Category Archives: Catholic church

The poetry and politics of Pope Francis’ climate encyclical

Ted Scheinman writes: Pope Francis lives modestly, having renounced the Papal Apartments for a small cell in the Vatican guesthouse. In this regard, he honors his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. But the Pontiff’s relationship with language is far more florid, at times even baroque. In interviews, he plays free-association to grand effect, drawing on art, poetry, and the history of science. In September 2013, Francis gave an expansive interview, disseminated by the Vatican, that attested to his facility at wedding abstract thought to concrete policy. He came off as a pragmatist (“There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now have lost value or meaning”), a mystical aesthete (he describes the gospel as having “freshness and fragrance”), and a Jesuit mistrustful of authority (a true Jesuit, Francis said, “must be a person whose thought is incomplete”).

He is a Renaissance man who believes in the theological uses of doubt, an ascetic given to rich, occasionally gnomic pronouncements, and a pope who broadcasts his fallibility (“I am a really, really undisciplined person”) — small wonder Francis has attracted fierce devotion even among the secular American left.

As he prepares to address the United Nations summit on climate change in September, followed by a speech on the same topic at a special joint meeting of Congress the same month, the pope’s secretaries have prepared a document unprecedented in the Vatican’s history: A nearly 200-page encyclical that ambitiously — and persuasively — integrates the problems of global poverty and man-made climate change, proposing collective solutions for both. Still more radical, the encyclical characterizes both problems as unequivocal moral failures on the part of mankind. [Continue reading…]

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How Pope Francis is about to reshape the climate discussion

Celia Deane-Drummond, a professor in theology at the University of Notre Dame, writes: Geologists claim that we are now living in the age of the “Anthropocene:” a new geological era where human domination of planet Earth is becoming indelibly written into the geological record.

Human actions are becoming slowly but surely crafted onto the material remains each generation leaves behind. The difference between climate changes that are taking place in our present century and those at the dawn of human existence is that humanity now is affecting and instigating such changes.

We are constructing our world to such an extent that we have lost sight of both our origins and our futures, caught up in the micro and macro politics of the everyday, feasting on the products of our own creations.

It is against the backdrop of the Anthropocene that Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical will be delivered on June 18. In it, the Pope will draw on the praise poem Canticle of the Creatures, which was first penned by the patron saint of ecologists, Saint Francis of Assisi.

Pope Francis will speak to the ambiguous loss in Western societies of knowing ourselves as creatures. The world that we inhabit may be dominated by human activity, but it is still God’s world first and foremost. Once we know that the Earth is a gift, this creates a different relationship with it compared with the Earth as material for our use.

But he will not romanticize the Earth. Instead, he will speak of the need for human responsibility. And there are likely to be three facets of that responsibility to act, especially on the part of richer, consumer-driven nations of the world.

  • First, on behalf of the poor.
  • Second, in building relationships of peace.
  • Third, in service to creation.

The Earthly world is indeed our home but we have become estranged from it through our practices of domination. [Continue reading…]

Jeff Turrentine writes: Every now and then you come across a statement by a public official that is so ridiculous, so perfect in its unabashed wrongness, you have to read it a few times to fully appreciate it as a work of demagogic art.

My current favorite in this category comes courtesy of one Scott Weber, a member of the Park County School District #6 Board of Trustees in Cody, Wyoming. A couple of weeks ago, when he and his fellow board members were supposed to be voting on whether to purchase new textbooks and reading materials for the district, Weber put a stop to the vote by taking a bold stand in defense of climate denial, political cronyism, and intellectual closed-mindedness.

Here’s what he said about one of the reading materials the board was considering for purchase, as reported by the Casper Star-Tribune:

As a board member, I will not authorize any of the $300,000 allocated for this purchase to include supplemental booklets about “global whining.” … Our Wyoming schools are largely funded by coal, oil, natural gas, mining, ranching, etc. This junk science is against community and state standards.

This junk science is against community and state standards. Stop for a moment and give that sentence the attention it deserves. For thousands of years, going back to Aristotle, humanity’s greatest minds have sought to safeguard the precepts of the scientific method by keeping them away from the corrupting influence of political culture. Defending the integrity of science from powerful people is what got Galileo imprisoned. And yet, 400 years later, here we are: watching a public official tasked with guiding the educational trajectories of his community’s children rail against the accepted science on climate change—because its conclusions threaten to undermine the local political culture. [Continue reading…]

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Republicans’ leading climate denier tells the pope to butt out of climate debate

The Guardian reports: Washington’s notorious snowball-thrower was at it again – even on a June day with forecast highs of 92 degrees – as the Senate’s most powerful environmental leader delivered a pep talk to activists who deny the science behind climate change.

Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, who now chairs the Senate environment and public works committee despite famously calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”, took a star turn on Thursday at the Heartland Institute, whose conferences function as a hub for climate deniers.

His message – that “God is still up there” and that Pope Francis should mind his own business – sent a clear signal to his fellow conservatives: climate sceptics have a loyal – and newly powerful – friend in Congress. [Continue reading…]

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5 reasons Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment matters

Reynard Loki writes: Pope Francis’s forthcoming encyclical on the environment has been described as “long-awaited” and “much-anticipated.” Indeed, as Peter Smith, who covers religion for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, recently put it: “Rarely in modern times has a major papal pronouncement received so much attention and debate before it’s even been delivered.” And why not? In addition to being Francis’s first encyclical, it will be the first encyclical on the environment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

The landmark document is expected to be issued sometime this summer, and perhaps even later this month, with the title “Laudato Sii” (“Praised Be You”), taken from the pope’s namesake St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun, which praises God for creation, and the subtitle “Sulla cura della casa commune” (“On the care of the common home”). Published around the year 1224, St Francis’s prayer reads: “Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun,” and continues to praise God for “Sister Moon,” “Brothers Wind and Air,” “Sister Water,” “Brother Fire, and “Mother Earth.”

In a speech he delivered in Ireland in March, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which prepared the first draft of the encyclical, said that Laudato Sii “will explore the relationship between care for creation, integral human development and concern for the poor.” [Continue reading…]

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Honor comes late to Óscar Romero, a martyr for the poor

From San Salvador, Elisabeth Maklin reports: María de los Angeles Mena Alvarado knelt at the tomb of the slain archbishop and wept.

She had come to the crypt of the city’s cathedral to pray for a cure for the diabetes that was threatening her eyesight and weakening her kidneys. “I feel that, yes, he can perform a miracle,” said Ms. Mena, 62.

Thirty-five years after Óscar Romero, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated with a single bullet as he said Mass in a modest chapel here, this small country is celebrating his beatification on Saturday, the final step before sainthood.

For many here and in the rest of Latin America, though, Archbishop Romero is already a saint.

His tireless advocacy for the poor resonates deeply in a region where the gulf between those with riches and those without remains vast. He was the champion of impoverished Salvadorans, his homilies and radio broadcasts giving voice to their struggles. And as political violence battered the country and death squads killed any activist who challenged the existing order, the archbishop was defiant. [Continue reading…]

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Pope Francis prepares to deliver a powerful message on climate change

Pacific Standard: Representatives of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, perhaps the best-known and best-funded organization dedicated to denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change, were in Rome recently, respectfully calling on the Holy Father. Their stated goal for the visit—in their own words, including exclamatory punctuation—has been “to inform Pope Francis of the truth about climate science: There is no global-warming crisis!”

The timing of their trip, like that desperate-seeming exclamation point, is telling. At some point over the next two to three months, Pope Francis will be issuing a clerically significant form of papal missive known as an encyclical. For those whose Sunday-school transcripts weren’t good enough to get them into the College of Cardinals, an encyclical is a letter sent by the pope to Catholic bishops instructing them to take immediate action on a matter of church doctrine. Less formally, it can be thought of as a personal message from the pope to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, urging them to focus their spiritual energies on something the Church deems important.

That’s why so many people have been buzzing about what’s coming. As only the second encyclical to be signed by the new pope since he took office in 2013 — and the first that he has authored independently — this encyclical would be newsworthy no matter what it was about. But what makes it doubly so is its subject: climate change, and especially its devastating impact on global ecosystems. With more than a billion Catholics (and quite a few non-Catholics) hanging on his every word, Pope Francis will passionately make the humanitarian and spiritual case for acting on climate change — through, among other things, the conservation of resources, the pursuit of renewable energy, and the reduction of greenhouse gases. [Continue reading…]

ThinkProgress: Citing climate change as a major threat, one of the world’s largest insurance companies has pledged to drop its remaining investment in coal assets while tripling its investment in green technologies.

At a business and climate change conference held this week in Paris, AXA — France’s largest insurer — announced that it would sell €500 million ($559 million) in coal assets by the end of 2015, while increasing its “green investments” in things like renewable energy, green infrastructure, and green bonds to €3 billion ($3.3 billion) by 2020.

During the announcement on Friday, AXA’s chief executive Henri de Castries spoke about the threat that climate change poses to the environment, and the responsibility of insurance companies to deal with those threats. Last year, AXA paid over €1 billion ($1.1 billion) globally in weather-related insurance claims, citing climate change as a “core business issue” already driving an increase in weather-related risks.

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Marie Alphonsine Ghattas and Mariam Bawardy — two saints from Palestine

BBC News reports: Pope Francis has canonised two 19th Century nuns who lived in Ottoman-ruled Palestine, making them the first Palestinian saints in modern times.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas and Mariam Bawardy were among four new saints declared in Rome’s St Peter’s Square.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and over 2,000 Christian pilgrims from the region attended the ceremony.

The move is seen as a token of Vatican support for dwindling Christian communities in the Middle East. [Continue reading…]

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Vatican officially recognizes ‘State of Palestine’ in new treaty

The Associated Press: The Vatican has officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty.

The treaty, which was finalized Wednesday but still has to be signed, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state and constitutes an official recognition.

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2015 the ‘last effective opportunity’ to safely limit warming, says Vatican conference statement

The Washington Post reports: Following a closely watched Vatican climate change meeting Tuesday at the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, the attendees — including not only scientific leaders but also religious and political luminaries — have released a statement (PDF here) suggesting that a 2015 climate accord may be the last chance to keep global warming within a range deemed “safe” for the world, its people and its ecosystems.

Meeting attendees included U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who heads the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. The event is widely seen as a kind of prelude to a much anticipated papal encyclical expected this summer, in which Pope Francis will address the environment and humanity’s moral responsibility to care for it.

For now, the conference statement declares that “Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its decisive mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity.” And it points very directly at an unfolding international process for addressing it, suggesting that this process must succeed — at the end of this year. [Continue reading…]

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Pope Francis steps up campaign on climate change, to conservatives’ alarm

The New York Times reports: Since his first homily in 2013, Pope Francis has preached about the need to protect the earth and all of creation as part of a broad message on the environment. It has caused little controversy so far.

But now, as Francis prepares to deliver what is likely to be a highly influential encyclical this summer on environmental degradation and the effects of human-caused climate change on the poor, he is alarming some conservatives in the United States who are loath to see the Catholic Church reposition itself as a mighty voice in a cause they do not believe in.

As part of the effort for the encyclical, top Vatican officials will hold a summit meeting Tuesday to build momentum for a campaign by Francis to urge world leaders to enact a sweeping United Nations climate change accord in Paris in December. The accord would for the first time commit every nation to enact tough new laws to cut the emissions that cause global warming.

The Vatican summit meeting will focus on the links between poverty, economic development and climate change, with speeches and panel discussions by climate scientists and religious leaders, and economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who is leading efforts to forge the Paris accord, will deliver the opening address.

Vatican officials, who have spent more than a year helping Francis prepare his message, have convened several meetings already on the topic. Last month, they met with the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

In the United States, the encyclical will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign, now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors, said Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant in Washington.

But the effort is already angering a number of American conservatives, among them members of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group partly funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, run by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, who oppose climate policy. [Continue reading…]

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Pope urges world to act after new Mediterranean tragedy

AFP reports: Pope Francis on Sunday, April 19, urged world leaders to respond “decisively” after 700 migrants were feared drowned in the deadliest migrant shipwreck yet in the Mediterranean.

“These are men and women like us, brothers seeking a better life,” the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics said in his weekly address, urging leaders to “act decisively and quickly to stop these tragedies from recurring.”

Urging the faithful in St Peter’s square to pray for the victims, the pope added: “(They are) hungry, persecuted, injured, exploited, victims of war. They are seeking a better life, they are seeking happiness.” [Continue reading…]

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Pope provokes Turkish anger by again referring to the Armenian genocide

The Daily Beast reports: The first time Pope Francis dropped the g-word when describing the systematic massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turkish Ottoman Empire during World War I was on June 3, 2013, just a few months into his papacy in an address to Nerses Bedros XIX, head of the Armenian Catholics in Vatican City. “The first genocide of the 20th century was that of the Armenians,” he told those gathered for a special Mass.

Then, the Vatican public-relations team swung into action, softening the pontiff’s perceived intent. Turkish officials called the comment a disappointment, but largely brushed it off as a rookie mistake for a new pope who was not yet versed in Vatican-style political diplomacy.

When he repeated the claim on Sunday in front of hundreds at a Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the tragic events, the reaction was different. Turkey immediately summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Turkey for crisis talks, and by nightfall had called its ambassador to the Holy See back to Ankara. In recalling their ambassador, the Turkish foreign minister said in a statement that the Turkish people would not recognize the pope’s statement, “which is controversial in every aspect, which is based on prejudice, which distorts history, and reduces the pains suffered in Anatolia under the conditions of the First World War to members of just one religion.”

Meanwhile, the Vatican press machine didn’t blink—offering no explanations or apologies for the pope’s choice of words, even as the reverberations were felt all the way to Washington and beyond. The Vatican press office instead sent out the text for similar sentiments expressed by John Paul II in 2001. “We’ve learned by now that this pope is not politically correct,” Vatican expert Robert Mickens, editor in chief of the Catholic magazine Global Pulse told The Daily Beast. “No doubt the secretary of state cautioned him about using the g-word, but this is proof once again that the pope does what he wants to do.” [Continue reading…]

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The pope as messenger: making climate change a moral issue

By Andy Hoffman, University of Michigan and Jenna White, University of Michigan

This summer, Pope Francis plans to release an encyclical letter in which he will address environmental issues, and very likely climate change.

His statement will have a profound impact on the public debate. For one, it will elevate the spiritual, moral and religious dimensions of the issue. Calling on people to protect the global climate because it is sacred, both for its own God-given value and for the life and dignity of all humankind, not just the affluent few, will create far more personal commitment than a government call for action on economic grounds or an activist’s call on environmental grounds.

Making a case on theological grounds builds on long-standing arguments in the Catholic catechism that environmental degradation is a violation of the seventh commandment (Thou shalt not steal) as it involves theft from future generations and the poor. Against such a moral backdrop, the very call to “make the business case to protect the global climate” – a common tactic to argue for action on climate change – seems rather absurd. The pope’s statement will shift the tenor of the public and political conversation in needed ways.

Transcending political tribes

But perhaps even more important than the content of the message is the messenger: the pope.

The public debate over climate change today has been caught up in the so-called “culture wars.” The debate is less about carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas models than it is about opposing values and worldviews. In the United States, those opposing cultural worldviews map onto our partisan political system – the majority of liberal Democrats believe in climate change, the majority of conservative Republicans do not. People of either party give greater weight to evidence and arguments that support pre-existing beliefs and expend disproportionate energy trying to refute views or arguments that are contrary to those beliefs.

Further, research shows that we have begun to identify members of our political tribes based on their position on climate change. We openly consider evidence when it is accepted or ideally presented by sources that represent our cultural community, and we dismiss information that is advocated by sources that represent groups whose values we reject.

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Pope Francis uses Easter message to focus on Kenya, Syria and Iraq

The Guardian reports: Pope Francis used his Easter message on Sunday to pray for the nearly 150 victims of the Kenya university massacre, while also highlighting the suffering of people across the Middle East and elsewhere.

“May constant prayer rise up from all people of goodwill for those who lost their lives – I think in particular of the young people who were killed last Thursday at Garissa University College in Kenya,” the pontiff told crowds of believers cowering under umbrellas amid heavy rain in St Peter’s Square.

The pope’s comments came after Islamist militants stormed the Kenyan university on Thursday, killing 148 people. While the al-Shabaab gunmen initially killed students indiscriminately, survivors said Christians were later identified and shot.

The pope put persecuted Christian minorities and those suffering from conflicts at the centre of his Easter address in Rome, known as the Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) address, with particular emphasis on the Middle East.

“We ask for peace, above all, for Syria and Iraq: that the roar of arms may cease and that peaceful relations be restored among the various groups which make up those beloved countries,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Pope Francis believes his days are numbered

Barbie Latza Nadeau writes: Of all the things a sitting pope can do, calling for a Holy Jubilee Year is surely one of the more important. It is a joyous occasion that draws millions of Catholic pilgrims to Rome to take part in celebrations and get that ever-important indulgence, or forgiveness for sins, that some believers think will shorten their time in Purgatory.

With the announcement that Pope Francis has designated December 8 as the beginning of what the Vatican calls the Holy Jubilee of Mercy, this enormously popular pontiff is setting yet another record. No pope has ever declared a jubilee year so soon in his papacy. John Paul II held two holy years during his long sojourn, Benedict XVI retired before he had a chance to call such a celebration.

Once more the 78-year-old Francis seems to be racing against the clock, and many in Rome are speculating that his decision to declare such a momentous event so soon in his papacy, barely two years after his election, is to be sure he gets one in before time runs out, as if he is holding a sort of last hurrah or a farewell ceremony. And there are sad, almost sinister undertones.

“This pope seems to be in a hurry to get as much done as he can, as if he’s got a deadline,” Marco Politi, a Vatican expert, said at a small roundtable discussion on Francis and the length of his papacy last week. “He keeps talking about how his time is short, but it’s not because he’s sick. He has told his friends that he feels it will be an ‘event’ that wipes him out, not a natural end.” [Continue reading…]

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Does Pope Francis say too much?

Paul Vallely writes: It was conservatives in the church who were first most disconcerted. They bemoaned the “lamentable fuzziness” in his extemporaneity. One called him “the blabbermouth pope”. The conservative moral philosopher Germain Grisez – a man immensely respectful of popes in the past – accused Francis of talking in public as he might “unburden himself with friends after a good dinner and plenty of wine”. The arch-traditionalist Cardinal Raymond Burke, whom Francis sacked last year as the Vatican’s top judge, has accused him of causing confusion among the faithful.

More recently liberals got a dose of the same medicine when Pope Francis defended the official Catholic ban on contraception. He called Pope Paul VI who upheld it, in Humanae Vitae, a prophetic genius. In the Philippines in January Francis departed from his official text to repeat that. But then, on the plane home, he glossed that with a series of statements which went off in all directions like a theological firecracker.

Catholics should not breed “like rabbits” but should exercise “responsible parenthood”. Population experts said that three was the ideal size for a family, he told airborne reporters, and announced that he had “rebuked” a woman who had “irresponsibly” had eight children by caesarean section. Again aides had to put out a statement afterwards saying Francis thought big families were “a gift from God”; after the Italian association of large families complained to the Vatican.

What did all that mean? Was the pope trying to say something to please everyone and pleasing no one in the process? Was he thinking, to quote Pope John XXIII, “I have to be pope both for those with their foot on the accelerator and those with their foot on the brake”? One thing was clear in all the contradiction. This was a perspective from the pastoral south rather than the philosophical north. What particularly irked the Argentinian pope was what he called neo-Malthusian assumptions by rich nations that the way to eliminate poverty was to eliminate poor people. [Continue reading…]

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Vatican backs military force to stop ISIS ‘genocide’

Crux reports: In an unusually blunt endorsement of military action, the Vatican’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva has called for a coordinated international force to stop the “so-called Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq from further assaults on Christians and other minority groups.

“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”

Tomasi said that any anti-ISIS coalition has to include the Muslim states of the Middle East, and can’t simply be a “Western approach.” He also said it should unfold under the aegis of the United Nations.

The call for force is striking, given that the Vatican traditionally has opposed military interventions in the Middle East, including the two US-led Gulf Wars. It builds, however, on comments from Pope Francis that the use of force is “legitimate … to stop an unjust aggressor.”

Tomasi issued the call in an interview with Crux on the same day he presented a statement entitled “Supporting the Human Rights of Christians and Other Communities, particularly in the Middle East,” coauthored with the Russian Federation and Lebanon, to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The statement has drawn almost 70 nations as signatories, including the United States. [Continue reading…]

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French court banned advertisement insulting Christian faith

On March 11, 2005, BBC News reported: France’s Catholic Church has won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Christ’s Last Supper.

The display was ruled “a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people’s innermost beliefs”, by a judge.

The church objected to the female version of the fresco, which includes a female Christ, used by clothing designers Marithe et Francois Girbaud.

The authorities in the Italian city of Milan banned the poster last month.

The French judge in the case ordered that all posters on display should be taken down within three days.

The association which represented the church was also awarded costs.

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