How are so many conversions taking place in oppressive countries where proselytizing can bring a death sentence?

“We are in a time of the first ever mass conversions of Muslims,” Father Mitch Pacwa SJ told me in a phone interview. “God is doing a mighty work among them.”

Pacwa is a host for EWTN radio and TV, a frequent pilgrim guide to the Holy Land and is fluent in 13 languages including Arabic. He is considered as an expert on the Middle East and produced the DVD ‘Christianity & Islam: Are We at War? and co-authored, ‘Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics.’

Pacwa said he began hearing talk of conversions to Christianity around 2005 on Al Jazeera Television, the Arabic news satellite TV channel with 80 bureaus around the world. “They were reporting on the mass conversions of Muslims—as many as 6-8 million—in sub-Saharan, Africa, and they have repeated the warning every year,” he said. “I’ve confirmed it with Africans I know who have told me again and again about conversions in places like Nigeria, Uganda, Mali … that’s why Boko Haram has become so active. They are actually quite scared and trying to terrorize. But the very act of terrorizing people has ended up with people becoming more disgusted with Islam.”

Pacwa recalled hearing someone on African TV say: “Al-Qaida attacks Americans by blowing up our embassies but we Africans are the ones that die in the attacks.” He suspects that Islam is at the beginning of a collapse, likening increased terrorism to the supernova stage where stars burn brightest just before they burn out.

Pacwa gave recent examples of heinousness retribution for rejecting Islam. “Not long ago I read about a boy who was a slave that snuck out to pray on Good Friday and was crucified for it,” he said. “I also heard about two Filipino maids that were caught with the New Testament and beheaded.”

Americans caught practicing Christianity in Muslim countries are usually expelled. But according to Pacwa, it’s much different for citizens. “Fridays after the noon prayers is the day they cut off hands and heads from thieves, adulterers—women only—and people who commit blasphemy, and that would include converting to Christianity.”

Pope Francis has avoided any specific mention of Myanmar’s multiple conflicts, including the Rohingya refugee crisis, during his Nov. 28 public address set piece at the national capital Nay Pyi Taw.

Instead, the first trip ever to a country by any Pope, he chose to broadly address the importance of peace, tolerance, respect for religious differences and the duty of current generations toward the young, when he spoke to diplomats, politicians and civil society representatives at the national parliament.

“The arduous process of peace-building and national reconciliation can only advance through a commitment to justice and respect for human rights,” Pope Francis said. “Religious differences need not be a source of division and distrust, but rather a force for unity, forgiveness, tolerance and wise nation-building.”

“The future of Myanmar must be peace, a peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each member of society, respect for each ethnic group and its identity, respect for the rule of law, and respect for a democratic order that enables each individual and every group – none excluded – to offer its legitimate contribution to the common good.

“The future of Myanmar in a rapidly changing and interconnected world will depend on the training of its young, not only in technical fields, but above all in the ethical values of honesty, integrity and human solidarity that can ensure the consolidation of democracy and the growth of unity and peace at every level of society.”

Human rights groups expressed disappointment that the pontiff had remained silent about the Rohingya tragedy, which has seen 620,000 people flood into neighbouring Bangladesh with stories of murder, rape, pillage and property destruction by the Myanmar military.

But the pontiff had been begged by Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, the country’s only cardinal, as well as former UN chief Kofi Annan not to mention the group by their self–determined name of Rohingya, for fear of sparking sectarian violence.

Rohingya is a term that majority of Myanmar’s people now shun in favour of “Bengali” or as civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi says, “Rakhine Muslims” while referring to their home state and religion.

Francis met earlier in the morning for about 30 minutes with about 20 other religious leaders, including several Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus; and an Anglican, a Baptist, and a representative of the Jewish community.

Ukraine’s Catholic Church has welcomed a vote by MPs to make the 25 December Western Christmas a public holiday for the first time, in addition to the 7 January Orthodox Christmas.

“We’re very grateful to the parliament – it’s a great joy for our faithful, who often had to go to work or school and will now be able to celebrate Christmas in full,” said Abp Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki of Lviv, the Bishops Conference president. “It will also be a huge practical conveni-ence, since they were only able to go to church up to now in the evening. Since many families are mixed, it will strengthen community bonds.”

The archbishop was reacting to an overwhelming decision by the Kiev-based Verkhovna Rada to amend the Labour Code by adding 25 December to the list of public holidays.”

However, it was condemned by Ukraine’s largest Orthodox Church, which is linked to Russia’s Moscow Patriarchate, whose information director, Archbishop Irpen Kliment, said the “overwhelming majority” of citizens celebrated the 7 January Orthodox Christmas. “Christ was born once, not twice,” Arch-bishop Kliment said in a statement. “By trying to convert Christmas from a religious event into a farce, the Verkhovna Rada clearly doesn’t care much about the views of Ukrainians.”

The government and trade unions want workers to spend more time with their families

Polish MPs have approved a bill that will phase out Sunday shopping by 2020.

Initially proposed by trade unions, the idea received the support of the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party, who want to allow workers to spend more time with their families. The Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s parliament, passed the bill by 254 to 156 to restrict Sunday shopping to the first and last Sunday of the month until the end of 2018, only on the last Sunday in the month in 2019, and to ban it totally starting in 2020. It will still be permitted, however, on the Sundays before major holidays such as Christmas. Some bakeries and online shops will also be exempt.

The bill will now pass to the Senate, and then to President Andzrej Duda for approval.

In a statement, the Polish bishops’ conference said the bill did not go far enough, and that everyone should be free from work on Sundays.

It was supposed to be a day of rest – Tuesday 28 November – with the planned institutional meetings and the speech before the political authorities of the country. But Francis accelerated the times and this afternoon in the palace of the Archbishopric of Yangon he met with the Burmese military leaders.

Commander-in-chief of defence,  General Aung Hlaing paid a courtesy visit to his guest. He was accompanied by a small delegation of Lieutenants: Tun Tun Tun Naung, Than Tun Oo and Soe Hut, all serving at the Bureau of Special Opera-tions. Colonel Aung Zaw Lin, as transcriber, and a translator of the Burmese Catholic Church were also present.

Defence, Interior and border control, three key ministries of the Government of Myanmar are in the hands of the military.

At the end of what the Vatican authorities have called “courtesy visit,” there was an exchange of gifts: the Pope gave a pontificate medal and the general gave a Burmese harp in the shape of a boat and a decorated rice bowl.

An Italian missionary-priest is undertaking a 450-kilometer bicycle journey with two compa-nions from northern Bangladesh to meet Pope Francis in the country’s capital Dhaka. Father Almir Trindade, 38, from Ponti-fical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) set off on the “pilgrimage” from St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dinajpur district on Nov. 20.

The priest is now at Gazipur district near Dhaka with two Oraon indigenous Catholics — Ripon Albinus Lakra, 25 and Ranjon Minj, 18.

They intend to attend the papal Mass at Suhrawarday Udyan Park at Ramna, Dhaka on Dec. 1. They will also attend an interfaith youth gathering at Church-run Notre Dame College on Dec. 2.

“Our journey is a pilgrimage. We have decided to take this journey as the Pope is coming as a pilgrim to Bangladesh from thousands of miles away, so we could do the same from here,” Father Trindade told.

A Northern Irish priest has called for the Catholic Church to stop using the word “Christmas,” saying the holiday has been hijacked by commercialism, Santa and superficiality. “We’ve lost Christmas, just like we lost Easter, and should abandon the word completely,” Father Desmond O’Donnell, of a parish outside Enniskillen, told the Belfast Telegraph. “We need to let it go, it’s already been hijacked and we just need to recognize and accept that.”

O’Donnell said he had nothing against Christmas celebrations, but felt that they have become far removed from the true spiritual meaning of the holiday. “I am not seeking to take anything away from anyone, I am simply asking that space be preserved for believers for whom Christmas has nothing to do with Santa and Reindeer,” he said. “But non-believers deserve and need their celebration too, it’s an essential human dynamic and we all need that in the toughness of life.”

O’Donnell explained that “My religious experience of true Christmas, like so many others, is very deep and real — like the air I breathe.”

He added: “I’m all for Christians choosing to celebrate Christmas by going out for meals and enjoying a glass of wine, but the commercialization of anything is never good,” he said.

The Bishops of England and Wales have announced that the current translation of the Roman Missal will be retained for use, in spite of Pope Francis’ motu proprio restoring responsibility for liturgical translations to local churches.

Magnum Principium amends canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law, giving back to bishops the responsibility for liturgical translations that they lost after the Second Vatican Council. But the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said after their meeting in Leeds last week that they were “grateful” for guidance that they have received from the Congregation for Divine Wor-ship that the motu proprio “concerns future liturgical translations and cannot be applied retroactively.”

The bishops’ statement appears to put paid to hopes that the highly-praised 1998 trans-lation of the Roman Missal that had been approved by 11 confe-rences of English-speaking bishops might be authorised for use in England and Wales. This translation was ultimately rejected by Rome for being insufficiently true to the Latin original.

Archbishop of Southwark Peter Smith, vice-president of the bishops’ conference, said that the aim of Pope Francis from the start of his papacy has been to devolve power back to the bishops’ conferences.