The Catholic Weekly 28 June 2020

14 28, June, 2020 W orld catholicweekly.com.au New law won’t hurt us, says Cardinal THE NEW security law that Beijing wants to impose on Hong Kong will not harm re- ligious freedom, nor the right of the Church to speak out on social issues, said Cardinal John Tong Hong, Hong Kong’s former bishop and apostolic administrator. In an interview in Kung Kao Po , the diocese’s Chinese language weekly, the prelate said he understood the need for a security law, as provided for by Hong Kong’s Basic Law. He also noted that the Ba- sic Law itself guarantees reli- gious freedom and the right of churches to comment on so- cial issues. The new law is not expected to curtail that. His comments were report- ed by AsiaNews, the website of the Vatican’s Pontifical In- stitute for Missions. However Cardinal Tong called on Beijing and the lo- cal government to address the concerns of the people of Hong Kong. The cardinal’s remarks are the first by a Catholic official, and seemingly contradict statements made by members of Hong Kong’s Justice and Peace Commission who want Beijing to fully implement democracy in the territory before introducing a security law. A group of lay Catholics issued a statement last week in which they expressed con- cerns about possible limits to the religious freedom of Hong Kong Catholics, suggesting that relations with the Vatican could be deemed as “collu- sion with foreign forces” un- der the new law. However Cardinal Tong said that “the Hong Kong Catholic Church has always had a direct relationship with the Vatican; the relationship between the Hong Kong dio- cese and the Vatican should be regarded as an internal matter” and not “collusion with foreign forces”. - AsiaNews USING RELIGION to prop up an exaggerated sense of na- tionalism perverts healthy patriotism in its attempts to solidify national identity by excluding some members of society, said an essay in an in- fluential Jesuit journal. “In some countries, a form of religious-cultural nation- alism is back in vogue. Re- ligion is exploited both to ¾ ¾ Cindy Wooden Poor’s heroic medic Jesuit warns against religious nationalism AVenezuelan doctor set for beatification paid bills for patients who had nomoney DR JOSE Gregorio Hernandez was known for treating hun- dreds of poor patients for free, and he spent the last years of his life helping Venezuelans fight illness during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The Venezuelan doctor – who has been approved for be- atification, a step toward saint- hood – also tried to become a priest on two occasions. “He is a figure that unites all Venezuelans, regardless of their race, their religion or their political affiliation,” said Father Gerardino Barachini of the La Candelaria church in Caracas. “I’m sure that this will bring a spiritual rebirth to our coun- try.” Hernandez was born in a re- mote town in the Andesmoun- tains, but made his way to the ¾ ¾ Manuel Rueda country’s capital city to study medicine at a time when hos- pitals were scarce and doctors got around on horse carts. Shortly after graduating from medical school in 1888, Hernandez received a scholar- ship to study in Paris, where he specialised in bacteriology and pathological anatomy. Upon returning to Vene- zuela, he became a university teacher and founded the coun- try’s first bacteriology lab. But he also visited hundreds of pa- tients in their homes, working as a general practitioner. Medical students in Ven- ezuela now study his life and times. “He was an excellent scien- tist,” said Dr Leopoldo Briceno, president of Venezuela’s Acad- emy of Medicine. “But he was also a humanist. He would visit patients at their home and, if they didn’t have money, he wouldn’t charge them. And he would buy whatever medicine they required.” Hernandez became well known for his charitable ser- vices, especially because in the early 20th century pub- lic health care was limited in Venezuela. Hundreds credited him for saving them fromnear- death situations. When a dictator closed the nation’s main public university in 1908, Hernandez founded a private university with several colleagues, defying thepolitical establishment. Hernandez was also deeply religious. During a trip to Italy in 1909, he entered a seminary but was sent back home after a couple of months because of health problems. Another at- tempt to become a priest failed in 1913, also for health reasons. Hernandez died in Caracas in 1919; hewas hit by a car after leaving a patient’s house. Fol- lowing his death, thousands of Venezuelans began to pray to him for health. “There are Jews, Protestants, evangelicals, and even agnos- ticswhopray tohimfor health,” said Father Barachini. Hernandez had become so popular that in 1975, the Arch- diocese of Caracas removed his remains from a cemetery where his followers gathered and placed them in a church in the centre of the city. His miracles were never properly documented, but in 2019, the Vatican’s Congrega- tion for Saints’ Causes began to closely study one of them. It happened in 2017, when a young girl was shot in the head during a robbery. Doctors said she lost brain tissue and was not expected to ever walk or speak properly again. But the girl recovered within a fewweeks of a life-sav- ing operation. During that time, her mother had prayed to Hernandez to intercede for her daughter. - CNS ¾ ¾ Paul Wang obtain popular support and to launch a political message that is identified with people’s loyalty and devotion to a na- tion,” wrote Jesuit Father Jo- seph Lobo of St Joseph’s Col- lege in Bangalore, India. Father Lobo’s essay, “Against Religious National- ism,” was published in late June in La Civilta Cattolica , a Rome-based Jesuit journal reviewed by the Vatican be- fore publication. Because in today’s globalised world, he wrote, “there is no geograph- ical entity that can be defined as a ‘nation’ that has within it a single homogeneous identi- ty” – religiously, linguistically or ethnically – “radical na- tionalism is only possible if it eliminates diversity.” Suchnationalismwas at the centre of Nazism in Germany, he said, but inklings of it also can be seen in some sectors of the United States. “Even a na- tional sentiment as secular in some ways as that of the Unit- ed States has cloaked itself in ‘religious’ guise with a kind of divinisation of the founding fathers and a narrative cen- tred on the special role and favour given by God to that people,” he wrote. “In the period following the Second World War, the exal- tation of the American way of life led to the apotheosis of national life, the equiva- He is a figure that unites all Venezuelans, regardless of their race, their religion or their political affiliation.” Father Gerardino Barachini People stand near the church in Caracas, Venezuela, where the remains of Jose Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros rest. PHOTO: CNS/MANAURE QUINTERO, REUTERS lence of national values and religion, the divinisation of national heroes and the trans- formation of national history into ‘ heilsgeschichte ’ – the his- tory of salvation.” Conscious of the fact that religion, including Christi- anity, has been used in the past to prop up nationalism, Father Lobo called for a “lib- erating deconstruction of na- tionalism” relying on theolo- gy and biblical values. While the Bible is filled with stories about God’s special relation- ship with the Jewish people and their favoured status as a nation – stories that Christian nationalists like to adopt – Fa- ther Lobo noted there also are explicit criticisms of the way some Jewish kings ruled, ad- monitions to treat others just- ly and repeated references to how God also created, loved and cared for other peoples as well. - CNS