Baby dies of heart attack following baptism in Romania

The Orthodox Church in Romania is facing growing criticism after a baby suffered a cardiac arrest and died following a baptism ceremony.

Pressure to change the ritual, which involves immersing babies three times in holy water, is mounting on the church as local media reported similar incidents that have occurred in recent years.

The infant, who was six weeks old, was rushed to hospital in Suceava on Monday after suffering a heart attack but died a few hours later. The autopsy revealed he had water in his lungs.

A spokesperson for the hospital, Dan Teodorovici, was quoted by local media as saying: “A one-month-and-a-half baby was found in cardiac arrest in the church after the baptism service. The baby was respited by the SMURD unit that arrives on the spot.

“He was hospitalised in serious condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit, was intubated and mechanically ventilated.”

The father of the child told Monitorul de Suceava: “The boy was crying but the priest submerged him three times in water and he inhaled water. [I] removed him, wiped him, from the doctors I found out he inhaled 110ml of water… If you see a child with a gaping mouth and crying you wouldn’t immerse him completely in water, would you?”

Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation agains the priest who performed the ceremony.

More than 56,000 people had signed an online petition calling for the ritual to be changed by Thursday night. The petition said: “The death of a newborn baby because of this practice is a huge tragedy. This risk must be ruled out for the joy of baptism to triumph.”

The Archdiocese of Suceava offered their condolences to the baby’s parents in a statement earlier this week and said: “There is no word or deed to wipe away the tears and now soothe the broken heard of parents and relatives, but we are with them at this particularly difficult time.”

A spokesperson for the Romanian Patriarchate, Vasile Banescu, said the church had “deep compassion towards the family of the deceased child, so hard tried now and whose pain we cannot even fully understand”.

Dante's descendant seeks to overturn poet's 1302 corruption conviction

The reputation of Dante Alighieri needs little burnishing: his Divine Comedy, tracing the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written. But more than 700 years after Dante was accused of corruption and condemned to be burned to death, his descendant is looking to clear his name.

Sperello di Serego Alighieri, an astrophysicist, and the law professor Alessandro Traversi are working to see if Dante’s 1302 sentencing for corruption in political office can be reversed.

In the 14th century, Florence was divided between the Black and the White factions, formed after infighting among the Guelphs. Dante, a member of the White party, was accused of corruption when the Blacks took control of the city in 1301. His fine was 5,000 florins and two years’ banishment, with a permanent ban from public office. When he failed to appear in court in March 1302, he was condemned to death in absentia.

“They were political trials and the penalties of exile and death inflicted on Dante, my dear ancestor, are unjust and have never been cancelled as happened with Galileo Galilei,” Alighieri told Corriere Della Sera. “And therefore, if the laws allow it, we will ask for a revision.”

According to the Italian newspaper, any final judgment can be subject to revision if there is new evidence showing the offender’s innocence. There is no time limit to the request, which can be proposed by an heir of the convict.

“There were two sentences inflicted on Dante. The first was exile, the second was death and it will be interesting to understand whether in the light of the Florentine statutes of the time and the current legal principles the two judgments could be subject to revision,” said Traversi.

The plans to clear Dante’s name will begin with a conference in May, with participants including historians, linguists, lawyers – and Antoine de Gabrielli, the descendant of Cante de Gabrielli da Gubbio, the Florentine official who convicted Dante. They will be investigating if Dante’s sentences were just, said Traversi, or “the poisoned fruit of politics that used justice to attack an opponent”.

Not everyone is convinced of the need for rehabilitation. Writing in the same paper, journalist Aldo Cazzullo said that Dante “is the one who invented the word ‘belpaese’ [beautiful country]”. “What could a late acquittal add, however necessary?” he asked.

Pope Francis warns of new genocide after Holocaust if ‘warped ideologies' continue 

‘Regal’ purple dye is found in Israeli artefacts dating 3,000 years to the reigns of kings Solomon and David

Rich in hue and denoting royalty, power and wealth, purple dye has a prized status that is drawn from its exclusivity and the costs that go into producing it.

Now, researchers in Israel have for the first time found evidence of fabric dyed with “royal purple” dating back 3,000 years to the reigns of kings David and Solomon.

Since 2013, a team of archaeologists has been working in the Timna Valley, an ancient copper production district in southern Israel. There they discovered remnants of woven fabric, a tassel and wool fibres dyed with royal purple.

Tests on the artefacts indicated they dated to 1,000 BC – the time of David and Solomon’s biblical monarchies in Jerusalem.

‘Unique glimpse’

True purple – or argaman – was found in tiny quantities in the bodies of three types of mollusc found in the Mediterranean. Temple priests, David and Solomon, and Jesus of Nazareth are all described as having worn clothing dyed with purple, said the report in the PLOS ONE journal.

Professor Erez Ben-Yosef from the archaeology department at Tel Aviv University, who worked on the study, said: “As a result of the region’s extremely dry climate, we are able to recover organic materials such as textile, cords and leather from the Iron Age, from the time of David and Solomon, providing us with a unique glimpse into life in biblical times.

“The colour immediately attracted our attention, but we found it hard to believe that we had found true purple from such an ancient period.”

Dr Naama Sukenik, a curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority said: “Until the current discovery, we had only encountered mollusc-shell waste and potsherds with patches of dye, which provided evidence of the purple industry in the Iron Age.

“Now, for the first time, we have direct evidence of the dyed fabrics themselves.”