Al-Fashir, Sudan, Nov 15, 2018 / 09:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of 13 Christian converts in Darfur, Sudan was arrested and tortured last month for their faith, World Watch Monitor and several Christian aid groups have reported.
The Christians were reportedly taken from a home in southwest Darfur on October 13 and detained and beaten. Some were released shortly after their arrest, while the rest were released on October 21.
According to the Barnabas Fund, an aid group that supports persecuted Christians, those who were arrested had converted from Islam to Christianity, and were being punished for apostasy and pressured to convert back to Islam.
Sharia law remains the dominating system of law in Sudan. While 2005 amendments to the country’s constitution removed some references to Sharia, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir in 2011 vowed a stricter adherence to Sharia law.
Tajadin Idris Yousef, the pastor of the group, who was also arrested, was then made to appear before a court on October 28 for refusing to recant his faith while in police custody.
According to World Watch Monitor, he faces apostasy charges and must report to local authorities every three days. Nine of the men arrested recanted their Christian faith. They were forced to pay fines, and were ultimately charged with “disturbing the peace.”
Sudan ranks fourth on Open Doors’ 2018 World Watch List of most difficult places for Christians to live, after North Korea, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
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The 2024 Synod of the Chaldean Church in Baghdad, Iraq. / Credit: Chaldean Patriarchate
Baghdad, Iraq, Jul 25, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
The bishops of the Chaldean Synod on July 16 issued a statement declaring their position on the blessing of sa… […]
Pope Francis greets the crowd in Bahrain’s national soccer stadium before offering Mass on Nov. 5, 2022. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Nov 5, 2022 / 05:00 am (CNA).
About 30,000 people crowded into a soccer stadium on Saturday morning to attend the first public papal Mass in the Kingdom of Bahrain, a Muslim-majority island country in the Persian Gulf.
In the crowd was Julius Rhe, who traveled with his wife and son from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where restrictions prohibit the celebration of Catholic Masses in public.
“We are very honored to be part of this very, very memorable event. . . . We are very blessed,” Rhe told EWTN on Nov. 5.
The Rhe family traveled from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to attend Mass with the pope in Bahrain. Alexey Gotovsky/EWTN
The Rhe family practices the Catholic faith at home and has attended a private Mass in an apartment while living in Saudi Arabia.
According to Bahrain’s Daily Tribune, around 2,900 of the registered attendees at the stadium Mass with Pope Francis came from neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Reuters reported that foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia were bussed in for the Mass over the King Fahd Causeway that connects the two countries.
Many of the Gulf region’s foreign workers come from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries.
Pope Francis receives the gifts during Mass in Bahrain on Nov. 5, 2022. Vatican Media
Catholic foreign workers living in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates also traveled for the Mass.
Pope Francis arrived to cheers at Bahrain’s national soccer stadium as he greeted the enthusiastic crowd from the popemobile.
In his homily, the pope repeated the words of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Pope Francis said that Jesus “suffers when he sees in our own day and in many parts of the world, ways of exercising power that feed on oppression and violence, seeking to expand their own space by restricting that of others, imposing their own domination and restricting basic freedoms, and in this way oppressing the weak.”
In the face of the oppression and enmity that exist today, the Gospel calls Christians to “love everyone, even our enemies,” the pope said.
A family waits for Pope Francis’ arrival in Bahrain’s National Stadium on Nov. 5, 2022. Alexey Gotovsky/EWTN
Christians make a small minority in Bahrain. While it is more than 70% of Bahrain’s total population of 1.5 million is Muslim, there are about 161,000 Catholics living in the country, according to 2020 Vatican statistics. The country is home to two Catholic churches and 20 Catholic priests.
Pope Francis described Bahrain as “a living image of coexistence in diversity” and “an image of our world, increasingly marked by the constant migration of peoples and by a pluralism of ideas, customs and traditions.”
He added: “It is important, then, to embrace Jesus’ challenge: ‘If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?’”
At the end of the Mass, Bishop Paul Hinder, the apostolic administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia thanked Pope Francis for showing “pastoral care for a tiny Church in a tiny country.”
The bishop said: “Like your patron Saint Francis of Assisi, you are not afraid to build bridges with the Muslim world and to show your fraternal closeness to all people of goodwill regardless of their cultural background and religious belief.”
“We Christians in the Middle East—those of ancient Oriental tradition and those who as migrants temporarily live in this part of the world—try to implement the invitation of Saint Francis to his brothers to ‘live spiritually among the Muslims … not to engage in arguments and [simply] to acknowledge that [we] are Christians.’”
Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to the Catholics who had traveled from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region to attend the Mass. He said: “I bring today the affection and closeness of the universal Church, which looks to you and embraces you, which loves you and encourages you.”
“May the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Arabia, accompany you on your journey and preserve you constantly in love towards all.”
Asmara, Eritrea, Sep 17, 2019 / 01:45 pm (CNA).- Seven religious schools in Eritrea, four of them sponsored by the Catholic Church, have been seized by the country’s government this month. Catholic bishops in the country say the move was motivated by “hatred against the faith.”
“If this is not hatred against the faith and against religion what else can it be?” Eritrea’s bishops asked in a Sept. 4 letter addressed to the Minister of Public Education, Semere Re’esom.
The seven schools seized by the government include three run Protestant and Muslim groups, according to Comboni Catholic missionaries serving in the area. The schools have been nationalized, and will reportedly now be run by the country’s education ministry.
The Eritrean government has also seized Church-run health facilities.
“The actions that are being taken against our educational and health institutions are contrary to the rights and to the legitimate freedom of the Church,” the bishops wrote in their Sept. 4 letter.
The bishops also suggested that the government raise to them any objections to the way in which Catholic schools and hospitals are administered in Eritrea.
“If there are situations that need to be corrected or adjusted, not only is it good, but even the only viable way, in order for this to take place in a context of an open and constructive dialogue,” the bishops wrote.
Eritrea is a one-party state whose human rights record has frequently been deplored.
It is believed the seizures are retaliatory, after the Church in April called for reforms to reduce emigration.
The bishops had also called for national reconciliation.
Government seizure of Church property is not new, however.
A 1995 decree restricting social and welfare projects to the state has been used intermittently since then to seize or close ecclesial services.
In July 2018, an Eritrean Catholic priest helping immigrants and refugees in Italy told EWTN that authorities had recently shut down eight free Catholic-run medical clinics. He said authorities claimed the clinics were unnecessary because of the presence of state clinics.
Christian and Muslim schools have also been closed under the 1995 decree, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2019 annual report.
Eritrea has been designated a Country of Particular Concern since 2004 for its religious freedom abuses by the US Department of State.
Many Eritreans, especially youth, emigrate, due to a military conscription, and a lack of opportunities, freedom, education, and health care.
A July 2018 peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which ended a conflict over their mutual border, led to an open border which has allowed for easier emigration.
Catholics make up 4 percent of Eritrea’s population.
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