Malaysia’s human rights commission, Suhakam, has ruled that Pastor Raymond Koh and a Muslim social activist, Amri Che Mat, were the victims of state sponsored “enforced disappearances.” After a year-long inquiry, Suhakam reported on 3rd April that the two were taken by Special Branch – the police’s intelligence unit. Church leaders in Malaysia are now calling on the government to “Immediately take steps to clarify and separate the jurisdictions of the religious authorities and the Royal Malaysia Police.”

The Catholic Church in China is a fundamental part of Chinese history and can play a leading role in promoting the common good of all its citizens, says Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

“The Catholic Church in China is not a ‘foreigner’ but an integral and active part of Chinese history and can contribute to the edification of a society that is more harmonious and respectful of all,” the cardinal wrote in the preface of the soon to be launched “The Church in China: A New Departure.”

The book edited by Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, editor of La Civiltà Cattolica comes at a particular moment in the history of relations between the Apostolic See and China, following the signing of the provisional agreement on the nomination of bishops that took place in Beijing last September.

The volume emerges from the “China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue,” a collaboration bet-ween the journal, La Civiltà Cattolica, and Georgetown University. It gathers various studies that have appeared over the last two years in La Civilità Cattolica.

Chinese and Myanmar authorities are failing to stop the brutal trafficking of young women, often teenagers, for sexual slavery from conflict-ridden Kachin, a state in northern Myanmar, this according to a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Released on March 22, the report notes that women are often tricked into travelling to China in search of work or kidnapped and held against their will to be sold as “brides” to Chinese men. Most of those taken hostage by Chinese families are locked up and raped, it says. Those who do escape are often obliged to leave children fathered by their tor-mentors.

As a direct result of its one-child policy, China finds itself with 34 million more men than women. This fuels women-trafficking from neighbouring countries, where poverty and social discrimination make women more vulnerable. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are especially affected by the problem.

More than 120,000 people have been displaced by armed clashes between government forces and rebel groups in Kachin and in the northern part of Shan State – conflicts that started up again in 2011. In Kachin alone there are more than 100 refugee camps.

A leading Asian cardinal says the world’s resources are at the mercy of a minuscule minority, and the “poor are doubly-conde-mned by an economy that favours the powerful and a carbon hegemony that destroys their liveli-hood.”

Myanmar Cardinal Charles Bo, the president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, was speaking at a March 19 event on the Amazon at Georgetown University.

The Amazon will be the topic of the Oct. 6-27 meeting of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

During his lecture, the cardinal noted that Myanmar, also called Burma, is one of the poorest countries in the world.

“I have always worked with simple ethnic and indigenous communities. I come from a country where the Church is an ethnic, indigenous church,” Bo said. “We have watched in pain the destruction of the ethnic and indigenous way of life by the onslaught of market economy-oriented colonization. This is the norm elsewhere,” he said.

Despite her advancing years and having to walk with the aid of a stick, she continues to help dozens of lonely elderly people from various religious backgrounds at a home she runs in Purwokerto, in Central Java.

Sister Indrawati of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph established the Panti Wreda Catur Nugraha home more than a decade ago to create some love and help elderly people abandoned by their families.

From just a few people, it now cares for 52 senior citizens from across Indonesia. Most were hardly able to look after themselves.

“The trauma of being rejected by their relatives is a heavy burden to carry through the last stages of their life,” Sister Indrawati said.

“All they need is love.”

She says it’s her mission to make them as happy as they can, even though to fulfill their daily needs, she has to knock on people’s doors for support.

“Other people have to help,” she said, saying she actively seeks donations and volunteers to come to the home to provide some of the residents some much-needed company.

Caring for people like them was a goal even before she became a nun, Sister Indrawati says. “Since joining my congregation in 1971, I have cared for marginalized people, particularly the elderly,” she said.

Prior to setting up the home, Sister Indrawati worked at several care homes run by the Soegijapranata Social Foundation, which was named after the first native-born Indonesian prelate, Jesuit Bishop Albert Soegijapranata.

This gave her invaluable experience in taking care of the elderly and knowing what makes them happy.

A group of Christians was attacked in West Bengal by Hindu fanatics during a prayer meeting at the home of a Church member, Shibu Thomas speaking told AsiaNews.

Thomas is the founder of Persecution Relief, an organisation that defends Christians from persecution in India.

Rev Anand Hari, pastor of the Full Gospel Evangelical Church, who was leading the prayer, was severely beaten. He is now in hospital in serious condition.

The attack took place in Panch Gachia, a village in Paschim Bardhaman district, around 7.00 am (local time). “The attackers did not spare even women,” Thomas lamented. In fact, in addition to the pastor, “there were eight women and two teenagers.

“About 15-20 minutes after the meeting started, 20 people suddenly broke into the house and started hitting everyone present with fists, kicks and sticks. Then they fled, leaving the wounded on the ground.”

The leader of Persecution Relief explained that the incident attracted the attention of others, who took the reverend to a government hospital where he is still recovering.

The aggression against worshippers at prayer represents a serious example of religious intolerance, less than a month before the general election.

“In India, it has become difficult even to pray in private homes used as places of worship. Churches are attacked, destroyed, torched and vandalised,” Thomas said, this despite the fact that “The Indian Constitution recognises freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.”

“The faithful were only praying,” he explained. If people get together and pray for the sick, their country, their family and even politicians, they are not doing anything wrong.

At least 48,365 baptisms were celebrated in churches and Catholic communities in the People’s Republic of China in the year 2018. This is the number reported in the official publication of the Faith Institute for Cultural Studies, based in Shijiazhuang, the capital of the Chinese province of Hebei. The figures bring together data from 104 Catholic dioceses recognized by the Chinese authorities, scattered in more than 30 national provincial divisions. These data appear in substantial continuity with those of the previous year, when the Faith Institute had certified the celebration of 48,556 baptisms in the Chinese Catholic communities.

Also in 2018, as in previous years, the largest number of new Catholics baptized reported by the Faith institute (almost 13,000) was concentrated in the Chinese province of Hebei with other remarkable percentages of new baptisms celebrated in the Catholic communities of the provinces of Shanxi (4124), Sichuan (3707) and Shandong (2914). Faith institute also reported on baptisms celebrated in Catholic communities in the regions where Muslim populations and ethnic minority groups are found, such as Tibet (8 baptisms), Hainan (35), Qinghai (43) and Xinjiang (57).

“There will be no official or unofficial church when the church is united,” he said. Asked if it meant the so-called underground church would be forced to dis-appear, he said: “Don’t you want the church to be united? A church schism is not the fundamental aspiration of Catholics.”

Bishop Zhan said those Catholics who refused to join the official church were acting in their personal interests, but there was no timetable for the integration of the underground church — those who have refused to register with the government — with Beijing’s hierarchy.

“Everyone works hard and works together,” he said. The push to “Sinicise religion” — make it more culturally Chinese — was introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2015 and written into party orthodoxy in 2017. Experts see it as an attempt by the officially atheist Communist Party to bring religions under its absolute control.

“The agreement is provisional only, and we will improve it in the future,” Cardinal Filoni said after celebrating Mass in Hong Kong March 5.

The Christian community in Nepal has not been spared the wrath of society’s caste-based inequality, even though bottom-rung Dalits are increasingly turning to Christianity as a means to escape their fate.

Religious conversions are illegal in Nepal but the numbers suggest many consider it a risk worth taking as the “untouchables” are among the most oppressed by this complex social system, which leaves no sphere untouched. Testament to how legions of Dalits are prepared to gamble on breaking the law in search of a more dignified life, Nepal now harbours one of the fastest-growing Christian populations in the world.

The Federation of National Christians Nepal (FNCN) estimates there are 12,000 churches in the country and millions of Nepalese are believed to have turned to Christianity despite a 2011 census claiming Christians make up just 1.4% of the population, or several hundred thousand people. A whopping 65% of the newly converted are Dalits, according to the FNCN.

There are between 3.6 million and 5 million Dalits in Nepal, which means they could comprise as much as one fifth of the total population.

There are three Dalit sub-groups: those who live in the hilly regions, the mountain dwellers, and the Madeshi Dalits of the Terai, a lowland region in the south that extends to northern India.

The discrepancy in numbers is partly due to so many having legally changed their surname to make it sound like they belong to a more privileged caste as a last-ditch attempt to ease the discrimination they so often face.

In a Lenten message to young Catholics in Bangladesh, Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario of Dhaka called on them to get closer to Jesus Christ and to refrain from using their mobile phones on every Friday leading to Easter Sunday. “My dear young people, during this Lent I appeal to you for a unique sacrifice. I request you to abstain from using mobile phones from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Friday starting from Ash Wednesday. During this time, you can try to strengthen your relationship with each other and with Jesus Christ,” Cardinal D’Rozario said.

His message resonates with Pope Francis’ call to young Bangladeshis during his visit to the nation in 2017. The cardinal reiterated his appeal during his homily at the Ash Wednesday Mass at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in central Dhaka on March 6 where he was the main celebrant.

“I know, my dear young friends, you love your mobile phone, but it should not be more than your love for each other and for Jesus Christ who saved mankind from sins,” he told more than 3,000 faithful.

“There is a madness in today’s world — we need to grab everything on our way. But remember we came with nothing and nothing will go with us. Only our good deeds will remain, so let’s do good to others as much as we can.”

“I take the cardinal’s message positively, I have serious doubts whether young people, who are seriously addicted to their smartphones, will pay heed to his call. I think the prelate could have asked them to reduce mobile phone use every day,” William Nokrek, a Garo Catholic and former president of Bangladesh Catholic Students’ Movement.