RUI TAVARES CONTRA REPATRIAÇÃO DOS CIGANOS

Eurodeputado Rui Tavares diz que repatriação de ciganos contraria fundamentos da UE

O eurodeputado do Bloco de Esquerda (BE), Rui Tavares, disse hoje que a repatriação de ciganos que está a decorrer em França revela o "desfazer dos fundamentos" da União Europeia (UE).

“Estamos a assistir, em diversos planos, ao desfazer dos fundamentos da União Europeia e um dos fundamentos da UE é certamente a livre circulação de pessoas”, disse à Agência Lusa o eurodeputado bloquista.

A França começou hoje as primeiras repatriações, para a Bulgária e a Roménia, de pessoas de etnia cigana em situação irregular no país, um processo que está a gerar polémica e acusações sobre a alegada atitude xenófoba do governo de Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Estamos diante de um recrudescimento dos egoísmos nacionais”, indicou ainda o eurodeputado.

Rui Tavares condenou ainda atitudes parecidas do Governo italiano de Sílvio Berlusconi e advertiu que estas posições podem espalhar-se por outros países da UE.

Segundo o deputado europeu, “esta atitude que começou pelos os ciganos, pode passar a ser para determinados países e para determinadas categorias profissionais.”

“Na União Europeia não há os ciganos e os não ciganos, há cidadãos da Roménia e da Bulgária, cidadãos de países que entraram na União Europeia”, declarou.

Rui Tavares sublinhou que países como França e Alemanha, nomeadamente, querem o acesso aos mercados, aos territórios, às vantagens que lhes interessaram, mas não querem partilhar o território com os demais cidadãos europeus.

“Isto é de uma enorme hipocrisia”, finalizou o eurodeputado do Bloco de Esquerda.

Cerca de 700 pessoas de etnia cigana deverão ser repatriadas para os seus países de origem – na maioria dos casos Bulgária e Roménia – de forma faseada no espaço de um mês, segundo anunciou na terça-feira o ministro do Interior francês, Brice Hortefeux.

Um total de 371 ciganos romenos serão repatriados até ao final de agosto: 79 pessoas deverão chegar hoje a Bucareste e 132 são esperadas na sexta-feira em Timisoara (oeste) e na capital.

Uma terceira vaga de repatriamentos terá lugar em "finais de setembro", precisou Hortefeux, que defendeu a medida, considerando que "não se trata de estigmatizar uma comunidade, mas sim de fazer respeitar a lei".

I ONLINE

por Agência Lusa, Publicado em 19 de Agosto de 2010

CIGANOS ESPANHOIS PEDEM APOIO CONTRA MEDIDAS RACISTAS

Espanha: ciganos pedem apoio ao Governo contra políticas "racistas"

Depois de, na quinta-feira, o Governo francês ter começado a expatriar parte da comunidade cigana no país, os ciganos espanhóis estão preocupados com a medida de Nicolas Sarkozy. As associações de ciganos em Espanha reclamam o apoio do Governo, e pedem que "se pronuncie e defenda" a etnia frente às medidas "racistas" aplicadas em França.

A Fundação Secretariado Cigano escreveu várias cartas "aos ministérios dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Administração Interna e Justiça" para que o Executivo de Zapatero "defenda o que Espanha fez durante a presidência da União Europeia, em matéria de promoção de políticas de inclusão social com a comunidade cigana".

I ONLINE

por Mariana de Araújo Barbosa, Publicado em 21 de Agosto de 2010

PADRE FRANCÊS REZA PRA QUE SARKOZY TENHA UM ATAQUE CARDÍACO

Padre reza todos os dias para que Sarkozy tenha um ataque cardíaco

Arthur Hervet, padre numa paróquia de Lille, França, admitiu publicamente que reza todos os dias para que Nicolas Sarkozy, presidente francês, tenha uma crise cardíaca que o impeça de expulsar os ciganos.

O pároco, de 71 anos, confessou o pecado em plena missa dominical e justifica-se dizendo que não sabe o que mais fazer para travar o chefe de estado francês. Hervet é bastante popular na comunidade cigana e é conhecido pela ajuda que presta à etnia.

Na quinta-feira, o ministro francês da Imigração, Eric Besson, anunciou o repatriamento de 850 pessoas até ao final de Agosto. No mesmo dia 86 ciganos foram enviados para a Roménia, e no dia seguinte 130 tiveram o mesmo destino.

por Marco Dinis Santos, Publicado em 23 de Agosto de 2010

I ONLINE

BENTO XVI CONDENOU A EXPULSÃO DOS CIGANOS

Ciganos romenos e búlgaros

França: Papa reprovou expulsão dos ciganos

O papa Bento XVI e dois homens da Igreja francesa reprovaram este domingo as expulsões de ciganos pelas autoridades francesas, no âmbito do reforço da politica de segurança do presidente Nicolas Sarkozy.

Perante peregrinos franceses, na sua residência de verão de Castel Gandolfo, o papa apelou ao acolhimento dos homens de todas as origens.

"Os textos litúrgicos de hoje reafirmam-nos que todos os homens são chamados à saudação. É também um convite a saber acolher a diversidade humana, tal como Jesus representou os homens de todas as nações e todas as línguas", disse Bento XVI antes da oração do "Angelus".

O papa exortou ainda os pais presentes a educarem os seus filhos na fraternidade universal.

Bento XVI ainda não tinha comentado o repatriamento dos ciganos romenos e búlgaros mas a decisão das autoridades francesas foi criticada sexta feira pelo secretário do Conselho Pontifício dos migrantes e viajantes, Agostino Marchetto, que considerou que as expulsões vão contra as normas europeias.

Na sequência da posição de Bento XVI, dois clérigos franceses manifestaram a sua emoção e até cólera relativamente à expulsão dos ciganos.

Um deles, o padre Arthur, o pároco de Lille, anunciou que escreveu ao ministro do Interior para recusar a medalha de Mérito que lhe tinha sido atribuída e disse no final da missa que rezava para que o presidente francês tivesse uma crise cardíaca, embora, mais tarde, tivesse manifestado arrependimento por isso.

O arcebispo de Aix-en-Provence e de Arles, Christophe Dufour, assistiu ao desmantelamento de um acampamento de ciganos quinta feira e criticou, hoje em comunicado, a destruição das caravanas e a falta de dignidade pelas pessoas

Nicolas Sarkozy anunciou no final de Julho que os acampamentos ilegais de ciganos iriam ser desmantelados e que criminosos de origem estrangeira iriam perder a nacionalidade francesa.

Estas medidas começaram a ser postas em prática quinta e sexta-feita com expulsão de cerca de 200 ciganos romenos e búlgaros.

CORREIO DA MANHÃ 22-08-2010

THE SOCIETY O SAINT PIUX'S STANCE ON BISHOP WILLIAMSON'S DENIAL OF HOLOCAUST

Group Says It Doesn’t Share Views of Holocaust Denier

ROME — A schismatic Roman Catholic society that Pope Benedict XVI recently rehabilitated apologized to the pope on Tuesday and distanced itself from the comments of one of its members, who has denied the Holocaust.

On Saturday, the pope revoked the excommunication of four bishops from the St. Pius X Society, including Bishop Richard Williamson, who said in a television interview last week that there was no historical evidence for the Nazi gas chambers. The pope’s decision has angered Jewish and liberal Catholic groups, among others.

In a letter dated Tuesday and released by the Vatican, the director of the St. Pius X Society, Bishop Bernard Fellay, said that Bishop Williamson’s statements “do not reflect the position of the society.” He added that the group had been “saddened” by the repercussions of Bishop Williamson’s remarks and the damage they had done to its mission.

“We ask forgiveness of the supreme pontiff and all the men of good will for the dramatic consequences of this act,” he wrote.

In revoking the excommunications of the four bishops, the pope has shined a light on a small, traditionalist society that is little known beyond the inner circles of the Roman Catholic Church.

The St. Pius X Society is a traditionalist group whose 600 priests and 400,000 adherents represent the far right of the world’s one billion Catholics. It was founded in 1970 by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, in staunch opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, including its commitment to ecumenicism, the celebration of Mass in the language of the worshipers, and a greater role for laity and women.

As pope, Benedict has made reaching out to the society an important personal cause, and the Vatican views any reconciliation as an internal matter. Yet in revoking the excommunications, some say he has given another sign that he may be rolling back Vatican II reforms, though he has denied such fears in the past.

Based in Switzerland, the group was named after Pope Pius X, who reigned from 1903 to 1914 and saw the church as a bulwark against modernity.

The group’s founding documents, available on its Web site, paint a picture of a group deeply at odds with contemporary society, nostalgic for the French monarchy and hostile toward Jews, Muslims and the Vatican itself, some of whose pronouncements Archbishop Lefebvre called “satanic.”

The society has “always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it,” Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in a “rebuttal to modernism” in 1974.

The archbishop was reprimanded by two popes for consecrating priests according to earlier norms without Vatican approval. Pope John Paul II finally excommunicated him and the four bishops in 1988.

The following year, a Vichy war criminal, Paul Touvier, was found hiding in a Nice monastery run by Archbishop Lefebvre and arrested. He was later sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity.

Benedict revoked the excommunication of the Lefebvrists as a step toward the men’s full restoration to the church, but their status has yet to be determined. If he does reinstate them, the church will have to contend with the anger stemming from Bishop Williamson’s statements.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that the bishop’s comments had nothing to do with the pope’s decision, and that the Vatican did not “share in any way” his views.

The St. Pius X Society is particularly opposed to the Vatican II reforms that softened the church’s age-old teaching that Jews had killed Christ.

In a letter to Germany’s 27 official bishops in October, the director of the society’s German branch, the Rev. Franz Schmidberger, wrote that Jews “are not ‘our older brothers in faith,’ ” as Pope John Paul II said in his historic visit to the Rome synagogue in 1986.

Instead, Father Schmidberger wrote, “for as long as they do not distance themselves from their forefathers’ guilt through the avowal of Christ’s divinity and baptism, they are complicit in the deicide,” according to a copy of the letter available on the society’s Web site.

In response, the bishop of Hamburg, Hans-Jochen Jaschke, took pains to distance the mainstream Catholic Church from the society, according to German news media reports.

Then came last week’s revocations, which erupted into a global controversy. Some said welcoming the Lefebvrists was a sign that Benedict was moving the goal posts, making ultraconservatives look moderate and moderates seem progressive.

“By having the traditionalists on his right flank, it gives Benedict a lot more room to push his conservative view of Vatican Council II without seeming like an archconservative himself,” said David Gibson, the author of “The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle With the Modern World.”

Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: January 27, 2009

THE NEW YORK TIMES

FATHER VASYL KOVPAK

Lefebvrite Priest Excommunicated from Greek Catholic Church

12.02.2004, [19:22] // UGCC //

During a press conference on 10 February 2004 in western Ukrainian Lviv, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), announced that Fr. Vasyl Kovpak, an adherent of the so called Lefebvrite movement, no longer belongs to the UGCC.

“Fr. Vasyl Kovpak, former administrator of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Lviv’s Riasne neighborhood, of his own free will has ceased to belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church in general,” said Cardinal Husar.

“Despite his declarations of faithfulness to the Pope of Rome and the Major Archbishop of the UGCC, he recognized the uncanonical foreign Bishop Bernard Fellay, who does not recognize the authority of the Pope of Rome and is not united with the Catholic Church,” said Cardinal Husar.

In addition, Cardinal Husar stressed that Vasyl Kovpak and his followers are always welcome to return to the UGCC on condition that they renounce their connection with Bishop Fellay.

RISU Note:

The so-called Lefebvrite movement, or the Society of St. Pius X, unites Catholic clergy who have refused to accept some decisions of the Second Vatican Council. The movement, started by Swiss Bishop Charriere on 1 December 1970, was then led by French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre. Today, the movement has a developed international network and unites approximately 440 priests in 55 countries throughout the world. Its current leader is Bishop Bernard Fellay.

In Ukraine, the movement spread in the early 1990s, when Fr. Jean-Marc Rulleau, an official representative of the Society of St. Pius X, came to the country. The idea of the society found support among some faithful of the UGCC who were attached to certain Latin-rite practices that were preserved in the underground period and to the Old Church Slavonic language. After the Second Vatican Council, the UGCC began using the modern Ukrainian language in the liturgy, instead of the classical Old Church Slavonic language that had been used for centuries. The traditionalists did not accept changes in the liturgy, in particular “cleansing” the rite of Latin practices that had come into usage and what they called the “ukrainianization” of the liturgy.

In 1999, three Ukrainian priests asked Bishop Fellay to become the spiritual leader of traditionalist priests in Ukraine. During Bishop Fellay’s visit to Ukraine in November 2000, Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary, not approved by the UGCC, was dedicated and eight seminarians began study there. Under the leadership of Bishop Fellay, a congregation of Basilian Sisters of the Divine Mercy has also opened.

In 2000, the first retreat was held for followers of the Lefebvrite movement, in which over 100 people took part. In September of that year, the Society of St. Josaphat was formed, and now consists of seven priests. This society is a church structure under the spiritual care of Bishop Fellay and today is headed by Fr. Kovpak. Its members maintain that they recognize Pope John Paul II as the head of their church and mention him during religious services. However, they also state that the activities of their organization are aimed against certain tendencies in the church which, according to them cause, are harmful to it.

The society is active in the western Ukrainian Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions and recently has been expanding its activities to eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, working among the Orthodox faithful.

Sources: www.ugcc.org.ua, http://patriyarkhat.ucu.edu.ua, www.sspx.ca, www.dailycatholic.org


RELIGIOUS INFORMATION SERVICE OF UKRAINE

12-02-2004

http://old.risu.org.ua/eng

MONSENHOR FELLAY: O GOVERNO MUNDIAL

BISPO WILLIAMSON E O HOLOCAUSTO