The daylight attack by motor-cycle-riding gunmen on two Christian priests, killing one and wounding another, has reignited fears among Pakistan’s beleaguered minority community.
The priests were attacked as they drove home from a Sunday service in the north-western city of Peshawar on Jan. 30,
“We want to convey a positive message. We stand in solidarity with our Christian brothers,” said Tahir Ashrafi, special representative on religious affairs to Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Ashrafi sought to assure Pakistan’s Christians that the prime minister was personally overseeing the matter, calling it “an attack on Pakistan.”
“This isn’t an issue of one community or a pastor. It is an attempt to spread fear and defame the country. Blood in churches, mosques and sacrifices of our soldiers led to peace,” he said at a press conference.
Christian activists slammed Ashrafi’s presser. “This is an eyewash. The nation is tired of condemnations. We demand arrest of the murderers and their punishment,” said Samson Salamat, chairman of Rwadari Tehreek.
Human rights lawyer Nadeem Anthony called it a political stunt. “The cleric is trying to mislead the ongoing investigation. They [the government] are trying to escape the responsibility of protecting the innocent and vulnerable community,” he told.
“It is a pity that the new year started with this heinous hate attack. The country has been hijacked by Islamists who want Islamization in the country and are openly propagating faith-based hatred,” Anthony said.

Pakistan’s top court has dis-missed a plea by a Christian group seeking an increase in the seats reserved for religious minorities in the national and provincial assemblies.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Feb. 7 rejected the petition on the grounds that the constitutional amendment was required to increase minority representation. The highest court in the country said it cannot issue directions to the parliament on the issue.
“The court was not authorized to issue an order to the parliament to amend the constitution. How could the court decide for enhancing the minorities’ seats in the parliament,” Justice Ijazul Ahsan observed. The petition brought by the Pakistan Interfaith League (PIL) was earlier rejected by Lahore High Court.
Christian human rights activists had long been demanding an increase in seats for religious minorities from 10 to 14 in the 342-seat national assembly. The national parliament currently has four Christian and six Hindu members.
Currently, religious minorities can contest only 33 reserved seats in the provincial assemblies and four seats in the Senate.
Minority voters account for 3.63 million or 3.5% of the 118 million voters in Pakistan, according to official records.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar has issued a statement last week calling for humanitarian assistance to thou-sands of people who have been displaced by the ongoing conflict in the country.
In a letter of appeal released on Jan. 14, the Church leaders called on “all concerned” to facilitate “humanitarian access to suffering and internally displaced people.” “Human dignity and the right to life can never be compromised,” the Church leaders said in the letter following their general assembly in Yangon last week.
The bishops also called for “respect for life, respect for the sanctity of sanctuary in places of worship, hospitals, and schools.”
The letter also expressed their appreciation to priests, nuns, and catechists who continue to take care of the people “in their flight from dangers of life.”
The bishops called on all Church workers, especially priests, religious men and women, and catechists, to continue the “mission of love and sacrifice for the people irrespective of the faith, race, and place.”

The opening of a new apostolic nunciature in the United Arab Emirates is a testament to fraternity and goodwill between Muslims and Christians, said Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony in Abu Dhabi Feb. 4, Archbishop Peña, the substitute secretary for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State, said the new nunciature is also “a further sign of the Holy Father’s solicitude and concern for all the people in this land.”
“May this new embassy of the Holy See serve as a place of encounter and dialogue for our bilateral cooperation for many years to come,” the Archbishop said.
Among those present at the inauguration were Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince and minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation; Bishop Paul Hinder, apostolic vicar for Southern Arabia; and Msgr. Yoannis Gaid, member of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity.
The Holy See and the United Arab Emirates established diplomatic relations in 2007, but the nuncio resided in Kuwait. Currently the nunciature is headed by Slovenian Msgr. Kryspin Dubiel, who serves as chargé d’affaires.
The opening of the nunciature coincided with the third anniversary of the day that Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar in Egypt, signed a document on promoting dialogue and “human fraternity” during the Pope’s 2019 apostolic visit to the United Arab Emirates.
The document, Archbishop Peña said, showed that unity between Muslims and Christians is possible through the “shared belief in God the creator of all things” from which “stems the call for believers to live in fraternity with all people regardless of race, religion or creed and to safeguard creation, our common home.”
“Contrary to any distortion or manipulation of religion, the response to this call can be nothing other than choosing the path of dialogue, which leads to better mutual understanding and cooperation,” he said.

Hong Kong (CNN) China sent 39 war-planes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on January 24, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said, the largest such incursion this year.
The flights by the People’s Liberation Army aircraft came a day after the United States and Japanese navies put on a massive show of force in the Philippine Sea, putting together a flotilla that included two US Navy aircraft carriers, two US amphibious assault ships and a Japanese helicopter destroyer, essentially a small aircraft carrier.
Two US guided-missile cruisers and five destroyers were also part of the exercise. The Philippine Sea is the area of the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan, between the self-ruled island and the US territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The Navy did not say how close the flotilla was to Taiwan.
Aircraft fly over a US-Japan naval flotilla that included two US aircraft carriers in the Philippine Sea on Saturday.
“Freedom at its finest! Nothing reaffirms our commitment to a #FreeandOpenIndo Pacific like 2 Carrier Strike Groups, 2 Amphibious Ready Groups sailing alongside our close friends from the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force,” Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the US 7th Fleet based in Japan, said in a tweet.
A US Navy statement said the mass of warships was “conducting training to preserve and protect a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
Taiwan’s President: Threat from China is growing every day (October, 2021) 07:32
Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since the defeated Nationalists retreated to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago.
But China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views the self-ruled island as part of its territory — despite having never controlled it.

A missionary-run school and college in Rajshahi city launched more than 30 years after the establishment of the Catholic diocese is committed to imparting human values as well as offering a solid academic education to Bangladeshi students.
Holy Cross Brothers, well known for their education apostolate, officially started their new ministry in Rajshahi on Jan. 18 with the aim of providing an inclusive education, welcoming new students at Holy Cross School and College in Rajsha-hi Diocese.
The educational institution started its journey with 106 students as the first Catholic missionary-run school and college in Rajshahi metropolitan city. Initially, it is admitting stu-dents at nursery, kindergarten, first, third, fourth and sixth gra-des but it will be gradually up-graded to 12th grade.
“Our first consideration is to ensure that pupils can learn in an open and student-friendly envi-ronment so that they can learn values. We want students to be 100% free from private depend-ence and attend class 100%,” said Brother Placid Rebeiro, principal of the institute.
“Students can learn leader-ship through humanitarian, moral development and extracurricular activities. In a word, we want to ensure an environment in which a fully fledged human child grows up, and we are committed to that.”

Catholic faithful in Laos joined clergy and religious to celebrate the dedication of a new church to the first layman from the ethnic Hmong community who was martyred for his faith six decades ago.
The church was dedicated to Blessed Paul Thoj Xyooj at Ban Nam Gnam village in Thulakhom district of Vientiane province, reported Fides new agency.
Born in 1941, Paul Thoj Xyooj was a Laotian teacher and catechist. He was killed by com-munist guerrillas in 1960 along with Italian Oblate missionary Father Mario Borzaga.
Pope Francis proclaimed them martyrs in 2015. Both were beatified on Dec. 11, 2016, along with 15 other martyrs by the pope’s special envoy, Oblate Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, archbishop of Cotabato in the Philippines, in Laotian capital Vientiane.
According to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) congre-gation, communist forces killed 17 Catholics between 1954 and 1970: a young Laotian priest, five priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP), six OMI priests (an Italian and five French) and five Laotian laymen.
Italian Oblate Father Angelo Pelis, who served in Laos for years as a missionary, told Fides that consecration of the new church was presided over by Cardinal Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, apostolic vicar of Vientiane. Catholic priests and Laotian Catholics also attended the ceremony.

Catholics in Vietnam are speeding up provision of basic food to allow people badly affected by Covid-19 to celebrate the coming Lunar New Year holiday. On Jan. 19, Caritas workers and parish council members from the parishes of Nhan Hoa and Xom Moi provided gifts for some 400 families whose members had died or lost jobs because of the pandemic, disabled people and street vendors regardless of their backgrounds. They were given money, rice, cooking oil, fish sauce, sugar, cakes and other items worth 1 million dong (US$45). Those people could not afford to get food for the five-day traditional festival starting Feb. 1.
“We are really appreciative of the generous gift from local Catholics who sympathize with our family,” Mary Vu Thi Loi said, adding that all her family members had suffered Covid-19 and her daughter had been left with partial paralysis.

A court in Singapore has charged a former Catholic officer of a church-run school with committing unlawful sexual acts with at least two teenage boys more than a decade ago.
District Judge Terence Tay at the State Courts of Singapore accepted the charges on Jan. 10 but issued a ban against media revealing the identity of the accused, victims and the school involved, local media reports said. Court documents showed that the accused in his 60s had unnatural sex with a boy aged 14-16 some time between 2005 and 2006. He also committed the same act some time between April 2007 and December 2007 with a younger boy aged 14-15.
The accused faces two charges of carnal intercourse against the order of nature under Singapore’s Penal Code. He was also charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child or young person under the Children and Young Persons Act.
Under Singaporean Penal Code, a person convicted of each count of carnal intercourse against nature can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

The Catholic Bishops’ Con-ference of Myanmar has issued a statement last week calling for humanitarian assistance to thousands of people who have been displaced by the ongoing conflict in the country.
In a letter of appeal released on January 14, the Church leaders called on “all concerned” to facilitate “humanitarian access to suffering and internally displaced people.”
“Human dignity and the right to life can never be compromised,” the Church leaders said in the letter following their general assembly in Yangon last week.
The bishops also called for “respect for life, respect for the sanctity of sanctuary in places of worship, hospitals, and schools.”
The letter also expressed their appreciation to priests, nuns, and catechists who continue to take care of the people “in their flight from dangers of life.”
The bishops called on all Church workers, especially priests, religious men and women, and catechists, to continue the “mission of love and sacrifice for the people irrespective of the faith, race, and place.”