Myanmar’s military regime has arrested two Catholic priests who were on their way to help internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Shan state.
Father John Paul Lwel and Father John Bosco, who belong to the St. Therese Little Way Missionary Institute, were arrested by junta soldiers and the Pa-O National Army, an ethnic armed group, at a checkpoint on February 21, said local church sources. Senior clergy from Pekhon Diocese confirmed that the two religious priests have been arrested but said the reason for their arrest was not yet known.
Church officials are trying to contact authorities for the release of the clergy. Two car drivers and a young student were also arrested with the priests.
The arrest of the clergy came even as fighting between the military and people’s defense forces (PDFs) intensified in Mobye township in Pekhon Diocese, where junta forces have deployed airstrikes, armored vehicles and heavy weapons. Thousands of people including Christians have been displaced due to the ongoing fighting.
Pekhon Diocese covers southern Shan state and is one of the worst-affected areas along with Loikaw Diocese in Kayah state due to the escalating conflict between the military and the combined rebel forces of the Karenni Army and newly emerged PDFs since May 2021.

Filipino Catholics see nothing wrong with couples living together without receiving the sacrament of marriage, showed the result of an online survey done by Church-run Radio Veritas 846.
“This nationwide survey reveals that 40 percent  would agree that couples should get married first before living together,” results of the Veritas Truth Survey (VTS) noted.
“On the other hand, 45 per-cent believe that being married is not necessary before living together,” it added.
The remaining 15 percent  were undecided over the question “Should couples get married first before living together; and not engage in a common-law partner-ship arrangement?”
Result of the survey also showed that among elderly respondents with ages 61 and older, 61 percent said couples should get married before living together; 33 percent said that being married is not necessary before living together; and six percent were undecided.
For adult (40-60 years old) respondents, 48 percent said couples should be married first before living together; 29 percent said that being married is not necessary before living together, and 23 percent were undecided.
As for young adult (21-39 years old) respondents, 21 per-cent said couples should be married first before living together; 58 percent said that being married is not necessary before living together, and 21 percent were undecided.
Finally, for teen (13-20 years old) respondents, 34  percent  said that couples should be married first before living together; 51 percent said that being married is not necessary before living together, and 15  percent were undecided.

New Zealand’s parlia-ment on February 15 near- unanimously passed a legislation that bans practices intended to forcibly change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, known as conversion therapy.
The bill, which was introduced by the government last year, passed with 112 votes in favour and eight votes opposed.
“This is a great day for New Zealand’s rainbow communities,” Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi said.
“Conversion practices have no place in modern New Zealand.” The government has said practices such as conversion therapy do not work, are widely discredited and cause harm.
The legislation also lays out what is not con-version practice and protects the right to express opinion, belief, religious belief or principle which is not intended to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The government said it had received nearly 107,000 public submissions on the bill, the highest number of public submissions ever received on any legislation. Under the legislation, it will be an offense to perform conversion practices on a child or young person aged under 18, or on someone with impaired decision-making capacity. Such offenses would be subject to up to three years imprisonment.

Israel’s Christian population is fast dwindling while those of Jews and Muslims continue to grow, giving credence to the fears that a plan to expel Christians is underway in the Jewish state.
The growth rate of Christians in Israel is much slower than those of Jews and Muslims. In 1949, when Israel was recognized as a UN member nation, there were 34,000 Christians. They increased only fivefold in the past 70 years to 180,000 in 2019. But during the same period, Muslims in Israel grew 14 times to number 1.6 million and Jews grew some six times to number 6.69 million in 2019, says a report of the Israeli Statistics Office released last month.
The Druze, another religious minority in the Jewish state, increased almost tenfold from 15,000 to 143,000 in 2019. The report noted that the falling number of Christians is due to the lower growth rate. The Christian growth rate was 1.9 percent, the lowest. The average growth rate was 2.43 for Jewish families and 2.60 for Muslim families, it said.
The lower growth rate of the Christian community in Israel is attributed to the violence due to the Palestine crisis. Often, their plight is overlooked as two main communities — Jews and Muslims — fight each other. As the fringe elements in both communities have become active in the last decade, Christians are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The largest Arab Christian population centres are Nazareth (21,400), Haifa (16,500) and Jerusalem (12,900). According to the report, 84 percent of Christians are satisfied with their life in Israel. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 76.7 percent of Christians in Israel are Palestinian Arabs, who mainly live in the northern part of the country with more than 21,000 Christians in Nazareth.

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.