When deliberating over whether or not to become a priest, Kinley Tshering – an extremely rare Catholic convert in his native Bhutan – asked God for a sign.

The sign came on an ensuing airplane flight when he discovered he was sitting next to Mother Teresa (now St Teresa of Calcutta). He soon joined the Jesuit Order and in 1995 became the first Catholic priest born in Bhutan – a landlocked South Asian country, surrounded by India and China, with a total population of about 800,000, some three-fourths of whom are Buddhists; most of the remaining one-fourth are Hindus, and Christians account for less than 1% of the population.

As a devout Buddhist family, Tshering’s parents actually took him as an infant to a monastery and dedicated him as a Buddhist monk. And yet he proceeded to receive a Catholic education. He tells how, as a small child in the early 1960s, “there weren’t many good schools in Bhutan.” So his family sent him to Catholic boarding schools in Darjeeling, India.

He proceeded to work in the business industry. But something about his conventional way of life left him unsatisfied and he continued to deliberate about becoming a priest.

For a long time, he had been praying to God to give him a sign to let him know that he should enter the priestly vocation.

Pope Francis has appointed a Sri Lankan as the secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID).

Monsignor Indunil Janakaratne Kodithuwakku Kankanamalage, currently the under-secretary of the council, is a priest of the Diocese of Badulla, Sri Lanka.

Monsignor Indunil was born in 1966 of a Buddhist mother who converted on marrying a Catholic. Two years after his priestly ordination on December 16, 2000, he was sent to Rome where he obtained a doctorate in missiology from the Pontifical Urban University. The university later hired him as a professor at its Faculty of Missiology.

On June 12, 2012. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Monsignor Indunil succeeds previous secretary, Spanish Bish-op Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, whom Pope Francis on May 25 appointed the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, following the death of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran on July 5, 2018.

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue was established by Paul VI on Pentecost Sunday 1964, with the aim of promoting dialogue with persons of other religions, in line with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, especially its declaration, “Nostra Aetate.”

Thai authorities in Bangkok have arrested 51 Pakistani Christian asylum seekers in an incident that has reignited fears among the city’s Christian refugees of another immigration crack-down on illegal immigrants.

According to eyewitnesses, immigration authorities arriving in two police vans pulled up outside a low-rent apartment building in Bearing Soi 7 in eastern Bangkok where several Pakistani Christian families had been hiding out after having overstayed their tourist visas to Thailand.

Likely acting on a tip off from a disgruntled local, immigration police knocked on selected doors around 7 a.m. on July 8. When the fearful residents failed to respond, officers battered the doors down with hammers.

They then proceeded to round up entire families and take them to Bangkok’s notorious Immigration Detention Centre where inmates languish, often indefinitely, in squalid and overcrowded cells.

“They took everyone — men, women, old people, young children,” a Pakistani Christian asylum seeker who was privy to the incident via a phone connection told ucanews.com. “They even took sick old people who can’t walk anymore.”

When several Christian asylum seekers seemed reluctant to leave the apartments, immigration officers allegedly manhandled them, including mothers in front of their crying children.

“The officers roughed up some people, even women,” a Pakistani Christian told ucanews.com. “They took some of my friends. I’m very concerned about them.”

As evidence of the incident, Pakistani Christians showed off images, taken with mobile phones, of plywood doors bashed in and numerous Pakistani refugees, including a distraught elderly woman, being taken away in police vans.

The Hong Kong government’s determination to pass a bill amending its controversial extradition law has compelled Christian communities to express their concern in a series of statements. Officially known as the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance, the law would allow people from the former British colony to be sent to mainland China to face trial. Secretary for Security John Lee Kachiu told reporters on May 20 that because the pro-democratic bloc and pro-government camp failed to cooperate on the matter, the bill would be submitted to the Legislature Council’s general assembly for a second reading on June 12.

There was hope of a compromise at a recent meeting of the Legislature Council’s Bills Committee, which was set up recently, but the ultimate result was a stalemate.

The Concern Group of Pastors, Hong Kong Christian Council (HKCC) and other Christian communities responded by urging Christians to pray for a speedy resolution.

The former recently collected 3,000 signatures and presented a petition to the Office of the Chief Executive on May 21.

It said the proposed amendment would jeopardize the “one country, two system” framework, deny Hong Kong’s normal connections with other regions, restrict people’s safety, and pave the way for abuse.

The group also worried that the rushed piece of legislation would deepen social conflict and make the people of Hong Kong more distrustful of the government of the Special Administrative Region (SAR), which in turn could harm Hong Kong’s long-term development.

“If the law is not amended, the suspect in [that] homicide case would escape trial and would not be brought to justice,” a representative of the church said in a recent media interview. He was referring to a case dating back to February 2018 when a 19-year-old Hong Kong citizen allegedly killed his girlfriend — who was three months pregnant at the time — during a vacation in Taipei and then dumped her body behind some bushes before fleeing home.

Quiapo district in the Philippine capital Manila has always been a hub of commerce and a centre of piety among Filipino Catholics.

It is home to shops that offer low prices and to the centuries-old image of the Black Nazarene, which is housed in a church in the middle of a busy marketplace.

Unbeknown to many, how-ever, it is also a centre of inter-faith understanding, of living in tolerance of two major faiths in the country.

Early one June morning, a group of 25 Christians gathered at a small eatery that serves halal food.

While eating bread and drinking tea the visitors listened to a Muslim woman talk about culture, bridging religious under-standing and cultural exchange among peoples.

Then they went out to explore Quiapo’s “Muslim town,” a place in Manila that is often perceived as a “dangerous and dark place.”

Ann Marie Cunanan, one of the promoters of the tour, admitted that even those living around the area would advise visitors not to enter the Muslim community.

“We want to change that perception,” said Cunanan, who is from the southern Philippine city of Davao.

Lovers of the Holy Cross Sister Anna Tran Thi Hien and four other nuns get up at 3.30 a.m. and prepare breakfast for hospital patients. They provide chao (rice cooked with meat or fish) for hundreds of poor patients and their relatives at a public hospital in Dong Ha city in Quang Tri province.

They teach basic education, catechism and how to play musical instruments to 45 orphans and children with physical disabilities aged 1-18. They also feed and wash babies.

Children are sent to local public schools and accommodated by the nuns at church-run Lam Bich Home. Many of the children are deaf or visually impaired and are from the Pako and Van Kieu ethnic groups who live in extreme poverty in mountainous areas. “We try our best to bring Jesus’ love to people in need through our services and loving care,” Sister Hien said.

The nun, who has worked with ethnic groups for four decades, said about 1,500 ethnic villagers have found happiness in their life and embraced Catholicism. Some use their houses as chapels for others to pray on a regular basis.

Tens of thousands of Pako and Van Kieu people live in Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue provinces.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila has asked the students to never bully others or allow bullying to happen in their schools or anywhere near them.

In his homily during the Mass of the Holy Spirit at the Manila Cathedral, he noted ton on June 19, 2019, the growing phenomenon of bullying, especially online. “Gossiping, vulgarity, to underestimate others, spreading fake news, and bullying are not the works of the Holy Spirit,” an article posted on Radio Veritas’ website quoted Tagle as saying.

Instead, he called on students to tap modern communication to spread the Gospel.

“Don’t be shy to proclaim Jesus,” he said.

Addressing the teachers, the cardinal urged them to expand not only their students’ intellectual dimension but also the human heart.

Catholics schools are called to lead their students to Jesus, according to him.

“Whatever is the subject matter, make sure that what you are teaching are ideas and concepts that lead the students to God,” Tagle added.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi starting his second term after leading his pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in India’s recent election, complaints of violence are growing from the country’s persecuted Christians. Christians face a new wave of threats from Hindu groups after the BJP retained its grip on power in May.

“A second term for the BJP has for sure boosted the morale of Hindu groups, who keep threatening and intimidating minorities for being non-Hindus in India, which they think belongs to Hindus only,” Christian leader A.C. Michael, an official of the Indian chapter of the Alliance Defending Freedom, told ucanews.com.

The BJP won 303 seats in the 545-seat parliament in a landslide victory in the April-May national election following the completion of Modi’s first term that began in May 2014. On June 2, Hindu groups ordered pastors in Jagannath Nagar in Maharashtra not to hold any Sunday prayer services. The pastors were threatened with violence if they refused. A pastor and his wife were abducted by a mob of 150 Hindu activists who entered a church during Sunday prayers on June 2 in the Moradabad area of Uttar Pradesh. They were later released after the intervention of village elders but were warned not to hold prayers there again. “These are not isolated incidents but part of a great game by extremist Hindu groups to terrify minorities, particularly Christians, and render them as second-class citizens,” said Peter Sony, a social activist based in New Delhi. “They believe Christians and Muslims aren’t Indians but foreign settlers who should be shown their real place.” Concerns are growing that India’s secular constitution may be changed to establish a Hindu hegemony, Sony said.