The vicar-general of the Prelature of Marawi and several other Catholic hostages taken by militants inspired by the so-called Islamic State (IS) are still alive after more than three months of fighting in the southern Philippine City.

At a press conference announcing the retaking of St Mary’s Cathedral, Major General Carlito Galvez, commander of government forces in Marawi, denied social media reports that terrorist gunmen may have spirited Father Teresito Soganub out of the city. The military presented gold-plated religious items including chalices and crucifix recovered by troops from the cathedral, which rebels abandoned on Aug. 25. Some of the items were damaged when the terrorists stormed the church on May 23, the first day of the conflict.

Marilyn Suganob-Ginni-van, a younger sister of the priest, said the family was glad to hear the information. “We are continuously praying for his safety and the other hostages. May God spare them [from death],” she told ucanews.com in a text message. “In two or three weeks’ time,” Galvez said the military expects the city to return to normal, as the battle zone has narrowed to just “400 to 600 square meters.” Captain Jo-ann Petinglay, spokesperson of Joint Task Force Marawi, said the cathedral needs repairing after many bullets struck the building. “It’s not totally wrecked. There was damage to the walls [from bullets],” she added. Earlier, IS-linked websites released a video showing fighters toppling over statues and desecrating icons before trying to set fire to the cathedral.

The Nepalese president is expected to approve a bill that will outlaw any attempt to convert someone to a different faith, alongside the “hurting of religious sentiment.”

The country’s parliament passed the law, which will effectively ban evangelisation, on 8th August as fears grow of a crackdown on religious minorities, especially the country’s small Catholic population. Anyone convicted under the new law, including foreign visitors, could face up to 5 years in prison for seeking to convert a person or “undermine the religion, faith or belief that any caste, ethnic group or community has been observing since sanatan [eternal] times.

Anyone who “hurts religious sentiment” also faces up to two years in prison and 2,000 rupee fine. Although the bill does not mention any religious group specifically, it is similar to Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which is frequently abused to harass minorities, particularly Christians. Nepal is over 80% Hindu, with Christians making up barely one per cent of the population.

International free speech group the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF) says that in 2016 eight Christians were arrested in Nepal after sharing a comic book on Jesus with children. Since the overthrow of the monarchy in 2008, Nepal’s republican regime has become increasingly authoritarian. The country’s government has been dominated by Moaists and Leninists who have struggled to establish a stable government.

A new constitution, finally approved in 2015, already forbids any attempt to convert a person from one religion to another, but no law to that effect has been formally enacted until now.
Tehmina Arora, legal counsel and director of ADF India, said: “International law and the human rights treaties the country has signed protect religious minorities. They explicitly allow conversion, missionary work, and public worship. Nepal risks returning to a totalitarian society in which individual rights are being severely curbed.”

North Korea’s underground Christian community is thriving despite followers of Christ suffering horrific torture and brutal deaths at the hands of the communist government, according to Fox News.

According to Open Doors, a Christian persecution watchdog site, North Korea has ranked No. 1 as the deadliest place for Christians for the last 16 years. Yet, North Korea still has an estimated Christian population of around 9 million people, or 36 percent of North Korea’s total population.

The Korea Risk Group told Fox News that North Korea’s Constitution maintains a non-discriminatory policy concerning the practice of religion, but this is just a facade to please visiting foreigners. Foreign diplomats and tourists are wheeled past state-run churches and mosques for various faiths. Each of these churches has the appropriately dressed clergy worshiping at the appropriate alters with congregations of people passing around collection plates.

According to the Korea Risk Group, this is a show performed by hand-picked state workers. The reality is that Christianity is seen as dangerous to the state, according to Fox News. Those caught practicing it face the harshest penalties.

A Catholic priest convinced an armed and allegedly “drug-crazed” former choir member to surrender peacefully after he barged into a convent in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on Ag.23, police said.

Father Roniedon Val-moria, parish priest of San Isidro Labrador parish in Naawan town in Misamis Oriental province, emerg-ed safe after almost four hours of negotiations between police and the suspect, Lavernton Rogedas. The priest said Rogedas used to sing in the parish choir.

“He barged into the convent with a gun. I was not taken as hostage,” the priest said in a radio interview. “He was just there to seek safety from the policemen who were running after him.”
Father Valmoria said he pray-ed for the suspect and convinced him to surrender peacefully.

Senior Supt. Rolando Destura, Misamis Oriental police director, said Rogedas was carrying a .45 caliber handgun and was high on drugs.

Rogedas had gone to the Naawan police station to clear a relative who was implicated in illegal drugs. Police said they noticed a gun tucked into his waistband and asked for it.

Rogedas resisted, briefly brandished the gun and then ran to the convent, which is near the police station, Destura said.

Fatalism, including acce-ptance of harmful traditions, exacerbates poverty in Nepal.

However, a lack of spiritual awareness and fatalism are also impedi-ments to progress among educated, well-to-do families.

Karma, the idea that a person’s fate results from their deeds in a past life, can constitute an escapist mentality.

Fatalism, that can be reflected in traditional plays and folk songs dealing with day-to-day struggles and sorrows, needs to also be subject to intellectual reflection. Nepalese society is still trapped by cultural malpractices and superstitions.

There has been a huge gap between Nepal and developed nations in terms of social development. Notwithstanding the sharing of some modern technologies, including social media, Nepal’s lack of sequential development has widened a generation gap.

For example, children in the 1990s still played with clay and stone. How-ever, the newest genera-tion jumped to smart-phones. More positive aspects of Nepalese socio-cultural and religious values have been degraded and confused. Spiri-tuality and social education have been usurped by militancy and street vandalism in support of political demands.

Leading Catholic human rights advocates in Pakistan are calling for authorities to take action after a Christian prisoner died in jail due to a lack of proper medical attention.

Dominican Father James Channan, the Director of Peace Centre Lahore, told Crux the death of Indrias Masih was the “result of negligence” by the authorities in the jail.

Masih was one of 42 people arrested as suspects in the lynching of two Muslims in the aftermath of a March 15, 2015, terrorist bombing of Christ Church, a Catholic church in Lahore’s predominantly Christian Youhanabad neighbourhood.

The two Muslims were suspected by a mob of having been involved in the attack, a charge their families and the authorities deny.

Christian leaders in the city say Masih himself was innocent of being involved in the revenge attack.

He died on August 13 of gastrointestinal tuberculosis. Channan called his death “sad and shocking.”

The National Commission for Justice and Peace, an office of the Pakistani bishops’ conference, said the family and community are demanding the government treat this incident as a murder case.
“His untimely death was a result of negligence on the part of jail authorities, poor prison conditions, consumption of unclean water and food. His deteriorating health was continuously neglected by the jail authorities. According to the family, Indrias was a healthy person and never had any major ailments before his arrest,” the NCJP said in a statement.

Bishop Joseph Arshad, the Chairperson of the NCJP, said police sensitivity should be made a priority, adding the police are often inconsiderate towards the sick and needy.

The government of Pakistan will accord a state funeral to Sister Ruth Katharina Martha Pfau, a German-born member of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary who devoted her life to eradicating leprosy in Pakistan. Sister Ruth, dubbed the Mother Teresa of Pakistan, died on 10 August in Karachi. She was 87.

“Sister Ruth was a model of total dedication. She inspired and mobilised all sections of society to join the fight against leprosy, irrespective of creed or ethnic identity,” Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, president of Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, told Catholic News Service on 11 August. “We are happy that the government is according her a state funeral on 19 August,” the archbishop said, noting it would be at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Karachi.

Pope Francis will focus on trying to improve the troubles of about a million ethnic Muslim Rohingyas when he visits Myanmar, in the first ever papal visit to the country.

The visit is due to take place in the last week of November after the Pope was personally invited by President Htin Kyaw. News of his visit has leaked out of the Vatican but is not expected to be officially announced until next month.

The visit has already drawn the ire of hard-line Buddhist groups who have fanned sectarian violence and protest, especially against the Rohingya and other Muslims, over the past five years.

“No, no, don’t come,” “don’t visit if you come to Myanmar for Bengalis,” and “we oppose the visit if he used the word Rohingya,” several Buddhists posted on their Facebook pages.

Bishop Raymond Sumlut Gam of Banmaw in Kachin State said a visit by Pope Francis to Myanmar is most likely, although he said he had not officially been informed.

“The Catholic bishops invited Pope Francis before the 500th anniversary of Catholicism in Myanmar in late 2014,” Bishop Gam told ucanews.com.

“Some improvements have occurred such as diplomatic relations between Myanmar and Vatican plus the appointment of an apostolic nuncio,” he said.

The Pope’s relatively last minute program change will see the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics cancel a planned trip to India after prevarication by that nation’s strongly pro-Hindu government. The proposed visit to Myanmar will precede the Pope visiting neighboring Bangladesh.

Senior Catholic sources told ucanews.com that Pope Francis will arrive in Myanmar on November 27 for four nights.

There are about 700,000 Catholics in Myanmar, served by 16 bishops, more than 700 priests and 2,200 religious.

More than 170,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia — many on risky boats — in the last five years according to the United Nations.

While Pope Francis will not visit Rakhine State, he will fly over it on the way to Bangladesh, church sources said, and probably use that time to make some sort of statement. It’s a tactic the Argentine pontiff, the first ever from outside Europe has used before.

Sister Mary Vu Thi Ngoc, head of the climate change group that was established in 2010, visits a farm in Huong Thuy District on July 20. (ucanews.com photo)

Seven years ago, Truong Thi Hat cultivated cassava on a 3,000 square-meter farm that yielded poor harvests due to drought, floods, and termites at Quang Tho village in central Vietnam. She also had to trade in second-hand clothes to earn extra money while her husband worked at construction sites.

Hat’s seven-member family lived in a 12-square-meter ramshackle house, was often short of food and owed six million dong (US$265) to a bank. “At that time we did not know what to do to improve our lives,” Hat said.

Then came a big change in fortunes. The family, in despe-ration, attended a workshop on selecting crops to cope better with climate change.

The workshop was conducted by the Catholic Group for Climate Change Prevention run by sisters in Hue city. Hat, a Buddhist, said nuns offered her 3 million dong to farm various vegetables and to raise poultry and pigs.

She was taught how to make natural fertilizers from dry leaves and straw as well as from manure of poultry and pigs. Now she daily sells carrots, cabbage, okra, cauliflower, green beans and other vegetables to shops in Hue City. She also raises 100 chickens and a dozen pigs.