A teenage Christian girl was kidnapped and forced to marry her Muslim abductor in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, her family says.
A local Muslim man is accused of abducting 13-year-old Arzoo Masih while she was playing outside her home in Karachi’s St Anthony’s Parish. The Catholic girl is the youngest of four children in her family.
Arzoo’s mother, Rita Masih, said she and her husband were at work on October 13 when they received a phone call from a close relative that Arzoo had gone missing.
The family immediately filed a kidnapping complaint with the police. The crime is punishable by death or lengthy imprisonment in Pakistan.
However, on Oct. 15, the police summoned the family to the station where they were given marriage papers which claimed Arzoo was 18 and had willingly converted to Islam after marrying Ali Azhar, a local Muslim.
Raja Lal Masih, Arzoo’s father, said he was “deeply concerned” over his daughter’s safety. He wanted authorities to trace and bring her home. Masih told that Arzoo was below marriageable age under Pakistani law. “At the age of 13, she is too young to get married,” he said.

The deal, which was first signed two years ago and expires, will be renewed for another two years, he said.
Asked by reporters on the sidelines of an event at a Rome university if it was a done deal, Parolin said: “Yes, I can anticipate to you that all will go well… I’ll leave you with a positive signal.”
The accord with Beijing gives the Pope final say over the appointment of Chinese bishops and the government allows all of them, including those hailing from a state-backed Church, to recognise the Pope’s authority.
The deal has been highly contested by the U.S. State Department and conservative Catholics, who say the Vatican has sold out to the communist government. Parolin said the final decision to renew had been made “in the last few days” after final contacts with the Chinese side. The deal would be extended without any new signatures because it was still an provisional deal.
The official announcement is due, he said.
Vatican officials say the agreement is not perfect but establishes a dialogue with Beijing after decades during which Chinese Catholics faithful to the Pope were driven underground.

Rights groups have condemned a Pakistani senator’s claim that a fact-finding team led by him could not find any proof of forced conversions among religious minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.
Senator Anwarul Haq Kakar is head of a parliamentary committee set up to look into the increasing incidents of Muslim men kidnapping Hindu and Christian girls and forcefully converting and marrying them.
“The committee, which also included members from other religions, did not find any trace of kidnapping and illegal confinement of Hindu girls who later gave statements in court. Most cases of forced conversions had some degree of willingness on the part of the girl,” Kakar told reporters earlier in Islamabad.
The Parliamentary Committee on Forced Conversions chief, rejected the validity of minority groups’ complaints. He said the marriages were “con-tracts involving willing girls and due to economic circumstances.”
His statement came after the fact-finding team visited Sindh, where most of the country’s Hindus live and where most complaints came from. The comments drew swift condemnation from rights groups.

Police in Sri Lanka have arrested a 43-year-old woman on charges of spreading hate between Buddhists and Catholics after she posted a video making various allegations against Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colo-mbo. Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department arrested the woman on Oct. 18 in capital Colombo, police spokesman Ajith Rohana told media.
The video released on a social media network makes allegations against Cardinal Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, and makes a hateful statement fomenting unrest between Buddhists and Catholics, he said.
It “seems to be an attempt to stir religious hatred among Buddhists and Christians,” said Rohana.
The police are “conducting further investigations in this regard,” he said, adding that the woman will be produced before the court on October 19.
“We have constantly informed the public to prevent any propaganda that incites hatred and enmity between religious groups. Then the law has to be enforced,” said the media spokesman.

The Communist Party is officially atheist and exercises strict control over all recognised religious institutions, including vetting sermons. The provisional deal, signed in September 2018, allowed both Beijing and the Holy See a say in appointing bishops, in an attempt to close the schism in China’s 12-million-strong Catholic community. An announcement extending the deal is widely expected in the coming days. But Washington has put intense pressure on the Vatican to scrap it, saying it has failed to shield Chinese Catholics from persecution. Those that operate without the Communist Party’s blessing claim to have been targeted by authorities in recent years, pointing to the demolition of underground churches, persecution of members and pressure on their clergy to switch sides.

Bishop Vincenzo Guo Xijin of the Mindong diocese announced his decision to resign from public life and retire to a life of prayer in a speech delivered at his last public Mass on the evening of Oct. 4.
Guo, who has suffered homelessness and imprisonment many times at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), submitted his letter of resignation to the Vatican.
“Tonight will be the last public Mass that I preside: From tomorrow I will only do private Masses,” he informed his parishioners. “The faithful can receive the sacraments and attend Mass at the nearby church.”
Guo described the reign of Chinese president Xi Jinping and Pope Francis as “a new era” and “a new page for the Church,” warranting other leaders.
I am no longer able to keep up with this era. Tweet
“In such an extraordinary historical moment, we need people with great talent, wisdom, virtue and knowledge to be able to keep up with this era or even precede the steps of the era by guiding it,” he argued.
The speech was laden with self-deprecatory and resigned remarks:
I am a person who has no talent; my head is now a void unable to change with a changing society; [I am] a shepherd born in a poor village who has no talent, no virtue, no wisdom, no skills, no knowledge; in the face of this age that changes so rapidly, I feel almost incapable.
The prelate, described as “a great confessor of the faith,” thanked God “for enlightening me by making me understand that I am no longer able to keep up with this era,” he resolved. “I do not want to become an obstacle to progress.”
When asked what could be done to stop the persecution of faithful Catholics in China or to support his pleas for a faithful appointment for the See of Hong Kong, Zen replied: ”Nothing. I’ve done more than I can, and there is nothing more to do other than prayer.”

Vincent Lüthi was among the 38 new recruits who took oath of allegiance to Pope Francis in the Vatican on October 4.
The 22-year-old grew up in Cugy, Switzerland and the only child of a Swiss father and a Filipino mother from Santa Fe town on Bantayan Island in Cebu province.
The ceremony for new Swiss Guards was due to take place in May, but it was moved to October due to the coronavirus restrictions.
The event was also held behind closed doors, in accordance with current protection regulations.
Pope Francis met with the guards and their parents before the ceremony and thanked them for choosing to dedicate “a period of their youth in the service of the Successor of Peter.”
In the audience on October 2, he told the new recruits that “the time you will spend here is a unique moment in your life.”
“May you live it in a spirit of fraternity, helping one another to lead a meaningful and joyfully Christian life,” the Pope said.
The pontiff also emphasized the crucial role of the family in the transmission of faith.
“The presence of your family members expresses the devotion of Swiss Catholics to the Holy See, as well as the moral education and good example by which parents have passed on to their children the Christian faith and the sense of generous service to their neighbor,” he said.

North Korean defectors who risked everything for freedom will speak on October 7 night at Liberty in North Korea’s annual Night of Freedom, which will be held online this year.
The hour long event will be held at 7 p.m. Eastern time and will include three stories from defectors who escaped one of the world’s most repressive regimes, along with appearances by celebrities, raffles, and never-before-released short film.
Liberty in North Korea plans to broadcast the event from its headquarters in Long Beach, California. It will host a similar event on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. Pacific time.
Anyone interested in participating can sign up for free on Liberty in North Korea’s website. So far, over 2,000 people world wide have done so. Liberty in North Korea CEO Hannah Song said it will be the group’s first large online event.
“What are we willing to give up for freedom?” Song said in an interview with The Christian Post. “When I hear the risks our North Korean friends take, these are things I can’t even begin to fathom deciding. I’ve had to think about that very deeply every time I’ve heard their stories. What is my freedom to me?”
Along the 3,000-mile trek from North Korea to South Korea, defectors must cross the North Korean border, dodge human traffickers and the Chinese police, and brave mountains and jungles. The defectors speaking at the event each fled North Korea in search of different kinds of freedom, Song said.

South Korea’s government has adopted a draft law to legalize abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy, but Catholic bishops in the country said it violates the foetus’s right to life.
The government on Oct. 7 adopted the bill that plans to ban abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy except in the case of a sex crime or if it affects the mother’s health or severe congenital disabilities for the foetus.
The law bans abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, the Justice Ministry said.
Although the government has adopted the bill, the public have been given around 40 days to submit their views before it is sent to the National Assembly for approval.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea has been opposing the move to legalize abortion since August when the government was finalizing the draft bill.
In a letter submitted to President Moon Jae-in on Aug. 20, the bishops voiced their concerns about legalizing abortion. They said human life must be protected “from the very moment of conception.”
The government began to amend the law prohibiting abortion in April 2019 when the South Korean Constitutional Court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional. It asked the government to legalize abortions by the end of 2020 or consider the abortion ban legally invalid.
The bishops said abortion is not the solution to issues related to marriage and pregnancy. Most such issues could be solved by changing the current social culture which makes “women solely responsible for pregnancy and childbirth,” the bishops’ conference said in a statement on September 2 on its website.

Police in southern Vietnam have captured a famous blogger and rights activist who has been praised for bravely struggling for democratic freedom and accepting persecution.
The Public Security Ministry announced on Oct. 7 that police arrested Pham Thi Doan Trang and searched her boarding house in Ho Chi Minh City. Trang is accused of campaigning against the state and spreading information and documents against the communist government. The Hanoi resident will be detained for four months as her case is investigated.
Le Nguyen Huong Tra said police arrested Trang at midnight of Oct. 6 while she stayed at a boarding house in the city.
“I am not surprised at my friend’s arrest after she published reports on the lethal land clash between police and farmers in Dong Tam Commune,” Pham Thanh Nghien, Trang’s close friend, said. The clash claimed the lives of three police officers and farmers’ leader Le Dinh Kinh.
Nghien, a Catholic mother of one, said Trang’s arrest, which came when delegations from Vietnam and the US were holding their 24th annual human rights dialogue via virtual sessions on Oct. 6-7, showed that the Vietnamese government refused to respect human rights.