Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, Myanmar, has defended his country’s leader in the face of global criticism over the alleged ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority. Cardinal Bo said Aung San Suu Kyi, state counsellor, still represented the best hope that Myanmar would emerge from a military dictatorship into a democracy.

He suggested that she did not have the power to stop the expulsion of the primarily Muslim Rohingya from the Buddhist-majority nation.

“As we know, her role has come under scorching criticism,” he said in a message to the 24th World Congress of the Apost-leship of the Sea, which took place in Taiwan 2-6 October.

“Her status is not official under the constitution,” he said, adding, “As long as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi continues, we have hope. She is a strong woman with strong principles.

“Despite the piercing criticisms of the international community, Myan-mar depends on her for many compassionate responses,” he said.

“Our perception is that she is trying to stabilize the fragile democracy,” the cardinal continued. “Democracy is hard won and it took 60 years to reach where the country is.”

Excerpts of the cardinal’s message were released on 6 October by the United Kingdom branch of Aid to the Church in Need.

Defending the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Cardinal Bo said: “The army, like the Thai army, has no patience with democracy and grabbed power from democracy thrice already in Myanmar.

“I think Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has an agenda to pull the country from the grips of the army which controls 25 percent of the parliamentary – and also the important – ministries.

Exasperated after violent interrogations and round-the-clock intimidation at the hands of the Vietnamese government, Y-Man Eban escaped into the forests of eastern Cambodia on July 7, 2015.

“The reason I ran away from my country was that the Vietnamese police interrogated me four or five times and put me in jail for a week. They beat me a lot,” Eban, 30, a Montagnard Christian, said from Dak Lak province.

Asked why he was arrested, Eban said it was because he sought “the freedom and independence for Dega people.”

Eban was one of more than 300 Montagnard Christians, the indigenous peoples of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, also known as Dega, who started fleeing into Cambodia three years ago. They there told of oppression at the hands of the Hanoi government.

The latest exodus is the first in about a decade when thousands fled amid crackdowns on protests in 2001 and 2004.  Persecuted for decades due to reasons such as their support for America in the Vietnam War and their faith, there have been widespread accusations of human rights abuses and land grabs in the rolling hills of the Montagnards’ homeland. “Since I came back to Vietnam, the authorities have viewed me as a criminal,” Eban said.

China will convene its 19th Party Congress on Oct. 18, a key meeting held every five years where President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a second term as the ruling Communist Party’s top leader.

For China’s religious minorities, to say that it has been a difficult year would be an understatement. The government is quickly transforming the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into a police state while new laws now mostly restrict the Tibetan region from access to the world outside of China.

But following the 19th Party Congress beginning this month — where Chinese President Xi Jinping will reshuffle his government, selecting the core leadership on the Politburo — human rights monitors fear that, given the current trajectory of the Chinese government, the situation for the country’s religious minorities may become even more tumultuous.

A delegation of Catholic Bishops from Australia has gathered in the Vatican to discuss “restoration of trust” as the country’s most senior Catholic faces allegations of sexual abuse.

The Vatican disclosed the meeting in a statement released on October 7th. The delegation included Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisban, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, and Justice Neville Owen of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

That council is coordinating the church’s response to an Australian government inquiry into child sex abuse in various institutions.

The bishops’ delegation discussed “the relationship between the church and society at large, the restoration of trust, and greater participation of the laity in decision-making roles in the church,” the statement said.

Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s economy minister, attended a pre-trial court hearing in Melbourne on October 6th over allegations of historical sex offenses.

No details of the allegations have been made public. Cardinal Pell faces a committal hearing in March which will determine whether the case goes to trial.

Police officers in the Philippines wishing to expose the full extent of the government’s anti-drug killing spree have approached the Church for protection, according to the outgoing president of the country’s bishops’ conference.

“Law enforcers have come forward confidentially to us, their spiritual leaders, to seek sanctuary, succor and protection,” said Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan.

“They have expressed their desire to come out in the open about their participation in extrajudicial killings and summary executions.”