Auckland, New Zealand, Jul 24, 2019 / 11:03 am (CNA).- Last fall, amid swirling headlines about synods and still-emerging sex abuse scandals, an odd account popped up in the newsfeeds of “Catholic Twitter.”
This account, calling itself &ld… […]
Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jul 23, 2019 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- One of the churches in Sri Lanka damaged in attacks on Easter was re-consecrated Sunday. During the ceremony, the Archbishop of Colombo criticized the government’s investigation of the attacks.
St. Sebastian’s parish in Negombo, nearly 25 miles north of Colombo, was re-consecrated July 21 by Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith.
The church was one of several targeted in bombings across Sri Lanka April 21. The attacks killed more than 250, and wounded another 500.
During his homily, the cardinal encouraged Catholics and Muslims to work together to stem the spread of terrorism. He also challenged Sri Lankan officials to reconsider their political agenda, charging that there has been a failure in the investigation of the attacks.
“The executive and the legislature were locked in a power struggle. They did not care about the international conspiracy against the country,” Ranjith stated.
He said that “the selfish power hungry leaders did not worry about ordinary people… The leaders did not heed intelligence warnings… the security council did not meet since October because of the power struggle.”
Ranjith said that “the current leaders have failed. They have no backbone. They must leave the government and go home.”
“I have no faith in any of these committees and commissions of inquiry. These are election gimmicks. The leadership must allow someone else to run the country.”
He expressed fear the investigation “will be brushed under the carpet,” and complained that the government “had been informed about the attacks more than three times” by Indian officials.
At the re-consecration a monument inscribed with the names of 114 victims killed in the attack was unveiled.
The Sri Lankan navy helped to rebuild St. Sebastian’s.
The government has blamed the attacks on the jiihadist group National Thowheeth Jama’ath, whom the police say was responsible for the attacks. The Islamic State has also claimed responsibility, saying the local jihadists had pledged loyalty to the group.
Jolo, Philippines, Jul 23, 2019 / 06:58 pm (CNA).- Despite the fresh memory of a deadly terrorist attack in January, the rededication Mass of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo, an island in the Philippines, was packed with Catholics, an aid worker said.
“Security was really tight – police and soldiers locked down an entire block of the city…Yet the cathedral was packed. The dedication was attended by hundreds. It was inspiring to see the families of the victims and the survivors of the blasts there,” Jonathan Luciano, national director of the Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in the Philippines, said in a report from the group.
The cathedral rededication was celebrated by Archbishop Gabrielle Caccia, Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, along with Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, Archbishop Emeritus of Cotabato, which, like Jola, is a Muslim-majority area in the country.
On January 27 of this year, two bombs exploded during Sunday Mass at the cathedral, killing at least 20 people and injuring at least 111 others. The Philippines bishops’ conference condemned the attack as an “act of terrorism.” ISIS, which has ties to the local Muslim insurgent group Abu Sayyaf, claimed responsibility for the attack. Attacks by Abu Sayyaf against Catholics in the region are not uncommon.
Jolo is a part of a group of islands called Mindanao. According to the New York Times, the attack happened just days after a referendum was held in Mindanao to establish a “Muslim autonomous region” in the area, an attempt at creating peace that was ratified by voters everywhere except in Jolo.
At the rededication Mass, Cardinal Orlando “described how inspiring the people of Jolo were because of their faith and resilience despite constant persecution,” Luciano said.
“At the end of the Mass, Archbishop Caccia assured people that the Church of Christ and the Christian community [are] with them…They are not forgotten or neglected. This is not only manifested with financial assistance, but through the solidarity of prayer all over the world,” he added. In the ACN report, Luciano said that ACN was the first aid group to offer the cathedral their assistance after the bombings, which included financial assistance for the “costly repairs.”
He said the goal of their response was to “rebuild the Christian community first then rebuild the actual church.”
The Governor of Jolo, Benjamin Loong, a Muslim, also spoke at the rededication ceremony. Luciano said he “spoke of the partnership between Christians and Muslims. With this rebuilding and this re-consecration, dialogue can restart.”
Luciano said he hopes that ACN’s mission partners and benefactors will be interested in helping persecuted Christians in the Philippines after hearing about what happened in Jolo.
“We have to reinforce the relationship between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “We can live harmoniously together.”
Xinjiang, China, Jul 22, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Chinese government officials denied mistreating the country’s ethnic Uighur population and said there is “no evidence” that the country is hostile to the minority group’s religion… […]
Patna, India, Jul 19, 2019 / 10:44 am (CNA).- Catholic Relief Services is working with local partners to provide aid amid severe flooding and landslides in parts of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, the group said Thursday.
“The most immediate need … […]
Manila, Philippines, Jul 12, 2019 / 06:22 pm (CNA).- The UN Human Rights Council has approved a resolution to launch an investigation into the violent war on drugs taking place in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Approved Thursday by a… […]
Canberra, Australia, Jul 10, 2019 / 01:19 pm (CNA).- The religious discrimination bill proposed by Australia’s coalition government is being well received generally, though some conservative members of parliament have asked instead for a religious freedom bill.
The religious discrimination bill would make it unlawful to discriminate against people on the ground of their religious belief or activity; establish a religious freedom commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission; and amend existing laws regarding religious freedom, including marriage and charities law, and objects clauses in anti-discrimination law.
The government wants to make religious belief and activity a protected class, like race or sex. It also hopes to ensure that groups rejecting same-sex marriage are not stripped of their charitable status.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said July 9 that “of course we will do what we need to do from a legislative point of view,” but “what all that boils down to is the culture in this country. It’s not the laws that make freedom of religion work, it’s the culture that accepts it.”
Morrison’s coalition government is led by the Liberal Party, which is joined by the National Party. The opposition Australian Labor Party is expected to back the bill.
Coalition MPs were briefed on the bill by attorney-general Christian Porter July 5.
Afterwards, Porter told Guardian Australia that “a bill like this would provide a very powerful avenue for someone who believed that a general rule in their employment especially disadvantaged them because of their religion, to argue that that rule was contrary to the act and unfair.”
He said the bill “provides an avenue for people who think a rule in their employment has unfairly disadvantaged them or led to their termination unfairly because of their religion, provides an avenue for complaint and potentially redress in those circumstances, and so it goes a long way to protect people from being discriminated against in the context of their employment.”
Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, of the Liberal Party, voiced concerns July 9 that the bill does not go far enough, saying it “would be defensive in nature and limited to protecting against acts and practices by others which are discriminatory on the grounds of religion.”
She said that “quiet Australians now expect the Coalition to legislate to protect their religious freedom.”
Porter made a case for the superiority of a religious discrimination bill over a religious freedom bill.
“As soon as you say, ‘Here is a bill that says everyone has a right to freedom of speech, everyone has got a right to freedom of association, to freedom of religion’ they all start competing with each other, and eventually you get the circumstance that you have got in America where the highest court in the land decides what is more important: the right to free choice or the right to life, and then the decisions around how the boundaries on really, really sensitive public policy decisions are made get made by courts,” the attorney-general stated.
Senator Pauline Hanson, of the One Nation Party, expressed concern on Facebook July 9 that “the government may be creating a pathway for extremists to practice polygamy, genital mutilation, or even under-aged marriage.”
One Nation, an Australian nationalist party, is a crossbench party with two seats in the country’s 76-member Senate. It does not have a member in the House of Representatives.
“Many people, including myself, are concerned about the rights of Australians who practice a legitimate religious faith,” Hanson said. “But what do we do when a belief clashes with the laws and customs of our land?”
The religious discrimination bill is being introduced to implement a commitment made in the 2019 federal election.
A review of religious freedom in Australia was finished in May 2018, making 20 recommendations; among these was a Religious Discrimination Bill.
The government has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to report on how to balance competing claims of religious freedom rights and LGBT rights.
Australia has seen debate over religious freedom in recent years with respect to the seal of the confessional, hiring decisions, and same-sex marriage.
When same-sex marriage was legalized in Australia in 2017, efforts to include amendments that would protect religious freedom failed during parliamentary debate.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney noted last year that “we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia,” and that “powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections.”
Jakarta, Indonesia, Jul 9, 2019 / 12:05 am (CNA).- A mentally ill woman who identified herself as a Catholic is being held for blasphemy in Indonesia after an incident last week in which she brought a dog to a mosque and did not remove her shoes inside.
The woman, who has a schizophrenia diagnosis, was arrested on July 2 for blaspheming Islam, which is a criminal offense in the Muslim-majority country. It is punishable by up to five years in prison.
The incident for which the 52 year-old woman was arrested was caught on video and shared widely within the country. It shows the “visibly distressed” woman arguing with mosque members while her dog runs around, according to the Associated Press.
The woman had come to the mosque thinking that she was breaking up the wedding of her husband to another woman, according to reports from The Australian. Authorities charged her with blasphemy for failing to remove her shoes inside the mosque, and for bringing her dog, which is considered a ritually impure animal in the Islamic religion.
The woman is only being identified by SM, her initials. According to The Australian, her relatives have sent medical records to officials to prove that the woman is mentally ill and did not intentionally blaspheme the Islamic faith.
The woman was held at Jakarta’s Police Hospital, which confirmed that she had schizophrenia and recommended that she instead be transferred to a psychiatric facility.
Despite her mental illness, police have said that the blasphemy charges stand until a court decides otherwise. International human rights groups have long opposed blasphemy laws such as those in Indonesia. They argue that they are used primarily to manipulate and persecute Christians and other religious minorities.
Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority nation in population in the world. While 87% of the population are Muslim, 10% are Christian, and 2% are Hindu. Discrimination and attacks on religious minorities in the country are not uncommon.
In April, Indonesia’s Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a Buddhist woman of Chinese descent who was convicted of blasphemy for complaining about the volume of a local mosque’s call to worship. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Her complaint is thought to have sparked a riot against Chinese-Indonesians, during which multiple Buddhist temples were burned or ransacked.
Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian and the former governor of Jakarta, completed a two-year sentence in January 2019 on a conviction of insulting the Quran.
Yunahar Ilyas, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), a prominent body of political Islam, said that the woman’s actions should “not be considered as blasphemy” because of her schizophrenia, but he did not directly call for a drop of the charges against her, The Australian reported.
Amnesty International condemned SM’s recent arrest, calling it “inappropriate” given her history of mental illness.
“This latest, unfortunate and absurd case is further proof that blasphemy laws should be repealed. Police must immediately release the woman and drop the charges against her,” said Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty Indonesia, The Australian reported.
Canberra, Australia, Jul 6, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Australia’s coalition government has proposed the introduction of legislation that would make it unlawful to discriminate against people on the ground of their religious belief or activity.
The proposal is being made to implement a commitment made in the 2019 federal election.
The legislation would also establish a religious freedom commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Moreover, it would amend existing laws regarding religious freedom, including marriage and charities law, and objects clauses in anti-discrimination law.
It would be made clear that religious groups cannot be required to make their property available for same-sex marriage celebrations.
The office of prime minister Scott Morrison said in December that “Australia is a place where discrimination on the basis of a person’s identity – including their religious identity – is unacceptable.”
“It is also a place where we respect the right of religious institutions to maintain their distinctive religious ethos. Our laws should reflect these values.”
The government wants to make religious belief and activity a protected class, like race or sex. It also hopes to ensure that groups rejecting same-sex marriage are not stripped of their charitable status.
A review of religious freedom in Australia was finished in May 2018, making 20 recommendations; among these was a Religious Discrimination Bill.
The government has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to report on how to balance competing claims of religious freedom rights and LGBT rights.
Australia has seen debate over religious freedom in recent years with respect to the seal of the confessional, hiring decisions, and same-sex marriage.
When same-sex marriage was legalized in Australia in 2017, efforts to include amendments that would protect religious freedom failed during parliamentary debate.
Morrison’s coalition government is led by the Liberal Party, which is joined by the National Party.
The opposition is the Australian Labor Party.
Labor senator Kristina Keneally told the ABC July 3 that “we are willing to have discussions with the government and work with the government on a religious discrimination and freedom act.”
Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney noted last year that “we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia,” and that “powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections.”
Beijing, China, Jul 3, 2019 / 06:09 pm (CNA).- As the Communist Party of China continues to tighten its grip on the regulation of religion and religious activity, a human rights group is reporting that officials are disrupting religious rites and cerem… […]
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