A10 | Saturday, January 14, 2017 | THE ZAPATA TIMES
INTERNATIONAL Vatican seeks youth input for meeting
Troops surround site as Ivory Coast negotiates mutiny deal By Isidore Kouadio and Robbie Corey-Boulet ASSOCIATED PRE SS
By Nicole Winfield A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is reaching out to young people for the next round of churchwide consultations, soliciting their direct input for an upcoming meeting of the world’s bishops on the plight of young Catholics today and their faith. The Vatican on Friday issued the preparatory document for the 2018 synod, which comes as the Catholic Church is still reeling from the fallout from the last synod and Francis’ controversial outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Organizers insisted young people will actually be involved in the upcoming synod process, which consists of bishops meeting behind closed doors for two weeks to develop recommendations for a future papal document. The Vatican plans to put a questionnaire on a future Vatican website, www.sinodogiovani2018.va, to solicit input from ordinary youths to help form the basis of a draft text. Monsignor Fabio Fabene, undersecretary of the office organizing the meeting, said the answers would be evaluated “scientifically” to weed out responses that aren’t serious. In addition, young Catholics would be invited to attend the synod and offer their testimony, but without any right to vote on the final text. Another questionnaire is being sent to priests, bishops and cardinals around the world, but some of the locationspecific questions immediately raised eyebrows about preconceptions going into the meeting. American prelates, for example, were asked to discuss how they respond to situations of extreme violence among young people, including gangs, jail, drug addiction and forced marriage. European prelates were merely asked how they respond to young people who feel excluded from the political and economic system and whether intergenerational bonds still exist. Asian bishops were asked how they can better use the “language” of sport, media and music in their ministry to young people. Francis has sparked a mini-revolution in the church by hinting at a flexible approach to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.
BOUAKE, Ivory Coast — Soldiers in Ivory Coast’s second-largest city surrounded the residence where officials were negotiating a deal to end an army mutiny, as gunfire was also reported in the commercial capital of Abidjan on Friday night, raising fears the crisis was far from over. An Associated Press reporter in Bouake, in central Ivory Coast, saw hundreds of soldiers converge on the home of a local official where the
talks were taking place, and some fired their weapons into the air. Inside, a government delegation led by Defense Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi was meeting with representatives of soldiers who kicked off the mutiny a week ago, re-igniting security worries in the world’s top cocoa producer and Africa’s fastestgrowing economy. Beginning at around 9 p.m. Friday night, sporadic gunfire could be heard coming from a military camp in the residential Cocody district of Abidjan, said resident Emmanuel Assouan, who
Drug lord told to pay $1M in DEA agent’s murder By Maria Verza ASSOCIATED PRE SS
MEXICO CITY — A Mexican judge has ordered a drug lord convicted in the 1985 killings of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a government pilot to pay relatives of the victims nearly $1 million in compensation. The Federal Judicial Council announced the ruling Friday in a statement. It did not name any of the parties involved. But a
judicial official confirmed that the order is directed at Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseca Carrillo, cofounder of the Guadalajara cartel, for the case of the kidnapping, torture and killing of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Fonseca was transferred from prison in July at age 86 to serve the remaining nine years of his sentence under house arrest.
lives nearby. “A barricade was erected by soldiers at the entrance to the camp. The shots are continuing to intensify,” Assouan said. The African Development Bank, which has its headquarters in Abidjan, sent out an alert advising staffers to stay home, citing reports of gunfire at the camp in Cocody as well as at a different military camp in the central Plateau district. Last week’s mutiny quickly spread to cities throughout the country including Abidjan before President Alassane Ouattara announced Jan. 7 that
Sia Kambou / Getty
Ivory Coast General Sekou Toure shakes hands with military commanders in Bouake on Friday.
a deal had been reached and that he would consider the soldiers’ demands. The soldiers are seeking unpaid bonuses, higher pay, faster promotions and improved living conditions. However, the details of the deal were not made public, and it was unclear whether all soldiers would accept them. On Friday, a military official with knowledge of the negotiations said the government was resisting paying bonuses of nearly $20,000 each for an un-
specified number of soldiers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorized to give his name. Ouattara and some other Ivorians have expressed frustration with the soldiers’ tactics. Before the talks began Friday, soldiers fired weapons to disperse a protest by civilians in Bouake who were angry that the standoff had disrupted economic activity in the city, said Fanta Kourouma, a Bouake resident.