The lockdown of churches in the UK during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic was “outrageous”, a former Government minister has admitted.

Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, a Conservative peer in Boris Johnson’s Government, said that churches and other places of worship were closed because “people at the heart of power did not understand faith”.

He made his remarks as the Covid Inquiry heard evidence from senior advisers and civil servants about the decisions taken during the pandemic.

They included Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara who told the inquiry that decision makers had suffered from a “narrow perspective”.

Lord Greenhalgh said that places of worship did a “phenomenal job” at controlling the spread of the virus compared to rates of transmission in other settings that were not subject to the same restrictions.

Preventing vulnerable people from being unjustly targeted for ‘assisted suicide’ is a real difficulty, numerous contributors told a joint Oireachtas committee.

On Tuesday, the National Suicide Research foundation said: “It is difficult to identify what safeguards would be deemed sufficient based on the international experience and where responsibility lies in determining adherence to safeguards”.

It added that those who choose ‘assisted dying’ have some things in common with persons who commit suicide including, “living alone, having no children, and not identifying as being religious”.

“It is likely that the prevalence of mental health conditions such as depression are under-reported and undiagnosed in people who request assisted dying.”

Speaking at the same meeting, Léopold Vanbellingen, a doctor in Law at the University of Leuven and expert on assisted death laws said despite their alleged safeguards, “each of these national laws rapidly tend to pose a threat to the lives of vulnerable people”.

“We can identify at least three categories of victims of this inescapable threat: firstly, elderly people who are dependent; secondly, people suffering from mental illness; thirdly, healthcare practitioners.”

Representing the Irish College of Psychiatrists, Dr Siobhan MacHale, said the answer to patients not receiving adequate specialist palliative care is not to “end our patients’ lives”.

She added that “by creating one class of people for whom life is expendable, that particular view may be extended by society to all groups possessing such attributes [such as permanently disabled people].”

By a vote of 72-26 with six abstentions, Peru’s Congress has passed a bill that expressly recognises the rights granted in its constitution to unborn children.

Congressman Alejandro Muñante, one of the spokespersons for the Life and Family caucus in Peru, said that the fundamental purpose of the law was “to consolidate the right to life from conception, which is already established in our constitution and in the Civil Code and the Children and Adolescents Code.”

The lawmaker explained that for the drafting of this law, “the need was seen to be able to develop and detail a list of rights that our constitution precisely seeks to protect from conception.” According to Article 2 of the country’s Magna Carta, in Peru “the conceived child is a subject of law in everything that favors him or her.”

The House of Delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA) has rebuffed an effort to change the organisation’s opposition to physician-assisted suicide, a development that drew praise from members of the Catholic Medical Association, which advocated against the change.

A resolution supporting physician-assisted suicide was proposed at an AMA House of Delegates meeting that took place Nov. 10–14 in National Harbor, Maryland. The resolution would have changed the organisation’s stance on the practice from opposed to neutral. Ultimately, delegates voted down the proposal.

The AMA’s current code of ethics states: “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. Instead of engaging in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life”.

The Irish Bishops are urging parishes to light up cathedrals and churches in red to mark the upcoming ‘Red Wednesday’ that highlights the persecution of Christians worldwide.

Wednesday, 22 November, has been set aside by the Pontifical charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), as a day of prayer and remembrance for Christians suffering for their faith.

The Irish Bishops recently said, “The continuing persecution of Christians in so many parts of the world is a reason for Irish people to take steps to show solidarity with them through prayer, the sharing of information, and to advocate for them with politicians and the wider community.”

ACN is a Catholic charity established in 1947 to help serve suffering and persecuted Christians around the world who are in material need as a result of discrimination and oppression. One of the initiatives of ACN Ireland is ‘Red Wednesday’, which this year falls on 22 November. Red Wednesday occurs in the middle of a week of witness and prayer for persecuted Christians across the world, including prayer vigils on the day itself.

All charges against two Finnish people for having publicly expressed their Christian beliefs have been dismissed by the Helsinki Court of Appeal.

Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola had both been tried for “hate speech” in August and acquitted, but state prosecutors appealed that judgement.

Räsänen, Finland’s former Interior Minister, was formally charged with “agitation against a minority group” in 2021 under a section of the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity” for sharing her Christian beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 2019 tweet, as well as a 2019 live radio debate and 2004 church pamphlet. Bishop Pohjola was charged for publishing Räsänen’s 2004 pamphlet. The case has garnered global media attention as human rights experts voiced concern over the threat posed to free speech.

In the 2019 tweet, to coincide with a ‘Pride’ march in which her Lutheran Church took part, she said ‘How does the doctrinal foundation of the Church fit in with shame and sin being raised as a matter of pride?’

Reacting to the court ruling, she said: “I am deeply relieved. The court has fully endorsed and upheld the decision of the district court, which recognized everyone’s right to free speech.”

In a unanimous ruling that upheld the District Court’s March 2022 unanimous acquittal, the court dismissed the arguments of the state prosecutor.

The Court has ordered the prosecution to pay tens of thousands in legal fees to cover costs incurred by both defendants.

The death of baby Indi Gregory yesterday has been called an unjust violation of the right of parents to make medical choices for their children.

The critically ill baby who was at the centre of a legal argument over her treatment died Monday after having her breathing tube removed.

Judges in several High Court and Court of Appeal cases ruled the eight-month-old should die but last week Italy stepped in and made her a citizen in a last-minute legal bid to bring her to a Rome hospital for treatment.

But on Friday that attempt failed.

She was moved from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham (QMC) to a hospice where she died in the early hours of today in her mother’s arms.

Her father Dean said: “The NHS and the courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi’s dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged”.

Commenting, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre said the case, “as so many before (cf. the cases of Alfie Evans, Charlie Gard, and many others) involves a violation of the right and prerogative of parents to make medical choices for their children”.

“To remove this right and responsibility is an act of injustice to both parents and children until and unless the former can be shown to be both unreasonable and harmful to their child”.

The number of births in Poland fell by 11pc in the 12 months to September, the first time the decline has hit double-digit levels.

The fertility rate has also been steadily declining from a high of 1.45 in 2017, to 1.26 in 2022, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

The outgoing conservative government, which has been in power since 2015, had made pro-natal policies a priority.

In the 12 months to September, Poland had 280,000 live births. That was the lowest annualised figure on record and 34,800 fewer than in the same period a year ago, according to calculations by economist Rafał Mundry based on data from Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency.

Last year, the number of births in Poland had already fallen to its lowest level since the Second World War and the number of deaths exceeded the number of births for the tenth year in a row.

There is a desperate need for conversion to a culture of life, according to an Ohio Archbishop after voters in the State approved a very permissive abortion law which makes the procedure available for any reason up to 22 weeks, which is near the point of viability. After 22 weeks, it will be available where “necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health”, which in countries like Britain is interpreted very broadly.

The measure passed with roughly 57 percent of the vote.

Archbishop Dennis Schnurr, who had helped lead the charge to reject the amendment, expressed disappointment in the result.

“The people of Ohio missed this important opportunity to demonstrate that the health and safety of women, the fundamental rights of parents, and the lives of preborn children deserve protection,” he said.

“The passage of Issue 1 [as the amendment was called] shows that there remains a desperate need for conversion of hearts and minds to a culture of life in our country, one that respects the inherent dignity and sacredness of every human being from conception to natural death,” Schnurr said.

A Christian nonprofit organisation is asking a US court to protect its freedom to hire people who share its religious beliefs and desire to spread the gospel through its homeless shelter, addiction-recovery programs, outreach efforts, meal services, and health clinics.

The Yakima Union Gospel Mission filed their opening brief last Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit after a lower court dismissed the mission’s case.

The mission will serve anybody, but it furthers its religious purpose by employing likeminded believers who agree with and live out the mission’s Christian beliefs and practices, including abstaining from any sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

In 2021, the Washington Supreme Court reinterpreted state law to prohibit religious organizations, including the mission, from only hiring individuals who share their religious beliefs. Soon after state officials began enforcing the law against religious organisations, and now the mission is threatened with significant penalties for using its religiously based hiring practices.