Angelus News | May 17, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 10

WORLD
■ Mexican bishop
a victim of ‘express
kidnapping’
Bishop Salvador Rangel in 2018. | OSV NEWS/GUSTAVO GRAF,
REUTERS
A Mexican bishop famous
for his work mediating with
drug cartels ended up in
the hospital after being
kidnapped.
Seventy-eight-year-old
Bishop Salvador Rangel
is the retired bishop of
Chilpancingo-Chilapa
in the state of Guerrero,
where the government has
endorsed his efforts to mediate
between gang leaders
to end the region’s violent
turf wars. Already in poor
health, he was abducted
April 27 but released hours
later.
Nobody has claimed responsibility
for the kidnapping, but it appears to be part of a trend of “express
kidnappings,” or quick abductions by low-level criminals with low ransom
demands. These kidnappings are meant to receive random funds more
quickly than regular kidnappings with large random demands.
■ More than half of Sudan
faces starvation, aid groups
warn
Catholic charities are desperately working
to ramp up food distribution campaigns in
Sudan as civil war continues to cause extreme
hunger.
“People are going through trauma and
staring at the looming famine they have
never experienced before,” said Telley Sadia,
country representative for Sudan for the
Catholic Agency for Overseas Development
(CAFOD). “They have no way to come
out of this situation; thus, there’s a need to
increase lifesaving food aid and allow humanitarian
access to save the lives of women and
children.”
Civil war has enveloped the African nation
for over a year, with more than 8.6 million
people displaced and half of the country’s 46
million population requiring life-saving assistance,
according to the United Nations.
According to Catholic aid group Caritas
International, a lack of funding is preventing
secular and faith-based organizations from
reaching more people facing starvation.
■ Don’t expect US to
save the day, Jerusalem
patriarch says
The Holy Land’s top Catholic bishop
warned against putting too much
hope in a “miracle” that ends the war
between Israel and Hamas.
“We are all waiting for something
big, something that changes the
course of the history of events,” Cardinal
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, patriarch
of Jerusalem, said May 1. “We all
want the United States to resolve
the problem; we all want the peace
negotiations to end in something big,
important, in a way that marks the
course of history.”
“This is not the way the kingdom of
God grows,” he said. “The kingdom
of God grows in community, with
communal gestures, calmly, little by
little.”
The cardinal made the remarks at
a Mass in which he formally took
possession as a cardinal of a historic
church in Rome, St. Onuphrius.
Papal cruise — Pope Francis waves as he arrives by boat from Giudecca Island to the Basilica of St. Mary of
Health during a one-day trip to Venice, Italy, April 28. The visit included stops at a women’s prison, a meeting
with young people, Sunday Mass, and private prayer before the relics of St. Mark the Evangelist in the famous
basilica built in his honor. In his remarks at St. Mary of Health, the pope said that just like Venice, people are
beautiful and fragile at the same time. “Take care of these fragilities and recognize that God always extends a
hand, not to blame or punish, but to heal and lift people back up,” he said. | CNS/LOLA GOMEZ
4 • ANGELUS • May 17, 2024