Asian

The mission to rectify illicit unions in Bangladesh

Twenty-two years ago, Swa-pan Das fell in love with Sabina Das but their Catholic parish in Bangladesh refused to solemnize their marriage. That was because the bride was only 14, and solemnizing her marriage would have been a vio-lation of Church laws and a cri-minal offense under national law. Both laws allow only women of […]

Korean Catholics honour human body donors

Catholics in the South Korean capital Seoul joined a memorial Mass at the Yongin Park Cemetery to pay tributes to 6,000 donors who donated their bodies for scientific purposes in the last 55 years. This annual commemoration takes place during the third week of November, a month dedicated to the departed souls in the Catholic […]

Caste culture’s rooted in amongst Bangladeshi Catholics too

Two years ago, Kanika Das was in a relationship with a boy from a rich Catholic family and they planned to get married. However, their dreams were left in tatters when the boy’s family opposed the plan saying Das belonged to a Dalit Catholic family. “When they [the boy’s family] found out my father is a cobbler and […]

Chaplains stay put in Myanmarese camps on the Thai side

Some 90,000 Myanmarese refugees live in nine camps on the Thai side of the border. At the height of displacement in the early 1990s, the camps held more than 130,000 refugees. People already in the camps have watched humanitarian groups come and go over the years, though in recent times aid workers have mostly moved […]

Blasphemy ‘wrath’ behind attack on Pakistan’s ex-PM

The never-ending nightmare of the blasphemy law in Pakistan has a new victim — former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was shot in the right leg on Nov. 3 in the eastern city of Wazirabad in Punjab province, where he was leading a protest march against the government. […]

From a few Catholics to a multitude in Bahrain

Before Bahrain established the Gulf’s first church in the 1930s, priests would visit from Iraq to perform services for a small Catholic community. Now, its ranks swollen by foreign workers, mostly from India and the Philippines, the community is preparing to wel-come the pope, the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics. Pope Francis’s visit […]

Sri Lankans rally to demand release of 2 protest leaders

Sri Lankan police blocked more than a thousand protesters who were attempting to march to the capital’s main railroad station on Wednesday to demand the release of two detained protest leaders and an end to a government crackdown on demonstrations against an economic crisis that has engulfed the island nation for months. The protesters, including […]

Nigeria bishop addresses the evils of Islamist extremism at interfaith summit

Before a gathering of religious leaders in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, a Catholic bishop from Nigeria gave an account of how his country had become a “cauldron of violence” at the hands of Islamist extremists. Addressing the G20 Religion Forum in Bali on Nov. 3 in advance of the Group of 20’s […]

Eviction-facing Indian Catholics to fight Muslim charity’s claims

Goans oppose tourism project near 16th century basilica