Fifteen Things that Caught My Eye Today: Hagia Sophia, Dems & Abortion, Rosary Doc & More (July 24, 2020)

1. Catholic News Agency: Churches burned, people beheaded in Mozambique’s escalating extremist violence

Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba diocese has been an outspoken advocate for the needs of the more than 200,000 people who have been displaced by the violent insurgency. 

In June there were reports that insurgents had beheaded 15 people in a week. Yet the bishop said that the crisis in Mozambique has largely been met with “indifference” from the rest of the world. 

2. Elyssa Koren: UN Human Rights Council Exploits COVID-19 Pandemic to Support Funding for Abortion

The U.N. Human Rights Council advanced the resolution July 17 under  the topic of ending discrimination against women and girls. It made the radical claim that “sexual and reproductive health services,” including “safe abortion,” are an “essential health service” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

3.  ‘Isolation for her was a death sentence,’ overdose deaths worsen in WNY

“She needed to be with people. She knew that isolation for her was a death sentence. And isolation truly was her death sentence and so last monday she overdosed and died,” said Sandra Robinson, speaking of her late daughter.

4. Washington Times: Federal prison had 75% coronavirus infection rate

5.  Why you shouldn’t dismiss Mike Pompeo’s report on human rights

Contrary to the fears of Mr. Pompeo’s critics, the report does a service by synthesizing the founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights—with the re-founding texts of Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction and the global human rights revolution of the 20th century centered on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Throughout it links freedom and equality, refusing to decouple them as many culture warriors do.

6. Heather Mac Donald: Freedom to Deface

Mayor Bill de Blasio has cancelled a graffiti-eradication program targeted at cleaning private buildings. He is thus deliberately sending New York City back to its worst days of crime and squalor.

The symbolic significance of this cancellation is as large as its practical effect.

7. Reuters: Greek church bells toll for Hagia Sophia, PM calls Turkey a ‘troublemaker’

In a message marking Greece’s 46th anniversary of the restoration of democracy on Friday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Turkey a ‘troublemaker’, and the Hagia Sophia conversion an ‘affront to civilisation of the 21st century’.

“What is unfolding in Constantinople today is not a demonstration of strength, but proof of weakness,” Mitsotakis said. 

8. The New York Times: Christian Abortion Critics Urge Dems to Change Platform

“We call upon you to recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child, before and after birth,” the group wrote in its letter to the Democratic platform committee, shared in advance with The Associated Press. “We urge you to reject a litmus test on pro-life people of faith seeking office in the Democratic Party.”

9. Former Wednesday’s Child Advocates for Adoption

10. The New York Times: Schools Beat Earlier Plagues with Outdoor Classes. We Should, Too. 

In New York, the nation’s largest school system, students will attend live classes only a few days a week, a policy that has angered both exhausted parents, who feel that it is not nearly enough, and many teachers, who fear it as way too much.

At the same time, one of the few things we know about the coronavirus with any degree of certainty is that the risk of contracting it diminishes outside — a review of 7,000 cases in China recorded only one instance of fresh-air transmission. While this ought to have activated a war-room focus toward the goal of moving as much teaching as possible outdoors, nothing like that has happened.

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12. Francis X. Rocca: What Should Jesus Look Like? 

The question of how to represent Jesus visually is nearly as old as Christianity itself. It is complicated by the historical mystery of what he actually looked like, and even more so by the theological mystery of his dual identity as both man and God.

13. Ohio nursing homes allow outdoor visits, but many remain closed because of surge in cases

14. CNN: This mom donated her lottery winnings to a wounded police officer. Now the community is paying her back. 

She was down to her last $7 when she found a dollar bill in a grocery store parking lot. She used it to buy a lottery ticket, winning $100.

Sims’ 12-year-old daughter, Rakiya Edmonson, suggested that rather than keep the money, they donate it to the family of a Kansas City police officer who had been wounded in the line of duty.

15. Aleteia: Photo of doctor praying the Rosary in COVID-19 hospital goes viral

“I have no doubt: God hears our prayers. What [Jesus] liked most was to heal the sick, and I witness His presence daily. He acts through my hands. I ask him to use my ministry of healing, more so now that we are going through such a difficult situation,” Dr. Ramirez told Aleteia. He is one of the many professionals fighting to save lives in a country where COVID-19 has exacerbated the crisis in its health-care system.