A Redemptorist priest who works to console old soldiers in southern Vietnam has been ba-nned from flying to the United States for social safety.
On Oct. 24, Redemptorist Father Joseph Truong Hoang Vu was stopped by public security officers at Tan Son Nhat Inter-national Airport in Ho Chi Minh City while he was due to take a flight to Manila, the Philippines, and then to the US.
In a report issued by the airport’s public security unit, Senior Lieutenant Colonel Doan Van Dac said the 45-year-old priest was not allowed to leave the country for “reasons of social order and safety specified in Article 36 of the 2019 Immigra-tion Law.” The article presents those whose leaving for foreign countries is considered to affect national defence and security by government authorities.
Father Vu, who serves at Can Gio parish in the city, was asked to contact the Public Security Department in Ho Chi Minh City to deal with his complaints.
However, the priest, who was accompanied by two other Re-demptorists, reportedly returned home without filing a complaint about the ban.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered a government probe into the Unifi-cation Church on October 17, after the assa-ssination of former premier Shinzo Abe re-newed scrutiny of the sect.
The church has been in the spotlight because the man accused of killing Abe was reportedly motivated by resentment against the group, which has been accused of pre-ssuring adherents to make hefty donations and blamed for child neglect among mem-bers.
Officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the organi-zation was founded in Korea by Sun Myung Moon and its members are sometimes called “Moonies.”
The church has denied wrongdoing, but a parade of former members have gone public with criticism of its practices, and revelations about its links with top politicians have help-ed tank Kishida’s approval ratings.
Kishida told parliament on Monday that there were “many victims” of the church and its related groups who had found them-selves in poverty or facing family breakdown.
“Efforts to help them are still insuffi-cient,” he said, so “the government will ex-ercise its right to probe the church, based on the Religious Corporations Act.”
The government also wants to implement other measures, such as strengthening “ini-tiatives to prevent child abuse and help the offspring of religious followers with their education and employment,” Kishida said.

The colourful posters advertising the annual Marian pilgrimage are plastered across Tera village in Pakistan, but they come with an unusual prohibition.
“Photographing or videotaping on mobile phones is prohibited. We are all obliged to respect the holy venue. The incoming guests for pilgrimage are requested to observe the SOPs [standard operating procedures],” state notices said.
The prohibition on mobile phones aims to keep people away from distractions. It also wants to avoid photos of young women being recklessly circulated on social media in the Muslim-majority country where young Catholic women are frequently kidnapped, and forcefully converted to marry Muslims.
The coronation of a Marian statue by young girls is the main attraction of Marian fests, such as the one on October 1 at Saint Mother Teresa Church Tera village in Punjab province.
Hundreds of parishes across Pakistan hold such coronations during October, the month dedicated to Mary and the rosary in the Church calendar.
Preteen Catholics, dressed as brides, walk gracefully towards the grotto or stage holding a gold or silver crown and place it on the Marian statue amid applause and cheers.
These girls, referred to as queens, are usually chosen from a rosary group or Sunday school through a lucky draw. Two children, dressed as angels, help them in holding the crown tray.
Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan dioceses of Punjab province, home to more than 2 million Christians, have set an age limit for these queens following the arrival of the internet and mobile phones in the 1990s.
“The annual practice is aimed at keeping the crowd at bay from the young girls”
Conservative churchgoers label the phone as a smoking gun in the hands of young men in the Islamic Republic where parents keep young people on a tight leash.
As popular dating apps such as Tinder are banned in Pakistan, young people use social media for such purposes.
According to Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, the restrictions vary in different dioceses. There is no such barrier in the southern region where there are fewer Christians.

A multimillion-dollar graft scandal involving high-ranking leaders in conflict-torn Papua has drawn a public backlash and further impoverished people traumatized by decades of violence.
Indonesia’s anti-graft agency confirmed last month a corruption scandal involving Papua’s top man — Governor Lukas Enembe. He allegedly embezzled around US$36 million of state funds aimed to advance people’s welfare. He allegedly spent the money on casinos overseas and his businesses. If the money had been used appropriately, hundreds of new schools and health facilities could have been built.
The governor claimed the accusations against him are politically motivated.
However, indigenous communities, anti-graft groups and the Church believe that corruption in Papua is rife. They have called on the governor to surrender and follow the legal process accordingly.
But he has refused to do so. The police haven’t arrested him, as his residence is heavily guard-ed by supporters and relatives, fearing it could trigger a clash.
“Twenty years since autonomy status was granted, Papua remains the poorest region in Indonesia.”

Murong Xuecun was one of the brightest stars of China’s literary scene, his novels offering searing critiques of contemporary social issues that few other writers dared to imitate.
But after a decade of diminishing freedom of speech under President Xi Jinping, he could not publish in his own country and was eventually forced into exile. His fate mirrors that of many liberal Chinese intellectuals who tried to shine a light on the system and then fled abroad, were im-prisoned or fell silent.
The 48-year-old writer, whose real name is Hao Qun, left China in August last year after writing “Deadly Quiet City”, a non-fiction account of the 2020 Wuhan coronavirus lockdown released in March.
His Australian publisher believed he would “definitely get arrested” after the book’s release, Murong told AFP from his home in Melbourne.
“They urged me to leave immediately.”
Fearing imminent arrest, Murong sent each page as he wrote it to a friend overseas using encryption software, before deleting it from his computer.
“I told my friend: ‘No matter what happens to me, this book must be published.’”

Weeping, grief-stricken families gathered on October 7 out-side a Thai nursery where an ex-policeman murdered nearly two dozen children in one of the kingdom’s worst mass killings.
Thai King Maha Vajiralong-korn and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha will later visit survivors of the attack that left at least 37 people dead, including the attacker’s wife and child.
“I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think that it would be my two grandsons,” she said, clutching her inconsolable daughter’s shoulder.
Overnight, coffins carrying the bodies of the victims — who include 23 children — arrived at a morgue in Udon Thani, the closest city to the rural district ripped apart by Thursday’s three-hour rampage.
Armed with a 9mm pistol and a knife, sacked police sergeant Panya Khamrab opened fire on the childcare centre in the north-eastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province at about 12:30 pm (0530 GMT).
Following the attack, 34-year-old Panya fled the scene in a pickup truck to head home and murder his wife and child before taking his own life, police said, ending the killing spree around 3:00 pm.

More than 100 Catholic priests have signed a petition seeking fair trials in cases of violence, including sensational murders, as a way of peace-building in Indonesia’s restive Christian-majority Papua re-gion. The petition includes a five-point declaration which was adopted during a meeting of 106 diocesan priests from all five dioceses in the region in Agats, Asmat district in South Papua province on Oct. 4-9. The priests cited the Aug. 22 killing and mutilation of four Protestant Christians in Mimika district of Central Papua province allegedly by six soldiers, who accused them of having links with separatist rebels.

In 2015, when Father Hwang Seokmo ended his term as the director of the headquarters of his religious order in Seoul, he requested the superior send him as a missionary to Timor-Leste.
The 57-year-old priest, a member of the South Korea-based Clerical Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs, said the tiny Catholic-majority country, also known as East Timor, drew his attention as “a fertile land” to cultivate the spirit and spirituality of the congregation.
“East Timor caught my eye. It was an area that was planned to contribute to the Asian region with the spirit and spirituality of the Clerical Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs and to develop vocations,” Father Hwang told the Catholic Peace Broadcasting Corporation of Korea (CPBC).
Since his arrival in Timor-Leste, Father Hwang has overseen the Sebastiao Gomes Monastery and serves some 8,000 Catholics in Aileu parish in the Alieu Requidoe region, about 1,500 meters above sea level.

Filipino Catholic bishops led by the Archbishop of Manila have urged church-goers not to forget the atrocities during the martial law era. But will the people heed their advice?
The Catholic Church’s hierarchy had gone silent after the presidential election results in May. It was perhaps a painful realization for them that very few Catholics listened to their call to support opposition candidate and for-mer Vice President Leonor Robredo.
The Catholic Church had not involved itself in national politics since the Church-supported 1986 People Power Revolution, which removed Dictator Ferdinand Marcos from power.
During the presidential election, clergy-men wore pink masks and shirts — the color adopted by Robredo supporters. Pastoral letters were issued against martial law and election frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s purported effort to revise Philippine history.
Despite accusations of electioneering by conservatives, priests formed associations to support Robredo. The Canon law’s provision for the Church’s non-partisanship was stretched to the limit. But still, Robredo lost. Marcos, Jr. won by an overwhelming majority with 31 million votes.
What happened to the Catholic consci-ence? Do Catholics in the Philippines still listen to their bishops and priests? Or have they pushed them aside while they themselves decide on matters that directly affect the nation?
On the 50th anniversary of martial law, the Catholic prelates spoke.
Perceived to be a clergyman who doesn’t engage in politics, Archbishop Cardinal Jose Fuerte Advincula broke his silence on martial law. Now the stance of the Archbishop of Manila is clear. His statement should silence any critics. He’s not an archbishop sitting in an ivory tower while looking at his flock in the old walled city of Intramuros in the capital.
Cardinal Advincula is still a pastor who does not want to erase the atrocities of martial law from Philippine history, and I suppose, from the history of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.