The Latin rite archdiocese of Trivandrum says it will continue its agitation against the Vizhinjam seaport, despite a High Court order to remove tents used by the protesters.
“It is only an interim order and the Church would file a petition to review it,” Father Eugine Pereira,, the vicar general of the archdiocese told on October 8.
“We have some 500 women currently protesting under the tents,” Father Pereira added.
The previous day, the high court directed the state government to demolish the protest tents pitched outside the under-construction Vizhinjam port that blocked the entrance of the project.
The high court, that heard a contempt petition filed by Adani Group, said the ongoing work of the seaport should not be disrupted at any cost and com-plaints regarding the project can be raised at appropriate forums.
Father Pereira said the Adani group could use a parallel road to resume the port work.
The government has appointed one more commission to study the demands of the fisher people and the environmental impacts, and “we will wait until the report is submitted,” the priest added.
The fisher people have demanded a rehabilitation package for those who have lost houses and occupation because of the port, subsidized kerosene, and a study about the environmental impact of the project.
The port is being built by Gautam Adani, an Indian businessman who already owns 13 seaports and airports in the country. The new seaport is coming up at Vizhinjam, south of Thiruvananthapuram, under an agreement with the Kerala government and the patronage of the federal government.
Indian govt to look into quotas for Dalit Christians, Muslims
A Catholic Church official has welcomed the Indian government’s decision to appoint a commission to examine if Dalits who converted to Christianity or Islam can be accorded Scheduled Caste (SC) status.
The federal government in a notification issued on Oct. 6 announced the setting up of a three-member inquiry commission headed by former Chief Justice of India, Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, to look into granting SC status, its implications and submit a report within two years.
However, Dalit Christian leaders dismissed this as a tactic to delay their recognition as SCs, the official name for former untouchables in the country.
The SC status will ensure them a share in the 15% reserved quota in parliament and state legislatures, government jobs and education, at present extended only to Dalits belonging to Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist religions
“It is a welcome move. We have to take it positively as it will give us an opportunity to highlight the issues plaguing our brothers and sisters,” Bishop Moses D Prakasam, a member of Indian Bishops’ Conference’s Office of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, told on Oct. 8.
Removing Satan from Pakistan parishioners’ pockets
The colourful posters advertising the annual Marian pilgrimage are plastered across Tera village in Pakistan, but they come with an unusual prohibition.
“Photographing or videotaping on mobile phones is prohibited. We are all obliged to respect the holy venue. The incoming guests for pilgrimage are requested to observe the SOPs [standard operating procedures],” state notices said.
The prohibition on mobile phones aims to keep people away from distractions. It also wants to avoid photos of young women being recklessly circulated on social media in the Muslim-majority country where young Catholic women are frequently kidnapped, and forcefully converted to marry Muslims.
The coronation of a Marian statue by young girls is the main attraction of Marian fests, such as the one on October 1 at Saint Mother Teresa Church Tera village in Punjab province.
Hundreds of parishes across Pakistan hold such coronations during October, the month dedicated to Mary and the rosary in the Church calendar.
Preteen Catholics, dressed as brides, walk gracefully towards the grotto or stage holding a gold or silver crown and place it on the Marian statue amid applause and cheers.
These girls, referred to as queens, are usually chosen from a rosary group or Sunday school through a lucky draw. Two children, dressed as angels, help them in holding the crown tray.
Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan dioceses of Punjab province, home to more than 2 million Christians, have set an age limit for these queens following the arrival of the internet and mobile phones in the 1990s.
“The annual practice is aimed at keeping the crowd at bay from the young girls”
Conservative churchgoers label the phone as a smoking gun in the hands of young men in the Islamic Republic where parents keep young people on a tight leash.
As popular dating apps such as Tinder are banned in Pakistan, young people use social media for such purposes.
According to Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, the restrictions vary in different dioceses. There is no such barrier in the southern region where there are fewer Christians.
Papuans pay the price of graft in Indonesia
A multimillion-dollar graft scandal involving high-ranking leaders in conflict-torn Papua has drawn a public backlash and further impoverished people traumatized by decades of violence.
Indonesia’s anti-graft agency confirmed last month a corruption scandal involving Papua’s top man — Governor Lukas Enembe. He allegedly embezzled around US$36 million of state funds aimed to advance people’s welfare. He allegedly spent the money on casinos overseas and his businesses. If the money had been used appropriately, hundreds of new schools and health facilities could have been built.
The governor claimed the accusations against him are politically motivated.
However, indigenous communities, anti-graft groups and the Church believe that corruption in Papua is rife. They have called on the governor to surrender and follow the legal process accordingly.
But he has refused to do so. The police haven’t arrested him, as his residence is heavily guard-ed by supporters and relatives, fearing it could trigger a clash.
“Twenty years since autonomy status was granted, Papua remains the poorest region in Indonesia.”
‘Nobody dares speak out’: Chinese writer forced into exile
Murong Xuecun was one of the brightest stars of China’s literary scene, his novels offering searing critiques of contemporary social issues that few other writers dared to imitate.
But after a decade of diminishing freedom of speech under President Xi Jinping, he could not publish in his own country and was eventually forced into exile. His fate mirrors that of many liberal Chinese intellectuals who tried to shine a light on the system and then fled abroad, were im-prisoned or fell silent.
The 48-year-old writer, whose real name is Hao Qun, left China in August last year after writing “Deadly Quiet City”, a non-fiction account of the 2020 Wuhan coronavirus lockdown released in March.
His Australian publisher believed he would “definitely get arrested” after the book’s release, Murong told AFP from his home in Melbourne.
“They urged me to leave immediately.”
Fearing imminent arrest, Murong sent each page as he wrote it to a friend overseas using encryption software, before deleting it from his computer.
“I told my friend: ‘No matter what happens to me, this book must be published.’”
Families grieve for Thai nursery dead
Weeping, grief-stricken families gathered on October 7 out-side a Thai nursery where an ex-policeman murdered nearly two dozen children in one of the kingdom’s worst mass killings.
Thai King Maha Vajiralong-korn and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha will later visit survivors of the attack that left at least 37 people dead, including the attacker’s wife and child.
“I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think that it would be my two grandsons,” she said, clutching her inconsolable daughter’s shoulder.
Overnight, coffins carrying the bodies of the victims — who include 23 children — arrived at a morgue in Udon Thani, the closest city to the rural district ripped apart by Thursday’s three-hour rampage.
Armed with a 9mm pistol and a knife, sacked police sergeant Panya Khamrab opened fire on the childcare centre in the north-eastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province at about 12:30 pm (0530 GMT).
Following the attack, 34-year-old Panya fled the scene in a pickup truck to head home and murder his wife and child before taking his own life, police said, ending the killing spree around 3:00 pm.
Priests demand fair trials in Indonesia’s Papua region
More than 100 Catholic priests have signed a petition seeking fair trials in cases of violence, including sensational murders, as a way of peace-building in Indonesia’s restive Christian-majority Papua re-gion. The petition includes a five-point declaration which was adopted during a meeting of 106 diocesan priests from all five dioceses in the region in Agats, Asmat district in South Papua province on Oct. 4-9. The priests cited the Aug. 22 killing and mutilation of four Protestant Christians in Mimika district of Central Papua province allegedly by six soldiers, who accused them of having links with separatist rebels.
A social development quest in Timor-Leste
In 2015, when Father Hwang Seokmo ended his term as the director of the headquarters of his religious order in Seoul, he requested the superior send him as a missionary to Timor-Leste.
The 57-year-old priest, a member of the South Korea-based Clerical Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs, said the tiny Catholic-majority country, also known as East Timor, drew his attention as “a fertile land” to cultivate the spirit and spirituality of the congregation.
“East Timor caught my eye. It was an area that was planned to contribute to the Asian region with the spirit and spirituality of the Clerical Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs and to develop vocations,” Father Hwang told the Catholic Peace Broadcasting Corporation of Korea (CPBC).
Since his arrival in Timor-Leste, Father Hwang has overseen the Sebastiao Gomes Monastery and serves some 8,000 Catholics in Aileu parish in the Alieu Requidoe region, about 1,500 meters above sea level.
Cardinal Müller on Synod on Synodality: ‘A Hostile Takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ …We Must Resist’
A top cardinal raised concerns about how his fellow prelates understand the nature of the Church and treat papal authority.
“The theory of the Pope as autocrat, borrowed from 19th century Jesuit theology, not only contradicts the Second Vatican Council, but undermines the credibility of the Church with this caricature of the Petrine ministry,” Cdl. Gerhard Müller told Spanish Catholic website InfoVaticana in September.
The German cardinal complained about views on papal authority expressed by his brother bishops during the September consistory in Rome.
“There was no opportunity to discuss the burning issues, for example, about the frontal attack on the Christian image of man by the ideologies of posthumanism and gender madness or about the crisis of the Church in Europe,” Müller lamented.
Among those neglected issues, Müller also identified shortages of priestly vocations and Mass attendees. Instead, bishops “referred to the theory of the papacy as an unlimited power of divine right over the entire Church, as if the Pope were a Deus in terris [Latin: ‘God on land’],” Müller said.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, the Pope’s top adviser on curial reform, represents an additional concern. Müller noted that Ghirlanda “holds the view that everything Popes have said or done in the course of Church history is either dogma or law, de jure divine [Latin: ‘of divine law’]. This contradicts the entire Catholic tradition, and especially Vatican II.”
Müller acknowledged that today’s focus in the Church is on the ecology and concerns for the planet, rather than on Jesus Christ and concern for salvation. The cardinal attributed this earthly focus to the lure of worldly power, prestige, money and pleasure dominant in today’s world. These lures have enticed many within the Church, leading them to attempt to create “a new world order with out God,” Müller said.
Belo sex allegations test Timor Church’s mettle
Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva of Dili, Timor-Leste’s first archbishop who was named a cardinal in August, is set for a baptism of fire that will test his every fibre and that of his countrymen.
A credible allegation of sexually abusing minors has been made against one of Cardinal da Silva’s predecessors — the form-er Apostolic Administrator of Dili Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, who has already had travel and other restrictions placed on him, and it does not surprise many in the tiny country that is only 20 years old.
Dutch news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer publish-ed on Sept. 28 an investigative report, accusing the 74-year Salesian bishop of sexually abusing underage boys in Timor Leste over a 20-year period and buying their silence.
On the following day, the Vatican responded, admitting it had known about the allegations since 2019 and placed restrictions on Bishop Belo in 2020. Yet, the Vatican did not make these allegations public and is yet to make any comment about victims. Hopefully, that will come.