A restaurant in Malaysia sacked an employee after a video of him wearing a crucifix at work went viral last Sunday, kicking off a public outcry.
The latest mass expression of discontent linked with food could further widen the racial and religious divide in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation.
The video of the crucifix-wearing man was meant to show the serpentine queue outside a restaurant in the heart of Kuala Lumpur well-known for its meat-filled flatbread.
However, many Muslim-Malay viewers were annoyed seeing the crucifix hanging from the worker’s neck. More-over, he was wearing the son-gkok, a Malay traditional headgear.
The restaurant faced a barrage of criticism. Was it trying to hoodwink the public into believing it was a halal establishment by making a non-Muslim wear a Malay-Muslim songkok? Some also questioned if the food and the preparation were halal.

Archbishop Joseph Li Shan of Beijing stressed the importance of building unity between Chinese Catholics across the mainland and Hong Kong by promoting Catholic spirituality and evangelization efforts in line with the process of sinicization following his three-day visit to Hong Kong.
Sinicization is a process by which religious practice is enculturated into the context of Chinese society so that it is assimilated within the local customs, styles, and language. However, for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) it has come to take on a new, political dimension whereby religious belief and practice are modified in order to fit into the frame-work of the party’s ideology.
“We pray that under the guidance of the revelation of the Holy Spirit of God, under the direction of the spirit of the Church’s communion, and under the diligent exploration of all of us, the Chinese Church will be able to promote the work of evangelization and spirituality along the direction of sinicization,” Li said after his Nov. 13-15 visit.

“Peace is possible. It takes goodwill,” said Pope Francis on Sunday and he implored men and women of goodwill never to resign themselves to war.
“Peace is possible. Let us not resign ourselves to war.”
Reiterating his belief, already voiced on many occasions, and repeating the word “always” three times, the Holy Father cried: “War always, always, always is a defeat,” and he noted the only ones who gain from conflict are those who manu-facture weapons. “War always, always, always is a defeat. Only the weapons manufacturers gain.”
The Pope’s urgent appeal came as he addressed the faithful after the recitation of the Angelus Prayer in St.Peter’s Square.
Shining the spotlight on Myanmar where an escalation of hostilities between the country’s military junta and ethnic minority armed group, the Arakan Army, have spread to various townships where civilians have been caught in the crossfire, the Pope said “I renew my closeness to the dear people of Myanmar who unfortunately continue to suffer from violence and suppression. I pray that they will not be discouraged and always trust in the Lord’s help.”
“I renew my closeness to the dear people of Myanmar who unfortunately continue to suffer from violence and suppression.”
Never neglecting to remember those suffering from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and in the war between Israel and Hamas, the Pope asked for prayers “for the tormented Ukraine and for the people of Palestine and Israel. “Let us continue to pray for the tormented Ukraine, and for the people of Palestine and Israel.”

Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, editor of Indian Currents, a leading Church publication in the country, has been transferred to Punjab as a manager of a school.
A November 5 message from Father Raphie Paliakara, the new leader of the Capuchin’s Krist Jyoti province, says Father Mathew will take charge as the guardian and manager of St Joseph’s School in Bhrariwal near Amritsar on November 30.
Father Suresh Mathew, the outgoing editor of Indian Currents weekly, says the Church should not identify with regre-ssive and repressive governments as its mission is to stand with the oppressed masses with little voice to raise their demands and grie-vances.
The 50-year-old Capuchin priest regrets that journalism is at peril as fascist tendencies gnaw at the fourth pillar of the largest democracy in the world. Journalists’ prophetic voices that once kept governments on tenterhooks have turned feeble.
He says his role model is Saint Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carme-lite priest, who stood alone against the Nazi regime that exterminated people by poison gas or shooting. “Titus Brandsma would probably be the only journalist-saint in the family of the ‘holy persons,’” he says.
In an interview with Matters India, Father Mathew shares his days with Indian Currents and his expectations from media people, especially Catholic journalists:” Speaking truth to those in power is always risky. John the Baptist was beheaded for speaking truth to the king. Oscar Romero was killed for confronting the powerful establishment.
“Indian Currents was established to speak the Christian con-science to the secular society. Hence, I could not compromise on the vision of the founding fathers and my predecessors. Moreover, a follower of Christ can never align with fundamentalist, fascist regime nor keep silence over their policies. If anyone is supping with the devil, no doubt they are either too diplomatic or have skeletons in their cupboard. They must read the Bible, especially the book of Prophets and the Gospels through the eyes of a follower of Christ, rather than through the eyes of a ritualist. The Church had many daring personalities in its chequered history.”

Last week more than 5,000 people signed a petition against the construction of a luxury eco-resort in Old Goa (Velha Goa), a city in the State of Goa, western India. Among the signatories there are also several political and religious leaders.
The project encroaches on areas around the Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount, one of the oldest Catholic churches in the region and an important religious site, which should be protected by the state.

In the face of wars, violence, death and destruction prevailing in the region and across the world, a college in north Bengal dedicated its two-day inter college mega music and cultural fest for global peace and harmony.
Salesian College Siliguri hosted the inter college cultural and music fest ‘Innovision’, for the first time as autonomous college, on November 8 – 9, 2023.

A 19th century nun, considered the “mother of consecrated women in Kerala,” has reached the second stage of the four-phase canonization process in the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis on November 8 approved the heroic virtues of Eliswa of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founder of the first indigenous congregation for women in India.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan faced detention and deportation on November 2 , as a government deadline for them to leave sparked a mass exodus.
Thousands joined a snaking queue that stretched seven kilometers (four miles) at the busiest border point, with officials reporting at least 29,000 people crossed into Afghanistan the day before.

Official recognition as essential workers, registra-tion, identity cards, and sett-ing up a helpline app to address workplace harass-ment were some demands from the garbage collectors of Hyderabad.
More than 500 garbage collectors met November 5 to highlight their pressing demands and the lack of their basic rights and entitlements as they keep the southern Indian city clean and healthy.
The meeting decided to present their de-mands as a memorandum to the Telangana chief mini-ster. The memorandum also demanded the garbage pi-ckers enumeration by the municipal and state labor department authorities.
The meeting was organi-zed by the Montfort Social Institute, India Network for Basic Income Foundation, and Work FREE, a research project based at the University of Bath, United Kingdom.
Brother Varghese Theckanath, director of the Montfort institute that hosted the convention.

Laughter and singing re-verberated through a girls or-phanage in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, as violence raged on the streets outside.
“Not that we are not affe-cted by the violence, but we feel safe and secure here,” Anjali Khouchung, a 12-year-old resident of Snehabhavan (“Home of Love”), told Global Sisters Report.
The ethnic violence in Manipur, which began May 3, is a conflict between the Meitei community, who are Hindus and the majority community of the state, and the Kuki, a minority tribe who are mostly Christians. Nearly 200 civili-ans, mostly Kukis, were killed in the violence. Many churches and villages were also burned.
The violence was still ra-ging when GSR visited the Manipur capital of Imphal the last week of September.
The state government had cut off the internet but, pre-suming the situation had im-proved, restored it after four months – only for it to be disconnected again as fresh violence hit Imphal following social media rumors about the murder of two students of the Meitei. The state government also reimposed indefinite cur-few in Imphal, the capital city.
“Our sisters take good care of us here,” said Khouchung, a member of the Naga, a mino-rity tribe in Manipur that is not involved in the conflict.
The sisters had to send the Kuki students back from their Imphal center for security rea-sons, as the majority commu-nity of Meiteis were targeting Kukis, but sisters continued to take care of the orphaned Kuki children in refugee camps thro-ugh their outreach programs.