The Sea Link Road in Gaehangjang of Incheon has earned fame as a “Historical and Cultural Pilgrimage Road” thanks to a series of century-old heritage sites related to the early days of Christianity in Korea.
All year round, pilgrims and tourists from home and abroad flock to the street to visit the monuments, including the site where the first Catholic missionary nuns arrived in 1885, Korea’s first Anglican cathedral and the Methodist Church, and Incheon’s first Catholic cathedral known as Dapdong Cathedral.
During the Christian Unity Octave from Jan. 18-25, when Christians across the globe pray for the unity of all Christians, many people throng to the street to visit the churches and other historical Christian sites.
A monument dedicated to four missionary nuns (two French and two Chinese) from the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres congregation stands in front of Incheon Central Police Station.
The nuns arrived in Incheon on July 22, 1888, five years after the opening of Jemulpo Port. Their arrival marked a new beginning for Catholic religious life when Korea was under the rule of the long-reigning Joseon dynasty (1392-1910).
The site is home to a bronze sculpture by famed Korean sculptor Joseph Choi Jong-tae depicting the missionary nuns disembarking from a ship. A prayer: “For the greater glory of God” is also engraved on it, recalling a note from the travel diary of one of the pioneering nuns, Sister Zacharias.
Some 200 meters from the nuns’ monument stands the Korean Christianity 100th Anniversary Memorial Tower, which commemorates the missionary spirit of the Protestant missionaries who first set foot in Incheon in 1885.
The church was rebuilt in 1985, on the 100th anniversary of its founding.
At the entrance to the church are busts of Appenzeller, the second pastor, George H. Jones, and Reverend Kim Ki-beom, the first pastor not only in the Korean Methodist Church but also in the Korean Protestant Church. A restored building of the Jemulpo Wesleyan Chapel, Incheon’s first Western-style Protestant chapel, is also located next to the church.
Myanmar soldiers flee to India after rebel gains
Nearly 300 Myanmar soldiers crossed the border into India to flee an advance by armed insurgents fighting the country’s junta, an Indian paramilitary officer told AFP on January 20 .
Clashes have rocked parts of Myanmar near the Indian border since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked security forces in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a 2021 military coup.
This week, the group said it had taken over the major town of Paletwa and six military bases along the border of India’s Mizoram state, where the soldiers had crossed on Wednesday.
A total of 276 troops carrying their arms and ammunition arrived at Bondukbangsora village, an officer from the Assam Rifles paramilitary force, who declined to give a name, told AFP.
“We have given them shelter at our camp,” he said, adding that the arriving soldiers were “given all the support they require”.
The officer said that his unit was collecting biometric data from the soldiers and had sought approval from the defence ministry in New Delhi to return them to Myanmar.
Hundreds of other Myanmar troops have fled to India to escape fighting since the ceasefire ended in November, according to local media reports.
Two Myanmar military aircraft arrived in Aizawl, the Mizoram state capital, to collect and repatriate soldiers who retreated from the conflict.
In October, an alliance of the AA and two other ethnic minority armed groups launched a joint offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, capturing towns and seizing vital trade hubs on the China border.
Church takes stand against charter change in Philippines
The Church and progressive groups in the Philippines are up in arms against a plan to change the country’s 1987 constitution through a people’s initiative.
The people’s initiative pro-vision in the Catholic-majority nation’s constitution states that amendments can be directly proposed by people “through at least 12% of the total number of registered voters.” Every legislative district must have “at least 3% of the registered voters” as signa-tories. “I do not favour the charter change… whether it is a people’s initiative or by the constituent assembly. A charter change is not the answer to inflation, unemployment, housing crisis, and corruption in the country,” said lawyer Aaron Pedrosa, leader of the Sanlakas, a multi-sectoral organization, on Jan. 18.
The Philippines got the current constitution a year after Ferdinand E. Marcos, the father of current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was deposed as president.
Presidential election: Ash Wednesday rite postponed to Thursday
So that the faithful can experience the important moment of the elections with full attention and with a conscience enlightened by faith and the search for the common good and charity, and on the other hand, to ensure that the baptized experience the beginning of Lent in fullness, without distraction and polarization, in a true spirit of penance, with fasting and prayer, Bishop Siprianus Hormat of Ruteng, a diocese on the island of Flores, the Catholic heart of Indonesia, has decided to postpone the celebration of the imposition of the sacred ashes, which follows liturgical calendar scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2024, to Thursday, February 15, 2024.
Particularly in the churches of the mission stations in more remote areas, the rites can also be carried out on the first Sunday of Lent, February 19. The main reason for this decision is political: the presidential elections will take place on February 14th, which will attract the attention of all Indonesian citizens and could overshadow the important spiritual moment that the Church has planned for the beginning of Lent. In a pastoral letter read to the community, Bishop Hormat reminded the faithful that “the celebration of Ash Wednesday will take place on Thursday, February 15, from morning to evening.
Christians in Asia face increasing persecution: report
One in every seven Christians in the world faces high levels of persecution for their faith and two out of every five Christians in Asia are persecuted, says a report from US-based Christian rights group, Open Doors.
The attacks on Christians are becoming “dangerously violent” with churches, and Ch-ristian institutions targeted while Christians face digital surveillance and tens of thousands are displaced across the globe, says Open Doors’ World Watch List released on Jan. 17.
The report lists the top 50 nations where Christians face severe forms of persecution. It listed North Korea as the “most dangerous place in the world for Christians.”
“Being discovered as a follower of Jesus is effectively a death sentence” in North Korea, Open Doors said.
North Korea strengthened its border with China making it hard for Christians to flee the nation and for external support to reach them.
The North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un has put maximum pressure “in all spheres of life for Christians,” the report said.
The report pointed out that 4,998 Christians were murdered, 14,766 churches and Christian properties were attacked, and 295,120 Chri-stians were displaced in 2023 across the countries that it analyzed.
The report said Yemen (rank 4), Pakistan (7), Iran (9), Afghanistan (10), India (11), Syria (12), Saudi Arabia (13) and China (19) are among the top Asian countries for Christian persecution.
The report particularly highlighted the plight of Christians in India’s Manipur state that saw ethnic violence and extensive deaths over giving scheduled tribe status to the local Meitei ethnic community.
Violence erupted on May 3, 2023, after the All-Tribal Students Union of Manipur was publicly protesting the decision by the Manipur High Court to consider giving scheduled tribe status to the Hindu-majority Meitei commu-nity. Around 70,000 ethnic Kuki Christians and Meitei Christians have been forcibly displaced, are living in terrible conditions, and are afraid to return home, the report said.
How the Vatican secured the release of jailed Nicaraguan bishop
It’s being called a successful negotiation between the Holy See and the regime of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The government in the Central American nation this past January 14 announced that it had released Bishop Rolando Alvarez from prison and exiled him to Rome. It also freed another bishop, 15 priests, and two seminarians and sent them to the Italian capital, as well.
Bishop Alvarez, a prominent figure in the Nicaraguan Church and one of last voices opposition to the Ortega dictatorship that was still in the country, had been under house arrest since August 2022. After refusing to board a plane bound for the United States with 222 political prisoners he was sentenced to twenty-six years in prison in February 2023. The following July, the defiant bishop again declined the possibility of negotiated exile with the Vatican, and in October, he was not among the twelve priests expelled to Rome after an “agreement” between the Holy See and Mana-gua. But on January 14, nearly a year after his sentencing.
‘Slum priests’ slam new libertarian government in Pope’s native Argentina
A group of 60 “slum priests” in Pope Francis’s native country released a January 19 statement denouncing what they described as deteriorating living conditions for millions of impoverished Argentines, driven by rising food prices and decreasing earnings.
Though he’s only been in office for a little over a month, new Argentine President Javier Milei nervetheless came in for criticism by the “slum priests,” who asse-rted that his minimalist concept-ion of the role of the government in society is contributing to the crisis.
“We declare in the letter that the current situation hasn’t begun with this administration. Drugs, poverty, hunger, and unemploy-ment are not something new in the poor neighborhoods,” Father Pablo Viola, who works in a poor parish of Córdoba, told.
“What’s new is that we believe that such issues can become even more complicated if the current administration really reduces the presence of the state in the slums,” Viola said.
Viola said the new admini-stration’s libertarian ideology prevents it from seeing “the complexity of the interests of different social segments and the hardships faced by the middle-class and the poor.”
He also claimed that Milei’s program is at odds with Catholic teaching, not to mention Pope Francis’s own vision.
Istanbul church attack: Gunmen kill one person during Sunday morning mass
The shooting happened at the Church of Santa Maria during Sunday mass at around 11:40 local time (08:40 GMT). Turkey’s interior minister later said on X, formerly Twitter: “The two mur-der suspects have been captured,” without giving further details on the motive of the attack.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a post on Telegram the group said two of its fighters had carried out the attack and then fled to safety.
CCTV released by Turkish media shows the moment of the attack. Worshippers were on their feet, facing the altar, when two gunmen came into the back of the church.
They appeared to be following a man who had just come in. After he was shot and fatally wounded, the gunmen calmly left.
The 19th Century church sits behind high walls, close to a small fish market, by the Bosphorus on the European side of Istanbul. The streets around it have been closed off by police.
Inside the church, investiga-tors took statements from those who were there when the attackers struck.
The Turkish Interior Minister, Ali Yerlikaya, who visited the scene said that an individual identified only as CT had died in the attack.
Speaking to reporters outside the church, Istanbul governor Davut Gul said the victim was a Turkish national and that no one else was hurt. He said the atta-ckers only fired at one person.
It was not immediately clear what the motive for the attack was or why the victim was targeted.
The Church has been urging government to permit non-Muslim students to receive religious education in their faith
In a notification on Jan. 22, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training in Paki-stan approved a new curriculum, which makes studying Islam non-compulsory for Christian, Bahai, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Zo-roastrian students in the Islamic nation.
The Religious Education Cu-rriculum 2023 for Grades 1 to Grade 12 will be introduced from the next academic year in 2024-2025.
The Catholic Church has been urging the government to make provision for non-Muslim students to receive religious education in their faith instead of Islamiat, which comprises courses on Isla-mic beliefs and practices.
Naeem Yousaf Gill, director of the National Commission of Justice and Peace, the rights body of the Pakistani bishops’ council, welcomed the development.
“We appreciate the govern-ment for involving Catholic bi-shops in developing the syllabus of Christianity. However, its mo-nitoring and implementation is another challenge. Policies for minorities often flop in our coun-try,” he told.
Pakistan has one of the lowest budgetary allocations for educa-tion in South Asia. The nation allotted 1.7 percent of its GDP for education in the fiscal year 2022-23 against 1.4 percent earlier.
“The long-term process will require training of teachers and a salary structure,” Gill observed.
In 2020, the provincial Punjab government made it compulsory for Muslim students to study the Quran, and non-Muslim students were asked to study ethics in lieu of Islamiat from Grade 3.
Surprising agreement between African and German bishops on same-sex couples
In the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria, featuring regional art of the Tyrol, there is a collection of magnificently, and intricately, carved nativity scenes. One of them shows the manger set amidst the mountainous Alps, with medieval towers looking down on the scene. That carving may not be historically accurate, but it is not heresy either. Its lack of historical precision does not undermine the doctrine of the incarnation. On the contrary, the Tyrolean manger exemplifies the doctrine. We Catholics believe that, just as the Son of God took on human flesh, the Christian faith can and must inculturate itself, adapting to the goodness inherent in all human cultures even while purifying any elements that are inherently contrary to the Gospel.
I thought of that manger scene when reading the response of the African bishops to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s decree Fiducia supplicans. The Vatican document said that while not changing the church’s perennial doctrine about marriage, it wanted to commend the practice of giving non-liturgical, spontaneous blessings to couples who are in an irregular union, whether because they are divorced or remarried or because they are in a same-sex relationship.
“We, the African bishops, do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities,” the statement read. Signed by Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM, the statement represented the united voice of the African bishops.
How is that different, then, from the decision by the German Synodal Way in March 2023 to affirm the practice of blessing same-sex couples? The article about the German decision noted, “German bishops face pressure from frustrated grassroots Catholics in a country where Christians are roughly equally divided between Protestants and Catholics.” In Germany, unlike Africa, it seems scandalous to many Catholics that the Catholic Church does not bless same-sex couples.