Vowing to pursue a program of “justice and peace,” the newly elected president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference says that agenda will include speaking out against the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.
Critics allege that those laws, which criminalize blasphemy against state-recognized religions, are often abused to oppress religious minorities in the over-whelmingly Muslim nation, as well to settle scores among Muslims themselves.
Famously, an illiterate Catholic woman named Asia Bibi was sentenced to execution by hang-ing for blasphemy in 2010 and spent almost a decade on Pakistan’s death row, until an inter-national pressure campaign resulted in her release in 2019 and settlement in Canada.
“Innocent people should not be targeted and sentenced,” said Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, who was elected the new leader of the Pakistani bishops in early November.
“My mission is to raise my voice and bring help and relief to the innocent victims,” Shukardin told Crux. The 62-year-old bi-shop insisted that while there are anti-Christian forces in Pakistani society, it’s not universal.
“We take this up with the government on a regular basis, and the government has been very supportive,” he said.
“This anti-Christian sentiment is not pan-Pakistan, but [only] in various places,” Shukardin said. More broadly, Shu-kardin sketched a social development agenda for his term as conference president.