Vatican City, Nov 9, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis and the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Gewargis III have pledged ecumenical unity in support of persecuted Christians in the Middle East. In a joint statement released Nov. 9, the two leaders called the… […]
Bamenda, Cameroon, Nov 8, 2018 / 11:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Seventy-eight students and a driver kidnapped from a Christian school in Cameroon were released late Tuesday.
The students were recovered the evening of Nov. 6 at a building of the Presbyterian Church of Cameroon in Bafut, fewer than 15 miles north of Bamenda, whence they were taken.
The principal and a teacher of the Presbyterian Secondary School were also abducted Nov. 5, but were not released with the students and driver.
The Cameroonian government and Anglophone separats have accused each other of being behind the abduction; both have denied involvement.
Fonki Samuel, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, told BBC Focus on Africa that the students, aged 11-17, were “frightened and traumatised but in good shape.”
Samuel said the release “was done peacefully… by unidentified gunmen.”
It had earlier been reported that 79 students were taken, but Samuels said it was in fact 78.
The Nov. 5 kidnapping was the second such incident at Bamenda’s Presbyterian Secondary School in recent weeks. Another 11 students were abducted Oct. 31, and released for a $4,000 ransom.
Samuel suggested that “armed groups, gangsters and thieves” could be using the insecurity in Cameroon, blaming kidnappings on either the government or the separatists.
Separatists have set fire to more than 100 schools, taking them over as training grounds, the AP has reported. The groups protest the bias toward the French language over English in the educational system.
On. Oct 30, an American Baptist missionary was shot in the head amid the fighting in Bamenda.
“This tragedy occurred in the midst of the Anglophone crisis that affects the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon. Both the separatist fighters and government security forces have used violence against innocent civilians,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Robert Palladino said Oct. 31.
Earlier in October, a seminarian in Bamenda was shot by Cameroonian soldiers outside of a church following Mass.
Archbishop Cornelius Fontem Esua of Bamenda called the 19-year-old seminarian, Gerard Anjiangwe, a “martyr of the Anglophone crisis” in his funeral Mass Oct. 16. Anjiangwe died holding his rosary.
More than 160,000 people have been forced out of their homes by the conflict according to Caritas International.
The crisis in Cameroon is rooted in conflict between the English- and French-speaking areas of Cameroon.
The area was a German colony in the late 19th century, but the territory was divided into British and French mandates after the German Empire’s defeat in World War I. The mandates were united in an independent Cameroon in 1961.
There is now a separatist movement in the Southwest and Northwest Regions, which were formerly the British Southern Cameroons.
Unrest in Cameroon has been ongoing since 2016, when the country’s Anglophone community began protests to demand the return of federalism. These protests have gone so care as to call for secession from the current government, run by President Paul Biya.
Biya was sworn in to his seventh term Nov. 6. He has ruled Cameroon for 36 years. Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala has voiced concern that Biya’s election was marred by fraud.
Warri, Nigeria, Nov 7, 2018 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic priest and three other persons were kidnapped in Nigeria’s Delta state Tuesday night, according to local media.
Fr. Emmanuel Obadjere and his companions were taken hostage by unknown gunmen Nov. 6 while on their way to Ekpoma, in neighboring Edo state, Pulse reports.
Fr. Obadjere is a priest of the Diocese of Warri, whose website says he was ordained June 26, 2008. According to Pulse, he is pastor of St. William’s parish in Orerokpe, about 10 miles northeast of Warri. It is at least 100 miles from Orerokpe to Epkoma.
Delta Commissioner of Police Muhammad Mustafa told Pulse Wednesday that a suspect has been arrested.
Last month, five nuns were abducted in Delta.
At least six priests have been kidnapped in the state this year.
Violence against Christians has significantly increased in Nigeria in recent years, with the radical Islamist group Boko Haram threatening safety in the north, and smaller violent gangs threatening security in the south.
Jerusalem, Nov 7, 2018 / 03:07 am (CNA).- Pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a powerful journey that can ignite Christian faith through seeing the places Jesus walked, worked miracles, died and rose from the dead.
The Franciscans who have served in the re… […]
Jerusalem, Nov 6, 2018 / 01:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Top Catholic prelates in Israel are asking the government to repeal the recent Nation State Law, which they say paves a path for discrimination against non-Jewish citizens.
“Although the law ch… […]
Bamenda, Cameroon, Nov 6, 2018 / 11:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed separatists kidnapped 79 students from a Christian boarding school in Cameroon Monday.
The principal, a teacher, and one other staff member were taken hostage Nov. 5 with the students a… […]
Islamabad, Pakistan, Nov 5, 2018 / 03:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The husband of the Pakistani Catholic woman who was recently acquitted of blasphemy charges is asking several Western nations to provide asylum for his family, whom he says is in danger of d… […]
Washington D.C., Nov 3, 2018 / 07:01 am (CNA).- Despite recent disparaging Western commentary on high African birth rates, fertility rates on the continent are normal when viewed in the context of development, new data analysis from the Institute for Family Studies shows.
The analysis comes weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron commented at a Gates Foundation event in New York that educated women do not choose to have large families. “I always say: ‘Present me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight or nine children,’” he said.
While Macron clarified that he was speaking about the lack of educational opportunities in African countries, his comments struck a nerve with women in the United States and throughout the world. One professor at Catholic University of America started the hashtag #PostcardsforMacron on social media, with which educated women from different countries shared photos of their large families.
In a new analysis published this week, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, said that the fertility rate of most African countries is normal when other factors such as levels of development and child mortality rates are considered.
“What’s really going on here is quite simple: United Nations demographers have repeatedly messed up their forecasts of African fertility in more-or-less the same direction, and, rather than give a good explanation about why that is, the development community is responding by faulting Africans for having kids,” Stone wrote.
Each time the U.N. has forecasted Africa’s population for 2050, the numbers of their prediction have increased, causing some demographers to publish papers “bemoaning Africa’s curiously slow ‘demographic transition’ to near-replacement fertility,” Stone said.
For example, in 2008, the U.N. predicted that by 2050, the fertility rate in Africa would fall to about 2.5 children per woman, close to near-replacement rates, which range from about 2.1 to 2.3 children per woman.
But in 2017, the U.N. predicted that instead, the fertility rate in Africa by 2050 would be about 3.25 children per woman.
“This upward trend in forecast population stems from the fact that U.N. demographers have repeatedly overestimated how quickly Africa’s fertility would decline.”
But that doesn’t mean that Africa’s fertility rates are not declining overall, Stone noted. “You might think, then, that Africa’s fertility is rising! But actually, it isn’t! African fertility is falling!” he wrote.
Between 1965 and 2015, the fertility rate in Sub-Saharan African countries fell from almost 7 children per woman to slightly less than 5 children per woman. The decline has been slight, and slow, but steady – just not as dramatic as some Western groups had hoped, Stone noted.
“The entire scary story about African fertility really boils down to fractional differences in the rate of future fertility decline. In other words, Macron’s comments about ‘6 or 7 or 8’ kids are totally irrelevant,” he wrote.
“Africa’s ‘problem,’ as far as U.N. demographers are concerned, isn’t women having seven kids today; it’s women having three kids, 40 years from now when they ‘should’ have had just two.”
The complaint that the African population and fertility rates are high is not new, Stone noted – “it’s part and parcel of old-school racist colonialism. Colonial regimes often tried various inhuman measures to reduce population growth. It’s no surprise the successors to colonial regimes, do-gooder ‘family planning’ NGOs, are pushing the same concerns.”
One factor being ignored in the “fear-mongering” of those who say African fertility rates are too high is child mortality rates, which are typically good predictors of fertility rates, Stone said.
Typically, the more developed a country, the lower the child mortality rates and fertility rates are, he said. This is because as countries develop and people live longer, healthier lives, parents can reasonably expect that their children will live well into adulthood, driving down the need for many children in hopes that some will live into adulthood.
Furthermore, as people become more educated, they learn to manage their own fertility better, and have jobs “where brains are often more useful than brawn,” reducing the economic need for having more children.
When rates of child mortality are considered, the fertility rates in most African countries are normal, Stone wrote.
“Adding in control variables for urbanization or dependence on agriculture or natural resources doesn’t change the story: African fertility looks fairly normal for its level of development,” he said, when compared with similar countries in Asia, which have slightly lower fertility rates, and countries in Latin America which have higher fertility rates.
Africa is also a large and varied continent, and fertility rates vary significantly between its countries, Stone noted.
Furthermore, comparing fertility rates among developing countries also must take into account what kinds of family planning policies are being implemented in those countries, Stone said.
While Western groups like the Gates Foundation say that they want family planning policies in African countries to respect women’s freedom, at the same time they want the fertility rates in Africa to decline as dramatically as in countries such as China or India, which have implemented inhumane practices such as the “One Child” policy or forced sterilizations.
“In other words, Western donors need to get their story straight: do they want Africa to experience East-Asian style fertility declines, or do they want African countries to pursue democratically-compatible, rights-respecting population policies? You can’t have it both ways,” Stone noted.
In fact, Stone added, it is unclear why Western groups think they should get a say in African fertility rates at all.
“Western countries should have learned their lesson: it’s time to stop acting like African policy can be made from London or Paris or Seattle. Truth be told, Western organizations have no right, and no moral credibility, to step in and tell African women what they should or shouldn’t do with their bodies. We would be much better off looking for ways to solve our own fertility problems.”
Cairo, Egypt, Nov 2, 2018 / 11:30 am (CNA).- At least seven Coptic Christians were killed and 12 more injured in Egypt when a bus traveling to a desert monastery south of Cairo was ambushed by Islamic militants who opened fire, Egyptian authorities sai… […]
Islamabad, Pakistan, Oct 31, 2018 / 03:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Pakistan Supreme Court Wednesday overturned the death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Roman Catholic woman convicted of blasphemy in 2010, after reserving judgment on the verdict earlier this … […]
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