A group of Vietnamese women whose husbands died or work far from home devote themselves to burying the fetuses of babies resulting from abortions or miscarriages.
The women, from Nam Vien Parish in Tien Du district neighbouring the northern city of Bac Ninh, provide a service that other married women who are busy looking after their husbands and children could not be involved in.
At night they have to work at full stretch. They will immediately travel 100 kilometrs from home to visit pregnant women in spite of chilly or rainy weather when they receive calls from people in need. They do not miss any call even when they are tired from their own work.
In the dead of night, a female doctor from a local hospital phoned Mary Pham Thi Hoai, one of the members, asking her group to help a young mother who gave premature birth to a baby who died after being placed in an incubator for 10 days. The baby’s father, with a low weak voice, also appealed to the group to bury his newborn baby.

At the chapel of Mai Thien Loc Theologate of the Oblates of Mary of Immaculate Conception (OMI), the superior of the Vietnam Mission received the vows of eight novices, including Brother Joseph Tinh A Senh, a son of Dien Bien Parish in Hung Hoa Diocese.
He belongs to the Hmong ethnic group. This is good news not only for the newly professed brother, his family and the OMI congregation but is also an indescribable joy for members of the Hmong community.
Brother Senh was born on June 10, 1996, in Dien Bien, the seventh child of 10 children. His family are poor like many other families in the area. Poverty is rife, from one corn season to another. Nothing has changed. The local people have a joke: just the piglet and buffalo grow up, but we grow old and then die.
After graduating from the village school, he intended to go to the fields like many other boys. But Father Peter Pham Thanh Binh, parish priest of Sapa, saw that this boy was smart and virtuous, so he invited him to live and study at Sapa boarding house. He agreed to live there with his friends to study. There are very few who hear the voice of God and respond.

Manila Archdiocese has issued a notice warning Catholics not to be fooled by fake social media accounts purportedly owned by the Philippine capital’s recently appointed archbishop, saying he has no social media account on any platform.
People have reported several accounts on Facebook using the name and photos of Cardinal Jose Advincula. One Facebook page has gathered hundreds of thou-sands of likes from Catholics in the Philippines and abroad. It also posts the cardinal’s homilies and speeches as well as providing information on his public engagements.
The Archdiocese of Manila and the Archdiocese of Capiz have not yet created a Facebook page or social media account under Cardinal Advincula’s name, the archdiocese’s chancellor Father Reginald Malicdem said in the May 24 notice.
The cardinal was archbishop of Capiz in the central Philippines before being appointed Manila’s archbishop.
In April, Cardinal Advincula himself warned against fake solicitation letters being circulated online using his name to ask for donations for his installation.

Churches in Papua have offered to mediate talks between the Indonesian government and separatist groups in a bid to ease tensions in the restive region.
The offer comes amid an escalation in violence in Papua that has seen hundreds of troops deployed and many people dis-placed in a crackdown following the government’s decision on April 29 to declare pro-separatists as terrorists. This followed the death a week earlier of an Indonesian intelligence chief in a shootout with members of the rebel West Papua National Liberation Army.
Church leaders conveyed their concern over the deteriorating situation during a meeting with Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Mini-ster Mahfud MD in Jakarta on May 25.
The leaders included Sacred Heart Abp Petrus Mandagi of Merauke in Papua, Indonesian bishops’ conference president Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo of Jakarta, and Reverend Ronny Mandang, chairman of the Fellowship of Indonesian Evangelical Churches and Institutions.
During the meeting, they offered to act as a mediator in peace talks.
“Many church and ordinary people in Papua are praying the government will hold talks to end the violence immediately,” Reverend Mandang said.
Dialogue must involve all elements to end the conflict
Mahfud responded by saying he was open to Christian leaders acting as mediators.
“If there are parties wanting to become mediators and they are welcomed by various groups in Papua, then we will facilitate that,” he said.
“We ask for dialogue and will exchange ideas with anyone including church leaders who can help forge peace and security for the Papuan people.”

More and more people on social media are describing the military junta responsible for the coup d’état and its soldiers as “terrorists.” The label is not only used to counter the military regime’s use of the “terrorist” label against its opposition, but reflects a broadly held view in the population that the military is reverting back to its cruel old methods, typical of the dictatorship that ruled before the recent short-lived period of democratic government. Increasingly, soldiers walk through markets taking food without paying, stealing valuables from the homes of suspected activists they search, beating defenceless civilians to a pulp, not to mention abducting people of all ages who go missing without leaving a trace.

Borders that are no longer walls, but “privileged places of encounter “ between all the components of a “colourful” society, capable of “dreaming together” to build a common future through “more sustainable development, balanced and inclusive.”
This is the vison of Pope Francis contained in his message for the 107th World Day of Migrants and Refugees – which will be celebrated on Sunday 26 September 2021 – entitled “Towards an ever wider we”, made public today.
The title chosen for the message, explained during the presentation of the document Father Fabio Baggio, CS, under-secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for integral human development, is “an appeal to ensure that” there may be more ‘others’, but only one ‘we’ “(Fratelli tutti, 35). And this universal ‘we’ must become a reality first of all within the Church, which is called to make communion in diversity”.
“It is an invitation to everyone, because we are committed to restoring our human family”. Thus the Pope, in the video on the next day, shown for the first time today in the Vatican press office on the occasion of the presentation of the message. “We are like many grains of sand, all different and unique but which together can form a beautiful beach, a true work of art”.
The “we”, Francis writes, is that of God’s creative plan who “created us male and female, different yet complementary, in order to form a “we” destined to become ever more numerous in the succession of generations”.
“The present time, however, shows that this “we” willed by God is broken and fragmented, wounded and disfigured.  This becomes all the more evident in moments of great crisis, as is the case with the current pandemic.  Our “we”, both in the wider world and within the Church, is crumbling and cracking due to myopic and aggressive forms of nationalism (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 11) and radical individualism (cf. ibid., 105).  And the highest price is being paid by those who most easily become viewed as others: foreigners, migrants, the marginalized, those living on the existential peripheries.”
“In reality, we are all in the same boat and we are called to commit ourselves so that there are no more walls that separate us, no more others, but only one us, as big as all of humanity”. Hence a twofold appeal. The Pope asks believers to commit themselves to making the Church more and more Catholic, to “all men and women of the world” to transform walls into bridges.

On April 27 Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman (Mbs), gave a long television interview to the Saudi channel “Al-Arabiya”[i], dedicated to his economic and social program for a new country in the framework of the 2030 vision, first unveiled in 2015.
In the interview he spoke of moderation in the application of Islamic laws, challenging Wahhabism, an ideology developed by Mohammed ben Abdelwahhab, an 18th century Saudi preacher, who reigned for a long time in the country and elsewhere, after promoting it for many decades in the Muslim world.
It would seem that MBS has come out in favour of the reform of Islam, when he stated: “All Muslim jurists and scholars have been talking about the concept of moderation for over a thousand years. So, I do not think I am in a position to clarify this concept, as much as I can … abide by the Saudi constitution, which is the Quran, the Sunnah, and our basic governance system and to implement it fully in a broad sense that is inclusive of everybody.” Until a few years ago, such a speech would have been unimaginable and [even that evening] it was hard to believe it, if broadcast live on the television channel.
MBS also declared that “the Constitution of Saudi Arabia is the Koran” and that his country is “obliged to implement the Koran in one form or another”; that is: all citizens will be respected as such and in their differences. To be more explicit, he stressed that only what is only said “unequivocally” in the Koran should be applied: “In social and personal affairs, we are obliged to implement only the stipulations clearly enunciated in the Quran. Thus, I cannot apply a sharia punishment without a clear or explicit Koranic stipulation of the Sunna.”

Authorities in China have removed online Bible apps from app stories in China, as well as taking down prominent Christian chat accounts.
According to Father Francis Liu of the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness, those logging in to see Christian chat accounts in China saw the following message: “[We] recei-ved report that [this account] vio-lates the ‘Internet User Public Account Information Services Management Provisions’ and its account has been blocked and suspended.”
“Sadly, this doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Dr David Landrum, head of advocacy for Open Doors UK and Ireland. “Since President Xi Xinping came to power we have seen a concerted and strategic wave of persecution against Christians, with the use and abuse of technology at the forefront of this religious cleansing.”

New research assessing the Pakistan Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment to protect minority rights predicts its implementation will take more than two decades.
“During this period, a Supreme Court bench has conducted 23 follow-up hearings and passed nearly six dozen orders, yet Pakistan stands 21 years away from the finish line of full implementation, considering the existing pace of compliance,” the study states.
“The federal government reported the least number of compliance reports. No report had been submitted from Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Reportage from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony and Ministry of Federal Education was in particular missing.”
Peter Jacob, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), virtually inaugurated his research titled “Justice Yet Afar” in Lahore on April 30. Speakers expressed concerns at the state’s lack of compliance with the 2014 Supreme Court judgment that mandated the federal government to create a national council for the rights of minorities and provincial governments to create task forces for religious tolerance, protect places of worship and crack down on hate speech, among other measures.

A malicious book accusing Christians of a grand conspiracy to undermine Islam has gone viral in Malaysia, even as fresh allega-tions are being brought against Kuala Lumpur’s archbishop for spewing anti-Muslim propaga-nda.
The Islamic book, Pendeda-han Agenda Kristian (Exposing the Christian Agenda), labels the “Nasrani” (Christians) as “ene-mies of Islam who are always malicious and display a negative attitude towards Muslims,” and who “will try their best to cause heartache among Muslims.”
Church Militant obtained a copy of the 130-page book from the official portal of the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (SIRC), which has a gov.my internet address — linking it to the government of Malaysia.
First published in hardback in 2014 and now made available in digital format in the Malay language, the publication accuses Catholics and evangelicals of adopting missionary schools and “contextualization” as a conver-sion strategy, especially by using the term “Allah” in the Malay-language Bible.
Ironically, the accusations come in the light of Pope Francis’ categorical rejection of efforts to convert people of other religions and in the wake of the pontiff’s Abu Dhabi Catholic-Muslim concordat with Sunni Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayyeb in 2019.
It gives the lie to Pope Fran-cis’ fond hopes that his ‘interfaith dialogue’ will lead to harmony and peace between Muslims and Christians.