Three Kenyan Christians were hacked to death by Al-Shabaab militants on August 18 after they refused to recite the Islamic prayer of faith. A fourth Christian – the mentally challenged older brother of one of the three – was also killed. At around 9 pm, Changawa Muthemba, who was in his forties, was dragged out of his home in Kasala Kairu, Lamu County, by a group of armed men and taken to the nearby home of his brother-in-law, Joseph Kasena, 42, where a 17-year-old neighbour, Kadenge Katana, also happened to be at the time. The three men were held at machete point and ordered to recite the Shahada. When none of them did, the attackers began to tie them up. When the men resisted, they were hacked to death. Then the attackers went to the home of Joseph’s older brother, Charo, who was in his late forties, and killed him.

Religion News Service takes a look at a couple of interesting issues that have surfaced recently. The first has Pope Francis proclaiming a fourth route to sainthood. Giving one’s life for someone else, even if it is not in defense of Christianity can now lead to sainthood. The example given is that of Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest, who at Auschwitz offered to take the place of a fellow prisoner sentenced to die of star-vation. Kolbe was then executed by lethal injection.

Kolbe was canonized without this additional path to sainthood, so one wonders how significant this change really is. For me, the significance is that so much of what the Catholic Church understands about sainthood and holiness revolves around being a good Catholic. I think this fourth road to sainthood puts greater emphasis on the importance of being a good person. Catholicism does not hold a monopoly on goodness. There are good people in every religion and in every walk of life. Good actions are not only related to the practice of Catholicism, and these actions continue to be good even if they are done by someone who is not Catholic.

I think this small modification in the road to sainthood recognizes that reality. Perhaps the next step would be to canonize exemplary non-Catholics such as Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela.

The second issue relates to the use of gluten-free commu-nion wafers in the church. It seems that Protestant churches are moving to provide gluten-free Communion at the same time the Catholic Church has restated its decision that, while low-gluten wafers are acceptable, gluten-free wafers constitute “invalid matter” for the Eucharist. Lauren Markoe sees the difference as a theological one. Because Catholics believe in transubstantia-tion, they want to stick as closely as possible to the first eucharistic celebration. Protestants see the Eucharist as more symbolic and thus are somewhat looser on what the elements must be.

About one in 10 Protestant churches has had someone embezzle funds, according to a new survey by LifeWay Research, which says it could be due to churches’ reliance on volunteers to handle their finances. 9% of pastors say that their church has witnessed embezzlement of funds, while 91% say they are not aware of any such incident, says the survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors by Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

The survey found that pastors of mid-sized churches, or those with between 100 and 249 members, are less likely to say funds had been embezzled (6%) than those with 250 or more members (12 percent).

While 16% of Churches of Christ ministers are likely to say their church had funds embezzled, only % of Baptist pastors and 6% Presbyterian/Reformed pastors are likely to say so, the survey adds. The study notes that volunteers are usually honest, but churches often lack systems to catch those who aren’t.

Police are investigating after a Brazilian bishop was robbed at gunpoint in his home.

Archbishop Antônio Muniz, the Archbishop of Maceió, was at his residence in the Farol neighbourhood, awaiting the arrival of Deacon Inaldo Pitta, before the assault happened at around 5.40 am.

Abp Muniz and Deacon Pitta had planned to travel jointly to the Church of St Goncalo for Mass, but as they were leaving the house, three armed men in a vehicle approached them. Pointing guns, the robbers forced them inside before running through the house in search of valuables.

“I was targeted by a gun, but the assailants did not physically assault anyone. They took personal belongings and the little money that was in the wallet,” said Archbishop Muniz, according to Globo.com.

A brusque reversal by the Belgian province of the Order of the Brothers of Charity (1) has led to a lively polemic. The order has previously always refused to practise euthanasia, which has been legal in Belgium for nearly fifteen years. But in a document addressed to hospital management and staff of its fifteen psychiatric centres, the Belgium Brothers of Charity in March confirmed its decision to finally authorize medically assisted death, including for its patients who were “in a non-terminal situation.”

This surprising about face by a Catholic congregation attracted the fire of the Belgian Bishops Conference, the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Order.

In a July 29 statement published by the Holy See following a joint inquiry by the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope gave the Belgian branch of the order until the end of August to reverse its position.

Failing this, sanctions will be imposed on the branch, which could go as far as excluding the Order and the withdrawal of its right to label its psychiatric institutions as Catholic.

In fact, it was Brother Stockman himself, who, after having tried in vain to get the Belgian branch to change its decision, asked the Vatican to open an inquiry into the issue.

Holy See Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, personally looked into the matter, Brother Stockman added.

In the face of a growing polemic, the Belgian Bishops Conference reacted at the end of May. A declaration entitled “Euthanasia and psychic suffering” reiterated its opposition to any “trivialization of medically assisted death.”

“We are conscious that psychic suffering may be immense and that a person can thus find themselves in a totally desperate situa-tion,” the statement said.

“However, it is precisely in this situation that it is necessary to remain close and not to abandon him or her,” the bishops emphasized, appealing to hospital personnel to implement “appropriate palliative care.”

A Vatican consultation group will consider initiatives to bolster the fight against corruption and organized crime, including by looking at possibilities for excommunicating members of the Mafia and other criminal organizations. The Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development published an outcome document Aug. 2 highlighting anti-corruption proposals that came out of the Vatican’s first “International Debate on Corruption.”

Among the proposals made by the consultation group is the “development of a global response—through bishops’ conferences and local churches—to the excommunication of the Mafia and other similar criminal organizations and to the prospect of excommunication for corruption.”

Popes and local bishops, especially in Italy, have long warned members of the Mafia that by committing such grave sins, they, in effect, have excommunicated themselves from the church.

In a June 2014 visit to Sibari, in Italy’s Calabria region, Pope Francis said that “those who follow the path of evil, like the mafiosi do, are not in communion with God; they are excommunicated.”

The June 15 meeting on corruption, sponsored by the dicastery and the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, looked at corruption as a global problem and at its connections to organized crime and the Mafia.

Euthanasia has become a common way to die in the Netherlands, accounting for 4.5% of deaths, according to resear-chers who say requests are increasing from people who are not terminally ill.

In 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in the world that made it legal for doctors to help people die. Both euthanasia, where doctors actively kill patients, and assisted suicide, where physicians prescribe patients a lethal dose of drugs, are allowed. People must be “suffering unbearably” with no hope of relief — but their condi-tion does not have to be fatal.

“It looks like patients are now more willing to ask for euthanasia and physicians are more willing to grant it,” said lead author Dr Agnes Van der Heide of Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

The 25-year review published in New England Journal of Medicine is based on physician questionnaires. The use of numerous methods to shorten patients’ lives “to relieve end-of-life suffering has become common practice in the Netherlands,” the authors said in the report.

The review shows that in 1990, before it was legal, 1.7% of deaths were from euthanasia or assisted suicide. That rose to 4.5% by 2015. The vast majority — 92% — had serious illness and the rest had health problems from old age, early-stage dementia or psychia-tric problems or a combination. More than a third of those who died were over 80.

The Anglican Church in Uganda is leading a rift with the global co-mmunion over LGBT rights. There are deep divisions over the largely pro-LGBT Western churches and hardline anti-gay Anglican chur-ches in Africa and the Global South, reports PinkNews.

While the Canadian, Scottish and American churches have embraced gay bishops and same-sex unions, many African archbishops have shunned equality rights for the LGBT community.

Stanley Ntagali, the Arch-bishop of Uganda, has disclosed that he will not attend the next meeting of Anglican leaders citing the gradual acceptance of same-sex marriage by the church.

The 62-year-old who also doubles as Bishop of the Ugandan capital, Kampa-la, in an interview with the BBC said he was not prepared to engage with people who took ‘an unbiblical view of marriage.’ He made the comments after joining the global leader of the church, Justin Welby – Archbishop of Canterbury – to visit refugee camps in the country’s north. Welby is on an African tour that saw him visit Sudan where he declared the 39th province of the church in Khartoum.

A prominent Jesuit publication’s essay on American religion and politics continues to provoke responses from critics concerned its two authors fundamentally misunderstand the situation of Catholics in the United States.

“Their essay is bad but important,” said New York Times columnist Ross Douthat Aug. 2, saying its apparent intention is to warn about Catholic support for “the darker tendencies in Trumpism” like xenophobia, stigmatization of enemies, the “prosperity-gospel inflected worship of success,” and a “crude view of Islam.”

For Douthat, however, the authors’ understanding of American religion “seems to start and end with Google searches and anti-evangelical tracts.” In his view, secularization and political polarization have made the place of Catholics in the U.S. “more difficult and perplexing.” Both Catholic support for Trump and more radical Catholic critiques “are not the culmination of the Catholic-evangelical alliance but rather a reaction to its political and cultural failures — and the failures of liberal religious politics as well.”

On July 13 the Jesuit-run journal La Civilta Cattolica published an analysis piece co-authored by its editor, Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., and Marcelo Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor who is editor-in-chief of the Argentine edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of Vatican City.

The piece, titled “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A Surprising Ecumenism” made a number of claims, alleging that many conservative Christians have united to promote an “ecumenism of hate” in policies that contradict Pope Francis’ message of mercy. They claimed that, that “Evangelical fundamentalists” and “Catholic Integralists” are being brought together in a “surprising ecumenism” by a shared desire for religious influence in politics.