Leaked UK papers show alternatives to Irish backstop are all problematic
THREE times a year, Father Pedro Opeka celebrates Mass in a vast grey quarry in the hills above Madagascar’s capital.
This week, he will welcome his old teacher, Pope Francis, to see the chiselled granite altar from where he ministers.
Opeka studied theology under the future pope in their native Argentina before dedicating his life to building communities for the families of Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest nations.
“The pope is coming to tell people to keep fighting for those who are forgotten,” he said. “The pope will comfort them.”
Over the last 50 years, an organisation founded by Opeka has built homes for 25 000 people, 100 schools, six clinics and two football stadiums. Next year they will build a college for paramedics.
Pope Francis, the 82-year-old leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, is visiting Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius during his six-day trip to Africa this week.
On Sunday he will meet some of the families whose lives have been changed by Opeka, whose Slovenian parents fled to Argentina before he was born because the Communists tried to kill his father for being Christian.
Opeka invited Francis to visit during a meeting at the Vatican last year, never dreaming that he would accept.
Ratsiory Fanomezanjanahary Tsiadino Fannie, a 13-year-old budding mathematician, lives in one of the homes Opeka has carved from the hillside and is due to meet Francis.
Her pastel green house sits on one side of a leafy courtyard where she plays hopscotch with her six siblings.Asked if she was looking forward to next week, she broke into a smile. “There will be my exams,” Fannie said. “I’m ready.” Following a prod from her mother Erlinne, she gasped: “Oh yeah, the arrival of the pope as well?
“I’m also ready for the arrival of the pope.
“I’m really happy.” Erlinne, a single mother of four children, has also adopted her brother’s two orphans, and taken in another child.
Struggling to find work in the countryside, she moved to Akamasoa, one of the 20 neighbourhoods that Opeka’s organisation helped build.“I, who was at the bottom at everything, will see my daughter talking to the pope,” she said, tears welling up. “My heart is full of joy.” | A RECENTLY leaked government report on “alternative arrangements” for a no-deal Brexit forecasts serious issues with all scenarios set forth to replace the Irish backstop, including those affecting the UK’s supply chain and putting smaller businesses at risk, just two months before the country is due to leave the European Union, The Guardian reported yesterday.
The so-called backstop is part of former Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with Brussels that entails keeping the entire UK in the EU Customs Union, with Northern Ireland complying with some EU Single Market rules, in case of a no-deal.
The measure would be put into effect if a consensus on all terms of post-Brexit relations is not reached by the end of the transition period. While May’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, has advocated removing this provision of the deal, the EU has repeatedly stated it is not willing to renegotiate.
“It is evident that every facilitation has concerns and issues related to them. The complexity of combining them into something more systemic and as part of one package is a key missing factor at present. Overall there were a number of concerns surrounding the deliverability of technological facilitations,” the leaked paper read.
Finding alternatives to the backstop has become the focus of Johnson’s political strategy, with the prime minister even claiming that there are “abundant solutions” to the problem.
But the report, dated August 28, indicated the opposite, proving there was no feasible solution at the moment.
The document compiled research done by a number of expert groups and customs and Northern Irish officials, as well as a Whitehall-based group that is due to propose ways of reworking the Brexit agreement to the EU.
The UK voted to leave the EU in 2016. After then-prime minister May failed to come up with an acceptable plan to leave the bloc by March 29 of this year, the deadline was moved to October 31. |