally, to approach death with dignity, within the interdisciplinary framework of good palliative care.  Assisted suicide, however, “is something very different and we believe that it would undermine the common good in several different ways”.

In the wake of a mass indictment of 42 people in India over charges of fraudulent conversion of members of poor and tribal communities to Christianity, a priest is warning that recent elections in several Indian states, which saw strong gains for the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, may make the situation worse.

In effect, Father Anand Matthew suggested that in light of accelerating crackdowns under India’s anti-conversion law, Christianity in the country may need to return to the model of the early church of lay-led small Christian communities able to fly below the radar of government authorities.

“Anti-Christian intolerance and harassment has already been bad, and this victory doesn’t augur well for religious freedom in these states,” said Mathew, a prominent social activist and a member of the Indian Mission Society.

A Catholic-inspired think tank has accused the Nigerian government of various levels of complicity in the killing of Christians by jihadist forces, while some observers predict Africa’s most populous nation may be on the brink of a “religious war.”

At least 500 Christians have been killed in Plateau State since January according to Intersociety, a democracy and human rights advocacy group founded in 2008. Over the past 14 years, at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants, according to the group.

The director of Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, has accused the government of encouraging the bloodshed.

“The level of violence is expected to continue and it has continued to rise because the authorities are fuelling the crisis,” he said.

“The authorities are behind the killings. The authorities have injected the security forces with jihadist bad blood, to the extent that the security forces have left what they are supposed to do and they started going after people who are not lawless citizens,” Emeka told Crux.

Referendums to remove the constitutional protection for mothers to not be forced to work outside the home, and to explicitly recognise families not based on marriage, will take place next year.

The Government has, however, given up on inserting an explicit recognition of gender. Critics have accused the Government of not being able to define the terms ‘gender’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

It proposes to delete both sections of Article 41.2 on the contribution of women to the common good and the work of mothers in the home and replace it with an Article 42B: “The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”

The other vote will amend the article on the family to insert the words “whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”.

It also proposes to delete the words “on which the Family is founded” in the article pledging special care for the institution of Marriage.

A related proposal to insert a specific reference to gender will not proceed as there are other clauses referring to equality more generally, and an explicit mention of gender could ‘unwittingly downgrade’ other minorities.

Five more hospitals will start carrying out abortions in December, more than five years after legislation legalising the procedure was passed. The State has had difficulty locating enough doctors willing to perform abortions.

The provision of terminations in St Luke’s hospital, Kilkenny; Letterkenny University Hospital; Wexford General Hospital; Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise; and Portiuncula hospital, Ballinasloe, follows the recruitment of staff specifically tasked to provide them.

With this latest expansion of the service, 17 out of 19 maternity units in the Republic will be terminate the lives of unborn children.

It is expected that terminations will be conducted in the two remaining units – Cavan General Hospital and South Tipperary General Hospital, Clonmel – next year.

A German missionary priest has been freed in Mali after more than a year in captivity.

News of his release was officially confirmed by his congregation, the Missionaries of Africa, on Wednesday, 29 November.

In a statement they said: “we are overjoyed to know that he is finally free after so many months.”

Father Hans-Joachim Lohre is member of a missionary Society known as the White Fathers. He leads the Institute for Christian-Muslim dialogue in Bamako.

Fr Ha-Jo was aware of the risks to his safety by continuing to work in Mali. Still, he persisted, driven by a desire to improve the situation for the country overall and to remain with his small Christian community. Hans-Joachim Lohre, known affectionately as Fr Ha-Jo, disappeared in Bamako, Mali, on 20 November 2022. He had over 30 years of experience in Mali. His car was found abandoned, and the cross he normally carried was on the floor.