Barbour, who served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997, will serve as chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board for a term that lasts until Sept. 30, 2023.

Governors' races in Kentucky and Mississippi took center stage, testing the political muscle of teacher activists and yielding possible policy implications for everything from public employee pensions to teacher pay.

Voters in three southern states will head to the polls for governors races that have shined a spotlight on educator activism, school funding, and teacher pay.

This year's November elections—a preview to next year's nationwide showdowns—cast their own spotlight on education, a dynamic that played out most prominently in the Kentucky governor's race, where teachers organized to unseat a combative incumbent who'd sparred with them.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who spent his career as a teacher, principal and superintendent of a rural Alaska district wants to now cut more than a third of the state's K-12 spending.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican who was elected partly because of his experience as a public school educator, proposed a budget this year that would slash more than a quarter of the state's $1.6 billion education budget.

London (No. 4, Hanover Street) : Published ... for the proprietor by T.G. March ; [London] (Threadneedle Street) : Sold also by F. G. Moon ; [London] (Strand) : [Sold also by] Ackermann & Co., April 10, 1842 ([London?] : Printed by R. Lloyd)

A Paris (rue St. Jacques audessus de la rue des Mathurins) : chez G. Duchange graveur du Roy. Avec privilege du Roy, [1708?]

Margie Vandeven, the state education chief, is appointed by an appointed board, which is still split on whether to fire Vandeven.

Gov. Erik Greitens has resigned and the board doesn't have enough governor-appointed members to form a quorum. Important tasks have been piling up.

England : London County Council, Public Assistance Department, 1935.

How an organization controls its actions. Governance describes the mechanisms an organization uses to ensure that its constituents follow its established processes and policies. It is the primary means of maintaining oversight and accountability in a loosely coupled organizational structure. A proper governance strategy implements systems to monitor and record what is going on, takes steps to ensure compliance with agreed policies, and provides for corrective action in cases where the rules have been ignored or misconstrued.

As the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 continues to spread, questions have been raised about the potential impact on food supply and availability and on livelihoods around the globe.

FAO

Highway 8, otherwise known as the Dempster Highway, will be closed to all traffic at 5 p.m. on Friday, according to the government of the Northwest Territories.

The Nunavut government says there is no set limit on how much money it is prepared to spend on hotels for residents required to isolate before they return home.

The premier’s office confirmed the news in an email statement, blaming visibility issues under "very specific lighting conditions."

"It is unfortunate that it has come to pass that we have to collectively and overtly publicly declare that we are unified," says Alberta Medical Association president Christine Molnar.

Press release "Governors and Heads of Supervision announce deferral of Basel III implementation to increase operational capacity of banks and supervisors to respond to Covid-19", 27 March 2020

Quebecers, like the rest of the world, are growing accustomed to the uncertainty that's accompanied the pandemic. But they may not appreciate their government adding to that already hefty burden.

The Winnipeg Airports Authority delayed a vote at Winnipeg's city council after it sent a request to move a dispute on development at Polo Park to the provincial municipal board, saying it was doing so "in the name of the government of Canada." But the government of Canada say the WAA can't speak on its behalf.

Authorities investigating Flint's water crisis have used search warrants to seize from storage the state-owned mobile devices of former Gov. Rick Snyder and 65 other current or former officials, The Associated Press has learned.

Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is headed to Harvard University to teach, study and write on subjects related to state and local government.

Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he won’t continue with a fellowship at Harvard University following backlash over his role in Flint’s water crisis.

Govt hikes borrowing limit by over 50% to Rs 12 trn as virus grips economy  Business StandardRaghuram Rajan says monetisation neither a game changer nor catastrophe  LivemintBank credit up 6.74% to Rs 102.69 lakh crore; deposits ris...

Have to learn to live with Covid-19: Govt  Times of IndiaHealth ministry says learn to live with coronavirus as India's COVID-19 count crosses 56,000  LivemintPeople must learn to live with the virus, follow prevention guidelines: G...

The Canadian Football League is asking the federal government for up to $150 million in financial assistance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An associate professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management calls the CFL's bid for securing financial aid from the Canadian government a "Hail Mary pass."

The province has extended the deadline for people to leave tent cities in Victoria until May 20. The original deadline was May 9 for campers to be out of Vancouver's Oppenheimer Park as well as Topaz and Pandora parks in Victoria.

A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed in B.C. Supreme Court which, if successful, could mean every ICBC-insured motorist and crash victim will be in line for a share of almost $1 billion. 

I just hate it when my fellow Italian-Americans squabble.

Bank of England Working Papers by Cristiano Cantore and Lukas Freund

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said that the Church must return to “normal life” after the governor announced plans to ban large gatherings until a COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is available.

Earlier in the week, the state’s Governor JB Pritzker unveiled a five-phase “Restore Illinois” plan that bans gatherings of more than 50 people until a vaccine or treatment is available, or the virus has stopped spreading for a sustained period of time. Health officials have said that a vaccine for the new coronavirus (COVID-19) might not be available for 12 to 18 months. 

Currently, people in the state are allowed to attend religious services of 10 or fewer people, but no gatherings of more than 10 people are permitted until phase 4 of Pritzker’s plan, and the state wouldn’t even be able to “advance” to phase 3 until May 29.

“The Church has certainly done her part in making great sacrifices to slow the spread of this virus,” Andrew Hansen, director of communications for the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, told CNA on Friday.

“That said, the Church must return to her normal life of liturgy and communal worship,” Hansen said, while emphasizing precautions such as social distancing “will likely be the appropriate path longer term for the return to some version of normalcy for the Church.”

Previously, in-person or drive-in religious services were banned in the state. The Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit on behalf of a church in Lena, Ill., on April 30. Later that evening a paragraph was added to the governor’s executive order allowing for people to leave their homes to attend religious services of ten or fewer people, the society’s president Peter Breen told CNA.

The next day, May 1, the archdiocese of Chicago announced it would be resuming public Masses with 10 or fewer people.

According to the “Restore Illinois” plan, there could not be any gathering of between 11 and 50 people in size until phase 4 of the plan—“Revitalization.”

That phase can start only when certain conditions have been met: the positivity rate of COVID tests is at or under 20% and doesn’t rise by more than 10 points over 14 days; hospital admissions don’t increase for 28 days; and hospitals have at least 14% “surge capacity” in ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

Pitzker clarified in a Wednesday press conference that religious services would be part of this 50-person limit in phase 4, and schools would not be allowed to reopen until then, raising questions of how tuition-dependent Catholic schools might fare in the fall if remote learning is still widely utilized.

The state’s superintendent of education has said that at least some schools might have to begin the new school year with remote learning, or with students attending classes in-person only on certain days.

“So we continue to hope and pray schools will reopen next school year. Certainly, when our schools reopen, new measures and precautions will be in place,” Hansen told CNA.

The president of DePaul University, located in Chicago, announced earlier this week that the university already plans to “minimize our footprint on campus this fall,” and that an announcement of the fall plans could happen by June 15.

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- As parishes and dioceses across the country deal with a drop in collections and the prospects of layoffs amid the pandemic, many parishes have managed to avail themselves of government loans designed to cover eight weeks of payroll expenses.

CBS News reported Friday that an estimated 12,000-13,000 of the 17,000 Catholic parishes in the U.S. had applied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) payroll loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA), and 9,000 so far had received them.

Guidance from the SBA on eligibility for the loans states that “no otherwise eligible organization will be disqualified from receiving a loan because of the religious nature, religious identity, or religious speech of the organization.”

Religious organizations are eligible for the loans as long as they meet the requirements of Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit and employ 500 or fewer people, the SBA said.

“The PPP isn't about the federal government assisting houses of worship or churches,” Pat Markey, the executive director of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, told CBS News.

“PPP is about keeping people on payrolls, and a large segment of our society [in] the not for profit world...are churches and houses of worship. And they have people on payrolls too. So, if what this is about is keeping people on payrolls, then we all should have availability to do that.”

The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference did not reply by press time to CNA’s request for additional comment.

Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act March 27 to help relieve the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

The CARES Act initially authorized some $350 billion in loans to small businesses, intended to allow them to continue to pay their employees. The loans were given on a first come, first serve basis.

The second round of funding, with some $310 billion in additional funds available, began April 27.

The loans were capped at $10 million, were open to businesses with fewer than 500 employees per location, and were intended to cover two months of payroll costs.

The federal government promised to forgive the loans if a business used at least 75% of the funds to maintain its payroll at “pre-pandemic levels” for eight weeks after the loan is disbursed, the New York Times reports.

The remaining money could be used only to pay for certain expenses, such as a mortgage, rent, and utilities, according to the Times.

A survey of Protestant pastors by LifeWay Research found that about 40% had applied for PPP loans with more than half of them reporting being approved.

NPR reports that synagogues have also applied for government funding, though in a smaller proportion— of nearly 4,000 synagogues in the United States, about 250 were approved for PPP loans in the first round of lending, according to surveys by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

The PPP has been subject to some criticism since its launch, including from those who say business owners with criminal records have been excluded from the program thus far.

In addition, several large companies, such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, have received multi-million dollar loans through the program. Some of these large companies, such as Shake Shack, have since returned their loans.

Two New York dioceses— Rochester and Buffalo— are suing the Small Business Administration for access to PPP funds, after they were denied loans because of their bankruptcy status.

An SBA rule stipulated that the funds would not go to bankruptcy debtors. Both the dioceses of Rochester and Buffalo have filed for bankruptcy in the past several months, after being named in hundreds of clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed under New York Child Victims Protection Act.

 

CNA Staff, Apr 22, 2020 / 05:02 pm (CNA).- A Sri Lankan priest criticized the government’s response to last year’s Easter bombings, saying the failure to thoroughly investigate has amounted to a betrayal of the people.

Father Nishantha Cooray spoke to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on the first anniversary of the bombings that targeted numerous sites across the country, including three churches, on April 21, 2019. The Easter attacks claimed over 259 lives and injured at least 500 more.

Police made 135 arrests following the attacks. Former president of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena created a presidential commission to look into the perpetrators behind the bombings. Current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed a similar committee.

But Cooray, who ministered at victims’ funerals, argued that the actions undertaken so far are inadequate. He warned that if the government does not take the investigation more seriously, it could lead to more attacks in the future.

“Although we have completed one year [since the bombings], no acceptable step has been taken in arresting the persons involved in the crime,” he said.

The priest argued that politicians made promises of a thorough investigation, and gained votes by doing so, but have not followed through on these promises.

“The newly elected government started the second chapter of the same book with the same writing style… They did not want to hurt the Muslim politicians,” he said.

“Now, we feel as if we are betrayed. Just to arouse the emotions of the people, the representatives of the government say something about the investigations [into the bombings]. It is only a good slogan for the next election.”

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka has appealed to the government to appoint an independent commission to conduct an impartial inquiry.

Commemorating the attacks on their one-year anniversary, parishes in Sri Lanka rang church bells, encouraged people to observe a two-minute period of silence, and lit lamps in memory of the dead victims.

While public Masses have been canceled in Sri Lanka because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo live-streamed Easter Mass on April 12. During the live stream, Ranjith voiced forgiveness for the attackers.

“[W]e meditated on Christ's teachings and loved them, forgave them and had pity on them,” he said, according to Vatican News.

“We did not hate them and return them the violence. Resurrection is the complete rejection of selfishness,” the cardinal said.

 

CNA Staff, Apr 30, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- As the Chinese government makes progress containing the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities have resumed action to remove crosses from buildings and crackdown on religious practice.

The latest round of enforcement actions have included the removal of crosses from buildings belonging to the state-run churches. According to a report from UCA News, priests say they are cooperating in the removal of exterior crosses in hopes that entire church buildings will not be demolished or converted into a building for secular use.  

According to a parishioner in the Chinese province of Anhui named John, Chinese officials cut down the cross from the top of Our Lady of the Rosary Church on April 18. Our Lady of the Rosary belongs to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA, the Catholic Church officially sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party and operating both in communion with Rome and under state control. 

The bishops of the CPCA, who were in many cases illicitly consecrated and under official excommunication, were received into full communion with Rome as part of the Vatican’s 2018 provisional agreement with China. The full terms of the China deal were not released to the public but have been reported to include the right of state authorities to propose and veto candidates for the episcopacy in China. 

John, speaking to UCA News, explained that on April 13, the leaders of Our Lady of the Rosary--which does not have a member of the clergy assigned to it, and all religious activities are organized by the laity--asked the city authorities about making repairs to the church building. Three days later, the community director of the city requested keys and access to the church, in order to remove its cross. 

Concerned parishioners went to Bishop Joseph Liux Xinhong of the Diocese of Anhui, who told them to request more information from the local CPCA office. The local CPCA office said they did not know of any plan to remove the cross from the building. 

Xinhong was one of the bishops who had his excommunication lifted and his position recognized by the Vatican following the 2018 provisional deal. 

On April 17, the parish community leader said that he had been given “directions from superiors” regarding removing the cross. The following day, said John, the cross was removed by a “team of young people.”

Elsewhere in the province of Anhui, on April 19 a cross was removed from a church in Suzhou City during pre-dawn hours, presumably to avoid the chance of a crowd protesting its removal. A man from the diocese named Paul told UCA News that the removal had previously been scheduled for the afternoon. 

Paul said that police officers blocked people from entering the church or taking pictures of the removal, and that a cell phone had been confiscated after it captured a picture of the cross coming down. 

In Hefei City, which is also located in the Anhui province, authorities on April 27 took a cross off a building for a Protestant church. 

A priest from the Diocese of Anhui, identified only as “Father Chen,” told UCA News that these sorts of activities are “happening all over the mainland” and are not limited to one diocese or province. 

 “If the churches don’t unite to resist, many more crosses will be removed,” he said.

In September 2017, China enacted strict new regulations concerning religion. Since then, authorities have been vigilant in enforcing permitting requirements. Churches that are not found to be in compliance are destroyed. 

The African Union Development Agency says countries should think about how they choose the lesser of the two evils because strict lockdowns have severe consequences.

Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe says that if there is appetite for nuclear power in the market, the SA government will pursue it over the next five years.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said that the Church must return to “normal life” after the governor announced plans to ban large gatherings until a COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is available.

Earlier in the week, the state’s Governor JB Pritzker unveiled a five-phase “Restore Illinois” plan that bans gatherings of more than 50 people until a vaccine or treatment is available, or the virus has stopped spreading for a sustained period of time. Health officials have said that a vaccine for the new coronavirus (COVID-19) might not be available for 12 to 18 months. 

Currently, people in the state are allowed to attend religious services of 10 or fewer people, but no gatherings of more than 10 people are permitted until phase 4 of Pritzker’s plan, and the state wouldn’t even be able to “advance” to phase 3 until May 29.

“The Church has certainly done her part in making great sacrifices to slow the spread of this virus,” Andrew Hansen, director of communications for the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, told CNA on Friday.

“That said, the Church must return to her normal life of liturgy and communal worship,” Hansen said, while emphasizing precautions such as social distancing “will likely be the appropriate path longer term for the return to some version of normalcy for the Church.”

Previously, in-person or drive-in religious services were banned in the state. The Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit on behalf of a church in Lena, Ill., on April 30. Later that evening a paragraph was added to the governor’s executive order allowing for people to leave their homes to attend religious services of ten or fewer people, the society’s president Peter Breen told CNA.

The next day, May 1, the archdiocese of Chicago announced it would be resuming public Masses with 10 or fewer people.

According to the “Restore Illinois” plan, there could not be any gathering of between 11 and 50 people in size until phase 4 of the plan—“Revitalization.”

That phase can start only when certain conditions have been met: the positivity rate of COVID tests is at or under 20% and doesn’t rise by more than 10 points over 14 days; hospital admissions don’t increase for 28 days; and hospitals have at least 14% “surge capacity” in ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

Pitzker clarified in a Wednesday press conference that religious services would be part of this 50-person limit in phase 4, and schools would not be allowed to reopen until then, raising questions of how tuition-dependent Catholic schools might fare in the fall if remote learning is still widely utilized.

The state’s superintendent of education has said that at least some schools might have to begin the new school year with remote learning, or with students attending classes in-person only on certain days.

“So we continue to hope and pray schools will reopen next school year. Certainly, when our schools reopen, new measures and precautions will be in place,” Hansen told CNA.

The president of DePaul University, located in Chicago, announced earlier this week that the university already plans to “minimize our footprint on campus this fall,” and that an announcement of the fall plans could happen by June 15.

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- As parishes and dioceses across the country deal with a drop in collections and the prospects of layoffs amid the pandemic, many parishes have managed to avail themselves of government loans designed to cover eight weeks of payroll expenses.

CBS News reported Friday that an estimated 12,000-13,000 of the 17,000 Catholic parishes in the U.S. had applied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) payroll loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA), and 9,000 so far had received them.

Guidance from the SBA on eligibility for the loans states that “no otherwise eligible organization will be disqualified from receiving a loan because of the religious nature, religious identity, or religious speech of the organization.”

Religious organizations are eligible for the loans as long as they meet the requirements of Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit and employ 500 or fewer people, the SBA said.

“The PPP isn't about the federal government assisting houses of worship or churches,” Pat Markey, the executive director of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, told CBS News.

“PPP is about keeping people on payrolls, and a large segment of our society [in] the not for profit world...are churches and houses of worship. And they have people on payrolls too. So, if what this is about is keeping people on payrolls, then we all should have availability to do that.”

The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference did not reply by press time to CNA’s request for additional comment.

Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act March 27 to help relieve the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

The CARES Act initially authorized some $350 billion in loans to small businesses, intended to allow them to continue to pay their employees. The loans were given on a first come, first serve basis.

The second round of funding, with some $310 billion in additional funds available, began April 27.

The loans were capped at $10 million, were open to businesses with fewer than 500 employees per location, and were intended to cover two months of payroll costs.

The federal government promised to forgive the loans if a business used at least 75% of the funds to maintain its payroll at “pre-pandemic levels” for eight weeks after the loan is disbursed, the New York Times reports.

The remaining money could be used only to pay for certain expenses, such as a mortgage, rent, and utilities, according to the Times.

A survey of Protestant pastors by LifeWay Research found that about 40% had applied for PPP loans with more than half of them reporting being approved.

NPR reports that synagogues have also applied for government funding, though in a smaller proportion— of nearly 4,000 synagogues in the United States, about 250 were approved for PPP loans in the first round of lending, according to surveys by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

The PPP has been subject to some criticism since its launch, including from those who say business owners with criminal records have been excluded from the program thus far.

In addition, several large companies, such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, have received multi-million dollar loans through the program. Some of these large companies, such as Shake Shack, have since returned their loans.

Two New York dioceses— Rochester and Buffalo— are suing the Small Business Administration for access to PPP funds, after they were denied loans because of their bankruptcy status.

An SBA rule stipulated that the funds would not go to bankruptcy debtors. Both the dioceses of Rochester and Buffalo have filed for bankruptcy in the past several months, after being named in hundreds of clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed under New York Child Victims Protection Act.

 

CNA Staff, May 7, 2020 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- Hours after the publication of a controversial open letter regarding the coronavirus pandemic, the prefect of the Church’s dicastery for liturgy and sacraments, listed among the signers of the letter, said he did not sign it.

The letter, titled “Appeal for the Church and the World,” says the coronavirus pandemic has been exaggerated to foster widespread social panic and undercut freedom, as a preparation for the establishment of a one-world government.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments, tweeted: “I share on a personal basis some of the questions or concerns raised with regard to restrictions on fundamental freedoms, but I have not signed this petition.”

“A cardinal prefect of the Roman Curia must observe a certain reserve in political matters, Sarah wrote in another tweet, “so I explicitly asked this morning the authors of the petition titled ‘for the Church and for the world’ not to mention me.”

Sarah was listed as a signatory of the letter when it was published May 7 by the National Catholic Register, LifeSiteNews, and other websites. Sarah's denial raises questions about the legitimacy of other reported signatories to the letter.

Jeanette DeMelo, editor of the National Catholic Register, told CNA that the principal author of the letter is Archbishop Carlo Vigano, a former papal emissary to the United States.

Vigano made headlines for an August 2018 letter that alleged Vatican officials had ignored warnings about the sexual abuse of disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Since that time, Vigano has released numerous letters expressing his viewpoints on matters in the Church, which include criticisms of Pope Francis and other curial officials.

DeMelo said that Vigano had vouched for the authenticity of Sarah's signature.

“The Register contacted Archbishop Vigano, the principal author, and asked him specifically about the authenticity of the signature of Cardinal Sarah and he said ‘I can confirm 100% that Cardinal Sarah signed it.,” DeMelo told CNA.

The letter laments the social distancing and stay-at-home orders issued to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting they are contrived mechanisms of social control, with a nefarious purpose.

“We have reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements,” the letter said.

“The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control,” it added. (bold original)

Among the letter’s reported signatories are four cardinals: Sarah, who has now indicated he is not a signatory; Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Zen, emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, and Cardinal Janis Pujats, emeritus archbishop of Riga, Latvia.

Two U.S. bishops are also alleged signatories: Bishop Rene Gracida, emeritus bishop of Corpus Christi, and Bishop Joseph Strickland, the Bishop of Tyler, Texas. 

Strickland told CNA by email May 7 that he “did sign off on this letter.”

Along with several other bishops, the well-known auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, is listed as a signer of the letter.

Another reported signatory is Fr. Curzio Nitoglia, a priest of the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist group in “irregular communion” with the Church. Nitoglia is the author of “The Magisterium of Vatican II,” a 1994 article that claims that “the church of Vatican II is therefore not the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The May 7 letter argued that the coronavirus pandemic has been sensationalized and exploited, to impede civil rights and exact government control over individuals and families.

The letter said that “the facts have shown that, under the pretext of the Covid-19 epidemic, the inalienable rights of citizens have in many cases been violated and their fundamental freedoms, including the exercise of freedom of worship, expression and movement, have been disproportionately and unjustifiably restricted.”

“Many authoritative voices in the world of science and medicine confirm that the media’s alarmism about Covid-19 appears to be absolutely unjustified.”

Nearly 4 million people worldwide have tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least 270,000 have died. In some countries, death rates in the months of the coronavirus pandemic have far exceeded death rates over the same months in previous years, suggesting to some demographers and epidemiologists that coronavirus deaths have been dramatically undercounted.

The pandemic, and the social distancing and stay-at-home orders issued to slow its spread, have become a source of considerable controversy in recent weeks. In the U.S., protests in several state capitals have gathered demonstrators in close proximity to one another, a move public health experts say could lead to new outbreaks of the disease.

The letter said that the economic crisis occasioned by the global pandemic “encourages interference by foreign powers and has serious social and political repercussions. Those with governmental responsibility must stop these forms of social engineering, by taking measures to protect their citizens whom they represent, and in whose interests they have a serious obligation to act.”

“The criminalization of personal and social relationships must likewise be judged as an unacceptable part of the plan of those who advocate isolating individuals in order to better manipulate and control them,” the authors added.

No cure or therapeutic treatment has yet been identified for the virus. In early weeks of the pandemic, President Donald Trump hypothesized that hydroxychloroquine, an inexpensive anti-malarial medication, could help treat the disease. U.S. researchers have largely moved away from the medication, especially after a study by the Veterans’ Administration found that administering the drug leads to higher death rates among patients receiving it.

Some, including television hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have alleged that the study is inaccurate. Some protestors have suggested the VA study was intended to discredit Trump or profit vaccine manufacturers.

In an apparent reference to the hydroxychloroquine controversy, the letter said that: “Every effort must be made to ensure that shady business interests do not influence the choices made by government leaders and international bodies. It is unreasonable to penalize those remedies that have proved to be effective, and are often inexpensive, just because one wishes to give priority to treatments or vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures.” 

“Let us also remember, as Pastors, that for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses,” the letter added.

The U.S. bishops conference has also said vaccine development should avoid unethical links to abortion.

The letter argues that governments do not have the right to ban or restrict public worship or other kinds of ministry, and asks that any such restrictions be rescinded.

On the sacraments, which have been subject both to voluntary restrictions and public health orders in some states, the letter noted that “the Church firmly asserts her autonomy to govern, worship, and teach.”

“The State has no right to interfere, for any reason whatsoever, in the sovereignty of the Church. Ecclesiastical authorities have never refused to collaborate with the State, but such collaboration does not authorize civil authorities to impose any sort of ban or restriction on public worship or the exercise of priestly ministry. The rights of God and of the faithful are the supreme law of the Church, which she neither intends to, nor can, abdicate. We ask that restrictions on the celebration of public ceremonies be removed.”

While restrictions on public worship have been met with public criticism in many places, the objections have been most pronounced in Italy.

After Italy’s prime minister announced in late April new health measures that would continue prohibiting religious gatherings, the Italian bishops released a statement denouncing the decision, which the bishops criticized as “arbitrary.” Two days later, Pope Francis seemed to signal his own view, praying while celebrating Mass that Christians would respond to the lifting of lockdown restrictions with “prudence and obedience.”

Along with cardinals, bishops, and priests, the letter’s signatories also included some academics, journalists, and scientists. Included among them are Vatican journalists Marco Tosatti and Robert Moynihan, Lifesitenews editor John-Henry Westen, Stephen Mosher, president of the Virginia-based Population Research Institute, and the leaders of pro-life groups in Texas and Ohio.

The letter’s signatories encouraged Catholics, and “all men and women of good will” to “assess the current situation in a way consistent with the teaching of the Gospel. This means taking a stand: either with Christ or against Christ.” (bold original)
 
“Let us not allow centuries of Christian civilization to be erased under the pretext of a virus, and an odious technological tyranny to be established, in which nameless and faceless people can decide the fate of the world by confining us to a virtual reality. If this is the plan to which the powers of this earth intend to make us yield, know that Jesus Christ, King and Lord of History, has promised that ‘the gates of Hell shall not prevail’ (Mt 16:18).”

The Holy See has not yet commented on the letter.
 

This story has been updated since its original publication. It is developing and will continue to be updated.

The Reserve Bank bought R11.4 billion worth of government bonds from the secondary market during April, as part of its measures to introduce liquidity to the market.

RESEARCHERS have called for a two-track approach to easing lockdown which would strengthen protection for the most vulnerable but relax restrictions for the majority of the population.