No Picture
News Briefs

Amid arrests of Indian priests and nun, bishop calls for ‘storming of heaven’

February 9, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
Father Dominic Pinto of the Diocese of Lucknow in Agra, India (cathedral school of Lucknow pictured above), was arrested for violation of the state’s anti-conversion law. / Credit: Rahulchandra.RC|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

Bangalore, India, Feb 9, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

After the recent arrests of priests and a nun in India on charges that they violated the Hindu-majority country’s “anti-conversion” laws, a Catholic bishop has sent out an appeal “to storm heaven with prayers.”

Bishop Ignatius D’Souza of Bareilly in the Archdiocese of Agra issued a “prayer request” on social media Feb. 7.

“I request you to storm heaven so that all those who are dealing with this sensitive case may get enlightened by the Holy Spirit and our brothers may be released soon,” D’Souza pleaded.

In the post, he said that Father Dominic Pinto and nine Protestant lay organizers have been taken into custody on charges that they violated the anti-conversion act, which, he said, does not allow those arrested to be released on bail.

Eleven out of India’s 28 states have passed laws to criminalize forced conversions but, in practice, they have been used to prevent the practice of the Christian faith. 

Pinto, director of the Lucknow Diocese’s pastoral center in northern Uttar Pradesh state, was arrested on Feb. 6 for allowing a gathering of 100 people led by evangelical pastors to take place in the Catholic center. The government of Uttar Pradesh is controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India’s population is 79.8 % Hindu, 14.2 % Muslim, and 2.3 % Christian. In Uttar Pradesh state — India’s most populous state with 2.3 million inhabitants — only .18% are Christian.

“Hindu fundamentalists barged into the center and insisted on the arrest of the priest at the police station along with the pastors while other fundamentalists even threatened the nearby convent and nuns nearby,” Father Donald D’Souza, chancellor of the Lucknow Diocese, told CNA. 

On Feb. 7, Sister Mercy of Carmel School in the Ambikapur Diocese in Chattisgarh state, whose government is also ruled by the BJP, was arrested for “abetting the suicide” of a sixth-grade female student. Before the girl’s death, the nun had questioned her and two other girls for being together in the bathroom for a long period of time. The nun had asked the girls to bring their parents to school the next day.

Shortly after the girl’s suicide, Hindu nationalist groups arranged for a large crowd to march to the school, and police were called to the scene. Police arrested the nun the next morning.

Father Anil Mathew, who manages a hostel for children, was also arrested on Jan. 7 in Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh state in central India, for running an “illegal hostel” and was bailed out only after two weeks in jail. The BJP is also the ruling party in Madhya Pradesh state.

A Catholic priest who was arrested by Indian authorities for violating “anti-conversion” laws was released from jail on Dec. 22 after being detained for nearly three months amid increasing persecution of Christians in the majority-Hindu state of Uttar Pradesh.

“Attacks on Christians continue to increase in different parts of India. Harassment of personnel serving in orphanages, educational, and health care institutions on false allegation of conversions have become common,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) lamented on Feb. 7 at the end of the weeklong assembly attended by 170 bishops. 

“Harassment of Christians and those running the institutions has become routine in these states,” Bishop Jerald Almeida, retired bishop of Jabalpur, also in Madhya Pradesh, told CNA on the concluding day of the CBCI assembly.

“I have two false cases against me of conversion and even torture of children and six more against priests, nuns, and teachers. Luckily, I got anticipatory bail from the high court,” Almeida said.

The United Christian Forum (UCF), which monitors anti-Christian violence in the country, in its Dec. 8, 2023, report pointed out that of the 687 incidents of violence against Christians in 334 days in 2023, 531 incidents took place in four states, and 287 took place in Uttar Pradesh.

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

President of Taiwan joins Pope Francis in call for regulating AI

January 31, 2024 Catholic News Agency 2
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference at the presidential office in Taipei on Dec. 27, 2022. / Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Jan 31, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).

President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen sent a letter to Pope Francis on Wednesday joining the pontiff in calling for greater regulation of artificial intelligence, reaffirming what Ing-wen said was Taiwan’s commitment “to promote peace and improve the quality of life of all humanity.” 

Noting that Taiwan “is eager to work with the international community to build a more stable society,” the Jan. 31 letter reflected on the country’s position as a “​​world leader in the semiconductor industry.”

“As the wave of AI sweeps across the world, Taiwan will continue in its endeavor to be a highly reliable, effective, and secure partner in the international community,” the president continued. 

Taiwan is a vital player in the global development of AI. The growth in demand for accelerator chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the country’s largest company — and the world’s second-most-valuable semiconductor company — has helped fuel an economic rebound for the island, according to Bloomberg

Investing and developing AI tools also plays a critical role in maintaining Taiwan’s national security apparatus amid growing threats of military intervention and economic sanctions from Beijing.

Tsai highlighted these themes and underscored the broader ethical considerations of developing emerging technologies in her letter to the pope. 

“As Your Holiness has warned, the growing scope of AI applications and its implications for human values engender grave ethical risks, such as invasion of privacy, data manipulation, and illegal surveillance, which all have serious consequences for free and democratic societies,” she wrote. 

“For Taiwan, as for other democracies, one major challenge has been disinformation campaigns,” the president continued. “Taiwan will deepen cooperation with the Holy See across many areas as we work toward exercising good technological governance, maintaining social harmony and stability, and jointly creating a peaceful future for humanity.”

Tsai sent the letter in response to the pope’s message marking the 57th World Day of Peace, a celebration that is observed by the Catholic Church on Jan. 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. 

The pope’s message for the 2024 World Day of Peace was titled “Artificial Intelligence and Peace.” In it, the pontiff called on policymakers and international stakeholders to direct the development of AI toward “the pursuit of peace and the common good.”

The pope in his Dec. 14 letter underscored the risks posed by AI with its usage in automated warfare as well as the bias it can effect when used in the job hiring process, mortgage applications, and even criminal recidivism. These “systemic errors can easily multiply,” the pope argued.

The Holy Father stressed that AI is a supplemental technology as it can only “imitate or reproduce certain functions of human intelligence,” adding that “the unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as ‘intelligent’ as it may be, remains a machine.” 

The ethical regulation and orientation of AI for the common good has been a common theme of Francis’ pontificate in recent years. In a Feb. 20, 2023, audience with the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope urged the academy to study emerging technologies in order to “ensure that scientific and technological growth is reconciled more and more with a parallel development … in responsibility, values, and conscience.”

The Holy See is a vital diplomatic partner for Taipei as it is the only sovereign European entity that maintains diplomatic relations with the democratically governed island. 

Formal diplomatic relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the Holy See were officially established in 1942. However, following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the government of the Republic of China relocated to the island of Taiwan, which sits 110 miles off mainland China’s Southeastern coast. The Holy See, at present, does not maintain official diplomatic relations with the PRC.

Taiwan, or the Republic of China, currently maintains diplomatic relations with 12 states after the Pacific island nation of Narua severed relations on Jan. 15, two days after presidential elections in Taiwan, which saw the election of Lai Ching-te, the current vice president and staunch advocate for Taiwanese sovereignty.

[…]