Papal visit sparks hope and joy in Papua New Guinea, says missionary priest
Indian court tells Church-run schools to ensure fair appointments
Cardinal Jaime Sin Museum set to open in central Philippines
Pope Francis to open youth education hub in Indonesia during Apostolic Journey
Cardinal Fernández: India’s Vailankanni Shrine reveals welcoming Mother, not syncretism
Seoul paves the way for World Youth Day 2027 with launch event
SIGNIS Secretary General calls for synodality and solutions journalism in AI-dominated future
Pope Francis: Reading literature can enrich the Christian life, aid in priestly formation
Cardinal Sako: Middle East still suffering after Iraq’s tragedy in 2014
Pakistan’s National Assembly unanimously approved the raising of the minimum legal age for marriage to 18, amending a 19th-century law allowing the marriage of Christian children.
The Christian Marriage Act of 2024 amended an 1872 British rule allowing marriage at 13 for girls and 16 for boys, raising the age to 18 for both genders. The law was approved amid incidents of child marriage, kidnapping, and forced conversion in Pakistan, where about 19 million Pakistani women are victims of child ma-rriage, according to 2018 data.
The act was first introduced to the Senate last year by Sen. Kamran Michael as an update to the 1872 law and was approved on July 9 of this year after Na-veed Aamir Jeeva, a Christian from Punjab province, introduced it to Pakistan’s sovereign legisla-tive body, the National Assem-bly.
The act applies to Christians in the Islamabad Capital Terri-tory, a territory in the north-western area of the Punjab region surrounding Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Local Catholic lead-ers including the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, Bishop Samson Shukar-din, and the National Commission for Justice and Peace have since hailed the act for protecting girls from forced conversions and child marriages, which is very common in Pakistan.
The new amendment may help prevent the practice of abducting young girls from the minority population of Christians and the forcing of them to convert to Islam and marry an older man. Fewer than 2% of Pakistanis are Chri-stian and Hindu, respectively. Sunni Islam is the majority reli-gion, at about 83% of the popu-lation, while Shia Islam is about 12% of the population.
Leave a Comment