Pope Francis on May 31 appointed Father Joseph Thykkattil of the Arch-diocese of Agra as the bishop of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
Father Thykattil is currently the parish priest of St Peter’s Church in Rajasthan State’s Bharatpur.
This was announced at noon in Rome, corresponding to 3:30 pm in India, according to a press release from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India headquarters in New Delhi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans visited St Anthony’s Church, venue of the first bomb blast site in Colombo, during his official visit to the island nation on June 9. The Indian premier’s Sri Lanka visit was announced by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on May 31, a day after he attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi.
Modi will go to Sri Lanka after completing a trip to the Maldives, the Sri Lankan president told reporters.
“Prime Minister Modi’s visit is very important to us. We are neighbours and friends… We are eagerly awaiting his arrival,” Sirisena told a news conference on May 31 after his meeting with the Indian premier at Hyderabad House.
Sirisena also said that his country is eagerly waiting to welcome the Indian leader.
Earlier, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement that Modi warmly thanked Sirisena for his gesture of attending the ceremony and for his good wishes. “He conveyed his government’s continued commitment to further foster friendly bilateral ties with Sri Lanka,” it added.
Modi’s Sri Lanka visit would highlight that for India “neighborhood first policy” is paramount.
Sirisena also said that the visit will further strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries, particularly in areas of trade and commerce. India is currently cooperating with Colombo in the investigations being carried out on the Easter Sunday terrorist attack bombers and ISIS presence. New Delhi has also sent a team from its National Investigation Agency to Colombo to further assist them with the investigations and their findings.
Modi is expected to visit Maldives on June 7-8 which will be his first bilateral visit after becoming the Prime Minister for a second term. However there is no official statement regarding the matter.
The funeral of a Chinese underground bishop was held under strict government control and underground priests were only allowed to attend part of it.
Bishop Stephen Li Side of Tianjin died at the age of 92 on June 8 after suffering a stroke in mid-May and being admitted to a hospital in Ji County.
Underground Coadjutor Bishop Shi Hongzhen, who will eventually succeed Bishop Li, was not allowed to attend his funeral on June 10. A source said Bishop Shi had been under 24-hour surveillance by local authorities who had restricted his movement.
State-sanctioned Tianjin Catholic Patriotic Association was put in charge of the funeral. When underground priests asked officials to allow Bishop Shi to hold the ceremony, the request was rejected because Bishop Li and Bishop Shi were not recognized by the government.
However, underground priests were allowed to organize a requiem Mass held by senior underground priest Father Yang Wanyuan at a funeral home, but laypeople and the taking of photographs were banned.
Thirty years ago, China’s Communist Party regime revealed, yet again, its true character when it turned its guns on the people and sent in its tanks to crush peaceful pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.
The People’s Liberation Army turned out to be neither on the side of the people nor for liberation as it slaughtered thou-sands who were simply seeking freedom. “We didn’t commit any crimes,” says Bob Fu, an exiled dissident and president of China Aid, who had joined the protests but left the square three days before the massacre. “We were just holding a peaceful protest.”
Three decades later, China, under President Xi Jinping, is undergoing the worst crackdown on human rights since the Tiananmen massacre. Hopes that China would gradually liberalize politically as it opened up economically have been dashed.
And the crackdown is on every form of freedom, from expression to religious belief, and in every corner of China’s territory, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong, and has taken on an unprecedented extraterritorial aggression, resulting in critics abroad being harassed, intimidated, threatened and, in the worst cases, kidnapped.
Furthermore, the Chinese regime has done everything possible to bury the truth of what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
A Pakistani high court is to hear the appeal of a Christian couple who have been on death row since 2014 for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, their lawyers confirmed.
Lawyer Saiful Malook, who successfully defended Catholic Woman Asia Bibi and had her blasphemy conviction overturned in the Supreme Court, will also contest the charges against the couple in Lahore High Court.
Disabled Shafqat Emmanuel and his wife Shagufta Kausar were arrested in 2013 and sentenced to hang in Toba Tek Singh town of Punjab province in addition to a fine of 200,000 rupees (US $ 2,000) after being accused of sending text messages insulting the prophet. Sentencing went ahead despite it transpiring that a SIM card presented as evidence by police was bogus.
The case was filed by Mohammed Hussain, a prayer leader in Gojra who alleged that the couple had sent religiously offensive text messages to him and other Muslims.
The couple pleaded their innocence, maintaining they were illiterate and could not write the text messages that were written in English. They also said that the SIM card used to send the alleged messages was bought using Kausar’s stolen identity card.
Sri Lanka’s government will introduce laws to curb hate speech and false news that threaten ethnic reconciliation and national security, in the aftermath of Easter bombings that killed more than 250 people.
According to a government statement, the Cabinet decided to amend the penal code to include the penalty of five years in prison and $5,670 fine for those found guilty of distributing false news.
The ministers, at their weekly meeting on June 4, also decided to take legal action against hate speech. A penalty will be announced later, after Parliament approves amendments to the penal code.
Tensions have been running high in the Buddhist-majority Indian Ocean island nation since seven suicide bombers struck two Catholic and one Protestant church and three luxury hotels on April 21.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were carried out by a local radicalized Muslim group known as National Thowheed Jammath.
In the wake of the attacks, dozens of shops and homes belonging to minority Muslims have been burned. Muslims have been harassed in public places and subjected to hate comments.
Mob attacks on the community have killed at least one. Police have arrested several dozen suspects, whose court cases are pending.
Catholic priests have filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka targeting the government for failing to act on warnings that could potentially have prevented the Easter Sunday bombings by Islamic extremists.
The priests have accused 13 public officials, including Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, of dereliction of duty and violating fundamental human rights, including Catholics’ right to freely practice their religion.
A local group of radicals affiliated with the so-called Islamic State (IS) bombed three churches and three luxury hotels on April 21, killing 253 people and injuring more than 500.
Pope Francis has met with Brazil’s indigenous chief Raoni, who is on a European tour to raise awareness about the dangers facing the Amazon. The pope’s meeting with one of the great leaders of the Kayapo people living in the Amazonian forest in Brazil, took place at the Vatican on May 27.
“Through this meeting, Pope Francis reaffirms his attention to the Amazonian peoples and environment and his commitment to the preservation of the common home,” the Holy See explained in a statement.
The Vatican also said that the meeting was part of the preparation of the next Synod of Bishops’ special assembly on Amazonia to be held next October in the Vatican.
The working document, which will serve as a basis for the debates of this assembly, is scheduled to be published in June, Cardinal Pedro Barreto of Huancayo (Peru) and member of the pre-synodal council, announced a few days ago.
A conference in Taiwan has been told that China’s communist government is increasingly using so-called ‘sharp power’ to stymie international scrutiny of its poor human rights record, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.
At the same time, the Beijing regime has been tightening controls on its own people, warned academics, student leaders and rights’ campaigners.
The term ‘sharp power’ was coined in December 2017 in a report of the United States non-profit National Endowment for Democracy to describe censor-ship and other tactics used to weaken independent institutions.
Wikipedia defines sharp power as the use of manipulative diplomatic policies by one country to influence and under-mine the political system of a target nation.
The May 18-20 conference in Taiwan marking the 30th anniversary of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre was organized by the Hong Kong-based New School for Democracy and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
More than 50 scholars, student leaders and witnesses of the Tiananmen Square protest, as well as representatives of overseas support groups and Hong Kong democratic parties, were present as speakers and discussants.
A Chinese charity called Huiling that supports people with mental disabilities paid tribute this month to Jean Vanier, the Canadian Catholic who inspired its creation, after he died in France on May 7 at the age of 90.
Huiling founder Meng Weinuo, a Chinese Catholic, said Vanier had recently been beset by health problems.
“He’d been in and out of hospital several times this year,” she said. “We knew it was just a matter of time before he returned to his heavenly home.”
The charity enjoys support from the Catholic Church. Meng set it up in the southern port city of Guangzhou in 1990 with Father Cagnin Fernando, a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME).
Huiling gained a reputation as the first NGO to serve mentally disabled people in China during the 1980s. It now has 20 service points nationwide.
Meng said she was inspired by L’Arche, an international private voluntary organization that works for the creation of growth of homes, programs, and support networks for people with intellectual disabilities.
Vanier, a Catholic who was born in Canada but later migrated to France, founded L’Arche in 1964. He was also a co-founder in 1971 of Faith and Light, a similar organization.
Meng got to meet Varnier in France in May 2013 when she and Father Fernando visited a L’Arche community there.
“Huiling has always admired L’Arche. We really want to be a sister organization with you,” she recalled telling the elderly Canadian.
Varnier welcomed the move but said he had stepped down from running the organization. He referred her to the head of L’Arche International.
Six months later, the two agencies signed a partnership deal. L’Arche agreed to provide training and spiritual support to Huiling.
