The China-backed United Wa State Army (UWSA) has destroyed unauthorized churches, detained pastors and closed religious schools in the area under its control in Myanmar’s Shan State near the Chinese border. Myanmar’s largest armed ethnic organization has clamped down on Christian churches since on September 13, according to church sources. A Catholic priest said the UWSA also checked Catholic Churches and schools and detained four teachers for questioning, but they were released two days later. “It appears that they are concerned about several churches [mostly Baptist] that had sprung up unofficially. They are also checking whether schools might try to persuade people to convert to Christianity,” the priest told ucanews.com.

“They know the Catholic Church’s activities as we never try to convert people to Christianity.”
Undated videos appearing to show UWSA officers destroying crosses, demolishing a new church and sealing off a church went viral on Facebook and Twitter on Sept. 19.

The UWSA instructed all its military officers and administrators to find out what missionaries were doing and what were their intentions, according to an Asia Times report.

All churches built after 1992 would be destroyed as they had been built illegally. Only churches built between 1989 and 1992 are legal, the army said in a statement.

It pledged to punish any local administration cadres who support missionary activities, it banned the construction of new churches and requires that priests and workers in churches must be local, not foreign.

It also bans religious teaching in schools in the Wa Hills area, while UWSP functionaries are no longer allowed to be members of any religious organizations.

Nyi Ran, a UWSA communications official at the army’s office in Lashio, Shan State, told Radio Free Asia that Wa leaders believe there are religious extremists in Wa territory, including missionaries who have not obtained official permission and clergy members who are operating outside the law.

One of Australia’s iconic Labour leaders and former Governor General Bill Hayden has been baptized as a Catholic at the age of 85, and after a lifetime as a declared atheist.

“There’s been a gnawing pain in my heart and soul about what is the meaning of life. What’s my role in it?” Hayden said.

Now in declining health, the former federal opposition leader and foreign minister said he hoped his new-found faith might encourage others as the Church passes through difficult times.

“This took too long, and now I am going to be devoted.

“From this day forward I’m going to vouch for God,” Hayden told The Catholic Leader as he prepared to be welcomed into the Church at St Mary’s Church, Ipswich, west of Brisbane, on September 9.

He suffered a stroke in 2014, and as he prepared for the baptism celebrated by Fr Peter Dillon, Hayden was feeling “great pain” from a recent fall in which he broke his shoulder. However he was determined to go ahead. Fr Dillon said he felt a “real closeness” with the former Australian leader as he baptized him.

“It was a big thing for him … an act of submission to the fact that there was no denying for him that God is real and he had come to discover that,” he said.

“I have always felt embraced and loved by her Christian example,” Hayden said, of the 93-year-old, who has been a lifelong inspiration of service to him, and who was among the congregation at the baptism.

“Sister Angela Mary Doyle was for twenty-two years administrator of Mater hospitals in Brisbane – a citadel of health care for the poor of South Brisbane where I grew up towards the end of the Great Depression,” he wrote in a letter to friends before the baptism.

“Dallas (my wife), our daughter Ingrid and I recently visited Sister Angela Mary in the Mater Hospital where she was a patient.

“The next morning I woke with the strong sense that I had been in the presence of a holy woman.

“So after dwelling on these things I found my way back to the core of those beliefs – the Church.”
“These characteristics are founded on the teachings of Christ and driven by faith in an external power – the Christian God whose limitations are beyond what humans could attain.

“I can no longer accept that human existence is self-sufficient and isolated.”

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge also congratulated Hayden.

“I’m delighted for Bill and think it is a gift for not only him and his family but for the entire Church in some sense,” he said.

There is hope and concern, sad- ness and uneasiness among Chinese Catholics at the news of the provi- sional agreement on the appoint- ment of bishops signed between China and the Holy See. There are criticisms of illicit bishops who have been excommunicated because they “have lovers and children” and are “loyal collaborators of the regime against the Lord,” together with requests to be able to see and know of the text of the agreement.

Another, who should be replaced – or share the responsibility of the diocese – with one of the former excommunicated bishops – says he knows nothing of his future destiny. Some say that the interim agreement will bring even more confusion to the Church and China. The names of the people have been changed or omitted for security reasons.

We know nothing about the agreement, and therefore we cannot say anything. I see the positive comments of Card. Parolin, and the negative ones of Card.

Zen. There is no trust in the Party, and we are worried about the Vatican’s scant knowledge regarding the Chinese Communist Party. The United States has understood it after 40 years of commercial experience.

Many faithful are disappointed, but as a pastor I must encourage the people of God to maintain authentic Catholic faith and communion with the Holy Father. There is nothing but to wait and face what will happen as a consequence of this agreement. More- over, I do not know if tomorrow the Holy See will ask for my resignation. I very much agree with the article by Fr Sergio Ticozzi. Thank you for your prophetic work.