Father Chris Riley dies at 70: Australian priest founded youth homeless ministry

Islamabad, Pakistan, Jul 27, 2018 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Imran Khan has emerged as the victor in a general election held in Pakistan Wednesday, July 25. The professional cricket player-turned-politician has previously voiced support for the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.

While votes are still being tallied in some areas, Khan’s centrist Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) have won 115 seats so far, becoming the largest party in the National Assembly.

Khan, who ran as a populist reforming candidate, has publicly supported laws imposing strict penalties for blasphemy against Islam – including desecrating a Quran or insulting Mohammed. Penalties for insulting Islam’s chief prophet include fines, prison, and even the death penalty.

While no one has been formally executed for the crime in Pakistan, mob violence and killings have accompanied public accusations of blasphemy. This includes the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, the Muslim governor of the Punjab province and a critic of the blasphemy laws, and Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic and Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet member. Bhatti’s cause for beatification was opened by the Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi in 2016.

In his 2011 autobiography, Khan spoke out against a lack of government action against religious leaders who used the issue of blasphemy “arguably [to] incite murder.”

Coming just weeks before the election, his public backing for the controversial laws was seen by many observers as a concession to hardliners in the country ahead of the vote.

Parties running on an explicitly anti-blasphemy platform did poorly at the polls, with Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, which campaigns under the rallying cry “Death to Blasphemers” failing to win a single seat, despite a garnering a large following in the province of Punjab.

As CNA has previous reported, accusations of blasphemy are disproportionately leveled against religious minorities, and the laws are seen as a vehicle for religious intolerance or persecution.  While Pakistan is 97 percent Muslim, 14 percent of blasphemy cases are brought against non-Muslims.

Cardinal Joseph Coutts, Archbishop of Karachi, has spoken about the religious climate in Pakistan, which he says is getting more dangerous for Christians. In an interview with CNA in June, he raised the risks increasing posed by radicalization and foreign influences.

While saying that the majority of Pakistani Muslims are moderate and support democracy, he noted that some extremists do not.

“[They] don’t accept democracy, they don’t accept the international declaration of human rights, they say it’s not Islamic.”

While saying that Islamic hard-liners are a small minority, Coutts cautioned that they are now becoming a more prominent force in the life of the country.

“We’ve always had these kinds of people on the fringes, but they weren’t dominant,” he added. “Now they are becoming more assertive.”

While he will need to form a coalition to formally take power, Khan is widely expected to become Prime Minister. He has pledged to create 10 million new jobs in five years and promised in his acceptance speech to prioritize the rule of law and end institutional discrimination.

“We will not do any kind of political victimizing. We will establish the supremacy of the law; whoever violates the law, we will act against them.

“We will set an example of how the law is the same for everyone. If the West is ahead of us today, it is because their laws are not discriminatory; this will be our biggest guiding principle.”

Although pledging to end corruption, the victory comes with allegations of vote-rigging. Every party apart from Khan’s Movement for Justice have complained about the way the vote was conducted. European Union observers characterized the campaign as having a “lack of equality” among the parties.

Despite this, the second largest party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), has accepted the result. Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, a senior party official said that despite “reservations” over the way the election was held, they were accepting the result to “strengthen democracy in the country”.

“Even if democracy is flawed,” he said, “its solution is more democracy, and then more democracy.”

If Khan becomes Prime Minister, it will be only the second democratic transition of power in Pakistan’s history.

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Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Nov 6, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Police in Papua New Guinea are moving sick refugees and migrants out of the capital city in preparation for a major economic conference, drawing ongoing criticism from the country’s Catholic leaders.

The refugees and migrants are being sent back to Manus Island off the northern coast of the country, where asylum seekers trying to reach Australia are being housed in poor conditions.

The Australian government has sent hundreds of asylum seekers to the island for processing since 2012, and around 70 men had been taken to Port Moresby, the capital, for medical treatment.

As many as 10 of the men being moved had not finished their treatment, but were told they would return in a month to complete it, Guardian Australia reported. One man reportedly attempted suicide after he was told he would be sent back to Manus Island without treatment.

Authorities are justifying the move by saying that the city’s hospital is needed for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference delegates and conference employees who may need medical treatment. APEC is scheduled to begin meetings in Port Moresby Nov. 12.

The Papua New Guinea Bishop’s Conference recently called for all the refugees and asylum seekers to be brought to Australia by Dec. 25, saying that their country cannot continue to provide adequate care.

“We are deeply concerned that the human rights of the refugees and asylum seekers have been breached as they were forcibly sent to [Papua New Guinea]; and Australia’s policies has caused us reputational damage,” a panel convened by the bishops wrote Nov. 1.

“We, the participants are speaking on behalf of the women and children on Manus who are the victims of Australia’s policies. The men have suffered enough from prolonged detention. Enough is enough. The time has come to let them go.”

About 650 migrant and refugee men are currently living on Manus Island, according to The Guardian. Conditions are bad, according to Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian journalist, who said the men are suffering widely from mental and physical illness. The conditions at the camps have been condemned by Church leaders and human rights groups.

Australia has had a system of “third country processing” since 2012 for asylum seekers who come to Australia by boat without a valid visa. The system transfers the asylum seekers to other countries, where they are processed based on that country’s laws.

Many of those seeking asylum in Australia come from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Iran, travelling by boat from Indonesia. They are typically intercepted by the Australian navy before reaching land, and are then sent to detention camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, a small Micronesian nation.

The government of Australia made an agreement with the government of Papua New Guinea in 2013, providing that migrants sent to Papua New Guinea from Australia would be settled there if they are found to be refugees. Otherwise they would be sent back to their country of origin or another country where they have legal residence.

Papua New Guinea is facing a medication shortage, an outbreak of polio, increased rates of tuberculosis, and funding crises in health and education, according to The Guardian.

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Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney at a Vatican press conference Oct. 5, 2018. / Daniel Ibanez

Sydney, Australia, Sep 9, 2021 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
The Fifth Plenary Council of the Church in Australia is scheduled to take place Oct. 3-10, in Adelai… […]