Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoti, a Catholic missionary abducted in the west African country of Mali, describes her five-year-captivity as “spiritually transformative” and a blessing in her life.
The Colombian nun was abducted in February 2017 in Southern Mali by what was later discovered to be a jihadi group.
She narrated her experience in the Foreword of the 2023 edition of the Religious Freedom in the World Report, which Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) published on June 22.
“Undoubtedly, it was one of the most spiritually transformative experiences of my life. Today, looking back, even though it sounds paradoxical, it was perhaps one of the greatest blessings that God has given me,” Sister Gloria said in the report on Christian persecution, which painted a grim picture of Africa.
She said that writing the Foreword of the report was an opportunity to speak out against religious intolerance and Christian persecution.
“I am aware of the importance of speaking about this fundamental right – religious liberty – to ensure that it is protected, especially within a polarized society where attempts are made to sweep under the carpet the abuses committed against the freedom to profess religious beliefs,” Sister Gloria said.
The member of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate added that her mission in Mali and her experience with jihadists in the West African country had taught her the importance of love and respect regardless of one’s religious affiliation.
She narrated having shared her captivity with two women: a Muslim and a Protestant, and added, “I learned that if we love, accept and respect one another, we can live as brothers and sisters.”
Accepting one another, she clarified, does not mean giving up one’s beliefs, “for true respect, is about listening, welcoming, and acknowledging everyone for who they are.”
Daily Archives: July 13, 2023
Workshop highlights platform-based taxi drivers’ problems
A workshop in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad has asserted the rights and well-being of taxi drivers employed in various platforms
The July 10 workshop, held at the Montfort Social Institute and organized in collaboration with the Bengaluru-based National Law School of India University, addressed various challenges faced by these drivers.
Brother Varghese, director of Montfort Social Institute, described platform work as a new and complex phenomenon for modern civilization. He emphasized the unprecedented situation where employees are uncertain about their employers, the source of their income, and whom to approach in case of issues. He stressed the need to identify and fight for the rights of platform workers, both from the platforms as well as from the government.
Babu Matthew, a speaker at the workshop, emphasized that platforms often employ eloquent language to shift the liability of assets onto the workers. This practice places an immense burden on the drivers, subjecting them to physical, mental, and economic strain.
The workshop was attended by 20 workers representing well-known companies such as Ola, Zomato, Uber, Rapido, and Swiggy. “Their presence lent authenticity to the discussions as they courageously shared their daily struggles and voiced their concerns,” Brother Theckanath said.
Catholic leaders say ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Christians unfolding in Indian state
Prayers and protest marches by India’s small but socially influential Catholic community were staged across the country July 2 in response to ongoing violence against Christians in the country’s northeastern state of Manipur.
Called by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the protests highlighted that more than 100 people, largely Christians, have been killed so far in Manipur, with the carnage unfolding just ahead of the August anniversary of an anti-Christian pogrom in 2008 in the state of Orissa.
The conflict pits the largely Hindu Meitei ethnic group against the mostly Protestant Christian Kuki people, each of which represents roughly forty percent of the state’s population of four million, but the Meitei enjoy the support of regional and national political forces dominated by the Hindu nationalist BJP party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since the violence began on May 3, estimates are that some 50,000 displaced persons are now living in 300 refugee camps, though with larger numbers expelled from their homes and villages who haven’t moved to any formal settlements. Over 5,000 structures, including churches and private Christian homes, have been burned, and some local observers claim that as many as 120 people have died.
Drastic increase in anti-Christian violence in India: Christian Forum
Christian community in India has suffered as many as 400 incidents of violence in the first half 2023, says the United Christian Forum, an ecumenical group.
A press statement from the forum titled, “Atrocities against Christians in India increasing drastically year on year,” says the incidents have occurred in 23 of India’s 28 states.
A forum official told Matters India July 11 that they have not included the northeastern Indian state of Manipur where ethnic violence allegedly targeting Christians has raged since May 3.
During the same period last year, the forum recorded 274 such incidents against Christians in India. January topped last year’s chart with 121 incidents (almost 4 incidents a day), followed by 40 in May, 31 in February, 29 in April, 28 in March and 25 in June.
However, the Indian government disputes the figures as wrong data used to sully the image of the country abroad.
On April 13, the government said this while responding to a public interest litigation filed by Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore Reverend Vijayesh Lal of Evangelical Fellowship of India, and others who claimed violence against Christians in the country.
Archbishop Machado and others in their petition had told a bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud that from 2021 to May 2022, 700 cases of violence against Christians were reported and a majority of those arrested were followers of the faith.
Manipur Interfaith Forum for Peace and Harmony holds rally
Manipur’s Interfaith Forum for Peace and Harmony (IFPH) has organized rally appealing for an end to the ongoing violence and for initiating dialogue between the two warring ethnic groups.
Some 500 people belonging to diverse religious and faith traditions, ethnic and spiritual communities participated in the July 11 rally at Palace compound in Imphal, capital of the northeastern Indian state where clashes between Meitei and Kuki groups began on May 3.
Five Members of Parliament from Kerala and Tamil Nadu also joined the rally to express their solidarity with the interfaith initiatives.
Addressing the media in the campus of Bal Vidya Mandir, convener, IFPH Deben Bachaspatimayum said, “People of all age and sex who participated in the rally are concerned citizens of India who also represented the core values of humanity across diverse religious, faiths and spiritual communities in the state.”
Stating the purpose of the rally, he said, “We collectively mourned deaths caused by violence; extended prayers of healing for victims; expressed solidarity with the displaced; and extended solidarity with women and citizen groups calling for ceasefire and dialogue.”
Members of the forum comprised of All Manipur Buddhists Association, All Manipur Christian Organisation, Art of Living, Bhakti Seva Lub/Ekta Parishad, Brahmakumaris, Catholic archdiocese of Imphal, Divine Life Society, Federation of Madrasahs, International Society of Gaudiya Vaishnavas, International Society of Krishna Consciousness, Jain Samaj, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Lainingthou Sanamahi Temple Board, Mahatma Seva Ashram, Manipur Baptist Convention, Meitei Christian Church Council, Manipur Cultural Integration Conference, Naga Christian Forum, Rongmei Naga Baptist Association, and Tinkao Ragwang Chapriak, Phom.
At ‘Church City,’ a taste of Catholic life in Qatar
Hymns echo through the spacious, blue-walled church. The congregants listen to the Gospel and the homily. They kneel, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer or palms turned skyward. They line up to receive Communion as a choir belts out: “Lord, for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.”
In many ways, the service at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Rosary feels like a standard Sunday Mass. But at this church in Qatar, the small Gulf emirate hosting the World Cup, there are some tweaks.
The church sits in a “religious complex” housing other Christian denominations. Its building looks non-descript from the outside, with no crosses on its exterior. Sunday Mass is celebrated also on Fridays and Saturdays, the weekend days in the conservative Muslim country.
From Masses to baptisms, weddings and confessions, the church provides a window into the religious life of Catholic expatriates in Qatar. Mass is offered in multiple languages, including English, Arabic, Konkani, Tagalog and Sinhala, to cater to Catholics from India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and other countries. While Qatar is unusually full of visitors now for the World Cup, migrant workers already make up the majority of the country’s population of about 3 million.
Bangladesh’s long road to lay empowerment
The 300-bed Divine Mercy Hospital near Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka will become the biggest Christian-run healthcare facility in the Muslim-majority nation when it opens in November this year.
The hospital, being built at a cost of 3 billion taka (US$ 28 million), is the signature project of Christian Cooperative Credit Union Limited (CCCUL) and has about 50,000 Catholic and Protestant members with total assets of 12 billion taka (US$ 110 million).
Founded on July 3, 1955 by American Holy Cross missionary, Father Charles J. Young, this lay-run organization is the largest non-banking financial organization in Bangladesh aiming to promote the socio-economic welfare of people, including the minority Christian community.
Young allowed clergy to be advisers of the union but ensured that decision-making powers rested with laypeople, which became the key to its success, says Nirmol Rozario, 62, the union’s former president and a lay Catholic.
Rozario, currently the president of the Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA), the country’s largest lay-run Christian forum, however, says the Church hierarchy lags behind in promoting lay people like Young did more than seven decades ago.
A democratic mind-set “does not exist in the hierarchy and its structure,” Rozario told UCA News.
Lay involvement is limited to membership in parish councils and diocesan advisory committees. And, most lay members of parish councils are selected based on “loyalty to clergy and the decision-making powers rests with the parish priest,” Rozario said.
“Clergymen should not consider themselves as super humans and look down upon laypeople,” he said, adding that priests should join hands with the laity for the common good of the Church “without egoism,” he said.
Lefebvre priests’ push spreads Malaysian Church confusion
In a busy commercial hub outside Kuala Lumpur, above a row of shops, sits the chapel where Elizabeth attends Sunday Mass. But the 27-year-old Catholic, who would identify only as Elizabeth, is discreet about her newfound love for the traditional Latin language Mass.
She is not alone. Some 120 Catholics gather regularly for Sunday Mass in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus celebrated by a priest of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).
They follow the 1962 edition of the Tridentine Mass and liturgical forms used prior to the Second Vatican Council, spreading confusion among the laity about the validity of the SSPX’s ministry.
“We are attracted to it because it nourishes our faith. Many young Catholics struggle with the watering down of the faith in many parishes,” Elizabeth said.
The Mass she attends is in Latin, which probably not many in her congregation understand. But they follow a book where the English translation is given to help them understand.
Elizabeth and others who prefer to attend the Tridentine Mass, which was abrogated in 2021, know that they are part of a schism started by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
But Elizabeth has her own reasons to reject her parish under Kuala Lumpur archdiocese.
Christians flee fresh violence in Myanmar’s Kachin state
More than a thousand people, most of them Catholics and Baptists, have fled their village in Myanmar’s northern Kachin state after fresh fighting erupted between the military forces and ethnic Kachin rebels.Those who fled belong to some 160 families from Nan San Yang village, located barely 20 km from Laiza town, which is the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) close to the China border. The fighting began on July 3 and those who fled have taken refuge in the Catholic Church compound at Wai Mai town. Gam Aung, who led the villagers from Nan San Yang, said more villagers were likely to flee as reports of violence continued to pour in on July 6.
“We escaped with only a few clothes, leaving behind our homes and livestock. Hope we might be able to return to our village in a week or two,” Aung told UCA News on July 7.
Amid the uncertainty, those who fled the village were worried about how long the church groups and local authorities will continue to feed them.
“We will certainly need food, medicines and arrangements for school children for a longer term,” Aung said.
Father Vincent Shan Lum, the parish priest of Nam San Yang village, said he fled with the villagers on July 3 and they may need to stay in the church compound for weeks amid the tense situation.
Christian widow raped and killed in Lahore for refusing to convert
Shazia Imran, a Christian woman, was kidnapped, raped and killed by four Muslim men because she refused to convert to Islam and marry a man who had set his eyes on her.
Mani Gujjar is the main suspect in the death of the 40-year-old Christian widow. After failing to get her to do what he wanted, he and others gang-raped her and, after killing her, tried to destroy her body with acid.
Shazia worked at a day-care centre at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) where she first met the man who now stands accused of her death.
On 6 June, when she did not return from work, her family searched for the mother of three – two boys, Salman (16) and Abrar (6), and one daughter, Aliza (7) – without success.
The next day, they went to the police to file a report, concerned because Shazia and her family were convinced that her husband was beaten to death 18 months earlier, not by “thugs”, as the police asserted, but by the same people who killed Shazia.
Physical attacks and rape have been used countless times as coercive methods of conversion, above all, against women from religious minorities in Pakistan.
Shazia’s case, her rape and murder for refusing to convert, have sparked a new wave of fear but also anger and protests among the country’s Catholic minority.
Her relatives say that she had told her sister-in-law about Mani Gujjar’s harassment and attempts to get her to convert and marry him.
So far police have arrested only one of the four suspects, Mani Gujjar himself; his brother and two cousins, who allegedly participated in the crime, are still at large.
Joseph Jansen, president of Voice of Justice, said he was concerned about the incident, and urged the authorities to take strong action against the perpetrators.
For Jansen, whose NGO provides legal counsel through Pakistan’s first digital legal portal, the persecution of religious minorities needs to be curbed as soon as possible.