Category: Asian

A Catholic Church building is part of a Chinese island’s inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list which is being seen by local Catholics as an opportunity for more people to learn about their faith. The former Catholic cathedral of Xiamen Diocese on Gulangyu Island of eastern Fujian province was included by the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee held in Krakow, Poland, on July 8.

The decision in recognizing the Christ the King Church as one of the 51 notable sites on the island comes as the church celebrates its 100th anniversary.

“The renovation of the church has almost come to an end,” Bishop Joseph Cai Bingrui of Xiamen told ucanews.com. “There is a tour guide service to introduce the church. It is a good chance to let more people feel the religious culture on the island,” said the bishop.

The church is located at the centre of the heritage area so “priests and laypeople in the church are very happy and excited,” said Joseph Chen, a full time worker of the church.
The Christ the King Church was built by Spanish Dominican Bishop Mamaunel Prat in 1917.

A Catholic family in Pakistan has fled their home fearing attack by local Islamists after their eldest son was arrested on blasphemy charges on July 13.

“We left the city same evening the clerics captured him,” Shfaaqt Masih told ucanews.com. “I switched off my phone fearing they will trace my family.”

Shfaaqt, whose name Masih is not a surname but identifies him as a Christian male, said that local police station will not tell them where 16-year-old Shahzad is currently being held.

“My relatives even visited the jail but he is not there. We don’t know what to do,” he said.

The father of four has been hiding since Shahzad was taken into custody for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed, a crime that carries a mandatory death sentence in Pakistan.

Shfaaqt, a builder, is liaising with his parish priest in the hope to somehow resolve the situation. “We are poor people and I am out of work now. The clerics did not listen to our please; they will kill my son,” he said.

Shahzad worked as a sweeper in a hospital of Dinga City, Punjab province, where a Muslim shopkeeper accused him of blasphemy. He was later taken to a madrassa by activists from the Islamist party Tehreek-e-Tuhafaz Islam Pakistan and was then arrested by the police.

More than 50 party activists later protested in front of the police station.

Dinga has a population of about 80,000 people of whom 150 are Christians who live in a Christian colony near the city’s railway station.

In response to the allegations, an X-marked photo of Shahzad is now being shared on social media captioned laanat (shame).

Raja Nadeem Ahmad, the main complainant of the blasphemy allegation, said Shahzad said abusive things about the Prophet Mohammed.

“We brought him to my shop and he repeated the same insulting remarks … he has hurt our feelings and tried to disrupt the peace in the area,” stated Ahmad in the first information report made with the police.

Ghazi Saqib Shakeel Jalali, from Tehreek-e-Tuhafaz Islam Pakistan said, “We will not forgive even if the court releases him. We are not cowards.”

The year was 1986. Sister Genevieve Ram Lal was being driven away from Lahore High Court when she noticed armed men in a car following her.

“We were fighting a case for abducted Christian brick makers in a nearby district. The Franciscan priest, sitting behind the steering wheel, knew the streets well and managed to lose the attackers.

We know they were brick kiln owners,” recalled the 59-year-old nun of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary congregation. “Fact-finding missions in brick kilns were always under the shadow of guns. The armed guards of kiln owners circle around as we collected interviews. The victims usually change the narrative by the time human rights workers reach them,” she said.

Presently, 58 nuns from her congregation serve in the fields of education, medicine and pastoral work. According to the latest Catholic directory, 29 women congregations are present in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Over the coming years, Sister Genevieve’s resolution as an activist only grew stronger as she became closely associated with the Protestant’s Young Women’s Christian Association and the Catholic Church’s human rights body, the National Commission for Justice and Peace. In 2012, she became the national director of the Catholic Women’s Organization(CWO) which observes its 10th anniversary in July.

Lay Catholics have joined dozens of priests in demanding Ruteng Diocese’s embattled bishop quit for allegedly misappropriating more than US$100,000 in church funds and having an affair with a woman.

In a July 1 statement signed by 30 people, they said “resignation” was the best course of action for Flores Island’s Bishop Hubertus Leteng as he had failed to perform his duties.

“The bishop is the shepherd, the representative of Christ, the spiritual leader, the model to live the Gospel value. Since his attitude and behaviour violate the nature and identity of a bishop, we urge him to resign from office,” they said.

If Bishop Leteng refuses to resign, they said, the Holy See must dismiss him.

“I think it would be a disaster if Archbishop Apuron were to return as the bishop of record,” said Coadjutor Archbishop Michael J. Byrnes, because of the extent of the loss of trust among the faithful and the “widespread disarray” left behind in church operations.

Byrnes, a former auxiliary bishop of Detroit, spoke to the press in Agana July 6, offering an update of the canonical investi-gation and trial of Apuron and his own personal thoughts about what would be best for the archdiocese moving forward.

The guidelines are expected to be ready in the next few months and implemented in Catholic schools when the next academic year begins. “What we are doing is in response to the current situation, where radicalism is so strong, including among teenagers,” Franciscan Father Vinsensius Darmin Mbula, chairman of the National Council of Catholic Education told ucanews.com on July 10. “To stem this, we believe one solution is through education,” he said.

Father Mbula referred to a 2015 survey in 171 schools in Jakarta and Bandung, West Java that revealed 9.5 percent of students supported violence committed by radical groups, including the so-called Islamic State group. An earlier survey by the Institute for Islamic and Peace Studies revealed that almost 50 percent of students supported radical ideas. He said advice would be sought from Islamic experts and thinkers from other religions.

An activist Catholic priest known for his human rights work and campaigns for social justice has been barred from leaving the country for “national security” reasons.

“Redemptorist Father John Nguyen Ngoc Nam Phong was stopped at Noi Bai Airport and prevented from travelling to Australia on a study trip as he was checking in on June 27,” a church source said.

In a post on Facebook, officials said Father Phong, from Thai Ha Parish in Hanoi, was prevented from travelling overseas “for the protection of national security, social order and safety.”

Catholic blogger John Baptist Nguyen Huu Vinh said on Facebook that Father Phong is well known for fighting for justice, truth and helping people who fall foul of the communist government.
“He struggles for religious freedom among people in northwest provinces and gives them opportunities to escape poverty,” he said.

The Dalits have decided to organize a secret meeting to pray to Jesus, to save them. Conversions and renunciations of the Hindu faith are occurring in the Surkhet district of western Nepal. The Dalits are marginalized because of their caste belonging. And they are tired of suffering serious discrimination and threats. Sanu Nepali, 21, was beaten by some senior caste members on July 5. They accused him of bathing in public drinking water, polluting it physically and above all “spiritually.” He ended up in the hospital. Two months ago, a nine-year-old Dalit boy, Bhim Bahadur, was brutally beaten with perhaps only because he dared to enter the kitchen of a family of a higher caste of his, in the village of Barahatal, in the same district. It is estimated that about 50,000 Dalits in Surkhet District, who were victims of serious discrimination, have decided to leave the Hindu faith and embrace the message of Christianity. The decision was taken in the meeting with a large number of representatives.

Lal Babu BK, one of the participants said, “We were more than 200. We have come together to convert to Christianity to save ourselves. We have all practised Hindu faith for generations since it was mandatory, but today the country is secularized and Hindu faith can not save us. Those who torment and who humiliate us are Hindus like us. By being named untouchables we are judged from the bottom down. We can not even touch lower caste people, can not enter their homes, we can not touch public drinking water and can not have access to public places. So what is this belief? Are we certain in this faith? We concluded ‘no’ and decided to convert to Christianity.” Jayasara, mother of Bhim Bahadur BK, said: “We made this decision from the moment we had no alternatives to save us.”

Rebel priests in Indonesia’s Ruteng Diocese have appealed to the Vatican to intervene and resolve a bitter dispute with their bishop, whom they accuse of misappro-priating more than US$100,000 in church funds.

Representatives of the priests, accompa-nied by a bishops’ conference official met Archbishop Antonio Guido Filipazzi, the outgoing apostolic nuncio in Indonesia on June 16 to call on the Vatican to help them achieve their demand that Bishop Hubertus Leteng heed their calls for a complete overhaul of how the diocese is run.

The move comes after dozens of priests in the diocese on Catholic-majority Flores Island quit their posts in protest against their bishop.

Father Alfonsius Segar, one of the priests who met the nuncio, told ucanews.com that Archbishop Filipazzi has promised to help resolve the dispute.

“He will immediately take this issue up with the Vatican,” Father Segar said.

Father Segar also said the nuncio will send someone to the diocese to appraise the situation. “We are looking forward to a swift Vatican decision on this,” Father Segar said.

A source close to Antonius Agus Sriyono, Indonesia’s Ambassador at the Vatican told ucanews.com that the Indonesian government was also raising the Ruteng dispute with the Vatican.

On June 12, 69 priests in Ruteng Diocese declared open revolt by quitting their posts as episcopal vicars and parish priests, and demanded Bishop Leteng completely change how the diocese is run.

Last year, Bishop Leteng was accused of secretly borrowing US$94,000 from the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference in Jakarta and US$30,000 from the diocese but failed to provide an accountability report. Accusing their bishop of embezzling funds and having an affair, 69 of the 167 priests in the Diocese of Ruteng, Indonesia, have resigned from their diocesan and parish posts.

The Vatican expressed “grave concern” today for a Chinese bishop who it says was “forcibly removed” from his office several weeks ago and whose whereabouts are unknown. The matter is the latest episode in a wider, decades old dispute between the Vatican and China’s communist authorities over papal authority to appoint bishops.

Shao was appointed by the Pope in September and posted to Wenzhou, an eastern city which has a large Christian community. A Vatican-affiliated missionary news service said Shao’s disappearance is believed to be part of an attempt to per-suade him to join the Communist-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association church. Chinese authorities don’t recog-nise Shao’s appointment by the Vatican. China has an estimated 12 million Catholics, many of whom worship in non-state sanctioned congre-gations that often overlap with the government-sanctioned church.