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Seminarians in select countries of Africa will be among some of the beneficiaries of a campaign, which the Catholic Charity organisation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is launching in honour of the murdered French Catholic priest, Father Jacques Hamel.

A total of 1,000 seminarians from 21 countries around the world will benefit from the ACN collections in honour of Father Hamel who was murdered by ISIS sympathisers while celebrating Mass on 26 July in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France.

The studies of future Catholic priests from Angola, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, DR Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia will be funded, in part, from the collection of funds by the Italian chapter of the pontifical foundation ACN.

“Support for the formation of new priests is a concrete response to fundamentalism, because especially in countries where the extremist threat is the greatest, the ministers of God must possess the appropriate tools to promote dialogue and contribute to a peaceful coexistence between all the religious groups, putting an end to the conflicts,” Director of ACN in Italy, Alessandro Monteduro has been quoted as telling Catholic News Agency.

ACN is “as an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy Father” with the mission “to help suffering and persecuted faithful worldwide.”

“We chose the seminaries that had the greatest need for aid, to allow them to accommodate more students and form what we consider to be the new 'soldiers of the faith.'” Monteduro of ACN has also been quoted as explaining the justification for choosing Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Other countries whose seminarians will be supported include the countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Romania, and India.

(Father Don Bosco Onyalla, CANAA in Nairobi)

Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va

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(Vatican Radio)  The abuse of religious freedom is on the rise, with a vicious cycle of religious restriction and social hostilities fueling its increase, according to Brian Grim, Ph. D. of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation.

The US State Department recently released its annual International Religious Freedom Report for 2015. The report says one-in-four countries oppress religious freedom, affecting roughly 75% of the world’s population.

Brian Grim, Ph. D. is president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and a leading expert on international religious demography and the socio-economic impact of restrictions on religious freedom. He spoke to Vatican Radio's Fr. Bernd Hagenkord about the cycle of restrictions on religious freedom and resultant societal hostility.

Listen to the full interview:

Mr. Grim said the statistics provided in the US State Department's report on religious freedom takes into account government restrictions on religious freedom and social hostilities involving religion.

He also noted the rise in religious intolerance increased greatly after the terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda of September 11, 2001.

"Those attacks and the reaction to them have set off a cycle of governments trying to restrict religion for security purposes, but as governments act to restrict religion that tends to exacerbate tensions. So we see a number of social hostilities coming from this back-and-forth of government action".

Interconnected freedoms

Yet restrictions on religious freedoms don't just stop there. Mr. Grim says other forms of personal freedoms are negatively impacted as well.

"Where you restrict religious freedom, that tends to also coincide with restrictions on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and these restrictions not only are felt by people in religious communities but across the board, including greater restrictions on women."

So, he says, greater freedom of religious expression means a more free society in general, which ushers in several corresponding economic advantages.

Better business

Mr. Grim believes more religious freedom pans out into a healthier economic system.

"Where you have religious freedom you have more stable and peaceful societies. So when you have stability and peace, then you have a more sustainable economy. It's not built on just, you could say, a 'bullets and bombs' economy, but it's built on a very diverse and sustainable business climate."

Two trends and a hope

Getting to the roots of the problem of religious persecution, Mr. Grim says there are two angles to consider: the previously-mentioned cycle of restriction and reaction, and the secularization of the Western world.

"Part of this is extremism, violent extremism, government reaction to it, but there is also a trend toward secularization, especially in Western societies. That contributes also to this rising tide [of religious persecution] because, as people secularize, they don't necessarily see the value that religion provides to society and then there is less support for religious freedom itself."

"The hope is," he continued, "that, as people of faith exercise their religious freedom to do good and to love their neighbor, these trends can turn around, but that takes a commitment that comes from the heart."

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As Pakistan’s minority communities marked National Minorities Day on thursday, two Catholic bishops called for a more inclusive society lamenting that despite Mohammad Ali Jinna, the founder of Pakistan, promising respect for all religions, minorities today are in the throes of intolerance.  Non-Muslim citizens "have played a vital role in the formation of Pakistan. Not only they gave their lives for freedom but still continue to fight for nation building. This is why their concerns must be addressed by the government”, said Bishop Joseph Arshad of Faisalabd, the president of the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, during the celebration of the National Minorities Day on Thursday in Lahore.

The Pakistani government established the annual observance in 2009, to recognize the sacrifice and service of minority groups.  Celebrating the day on the 69th anniversary of Jinnah’s historic 1947 speech to the Constitutive Assembly of the new nation, the Government of Punjab and the Department for Human Rights and Minorities organized a day of meetings, songs and speeches in Lahore to honor the non-Muslim communities. They were attended by thousands of religious, parish employees, Hindu and Sikh leaders.

"We know that Pakistan is going through a difficult phase in its history,” Bishop Arshad noted.  “Religious intolerance and neglect in society have created a sense of hopelessness among the people. Minorities must be included as an integral part of society”.   Archbishop Sebastian Shah of Lahore recalled Jinnah assuring Pakistan’s “Christian leaders that every person in Pakistan would have a free life in accordance with their religion and that the state would have no problem with religions.”  With Pakistani Independence Day coming up on August 14th, he said, “we must think about which direction our country is taking”. 

Minister for Higher Education, Zakia Shahnawaz supported the bishops' appeals, but said that Muslims cannot stop terrorism alone.  “Our hearts cry together every time a suicide bomber blows himself up and kills everyone. We need to look together for solutions to these problems,” she said.  (Source: AsiaNews)

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An Indian Catholic priest spearheading a campaign for cornea donation has invited Pope Francis to pledge his corneas to inspire others to help the blind.  Claretian Father George Kannanthanam's appeal, which asked the Pope to pledge his corneas to mark World Sight Day on Oct. 13, was handed to Apostolic Nuncio to India and Nepal, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio on Aug. 10.  "Your one act will inspire millions of people around the world to emulate," read Father Kannanthanam's appeal to the Pope.  "Sight will be the best gift you could give to the world in the Year of Mercy," said the appeal.

Father Kannanthanam who founded Project Vision a year ago to create awareness about cornea donation, told UCANEWS that India needs around 140,000 cornea transplants every year but currently only 30,000-40,000 corneas are collected.  Media reports say thee are some 39 million blind people worldwide with more than 15 million of them in India. It is estimated that in 20 percent of these cases vision can be restored through cornea transplantation, Father Kannanthanam said.  He urged the nuncio to take up the cause with various Church bodies in India, including the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, Catholic Religious of India and Catholic Health Association of India. (Source: UCAN) 

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Sri Lanka took a major step towards truth and national reconciliation on Thursday when its parliament passed a law to establish an office to trace people who disappeared during a 26-year war and another insurrection.  The law was passed without a vote.  It will enable independent investigation of thousands of cases of missing people, measures to trace them and protection of their rights and interests and those of their relatives.  

"We have brought this to correct the past mistakes in history," Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera presenting the bill told the parliament.   Meanwhile, supporters of former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, who allege that the move was to prosecute the military, protested wearing black bands and shawls.  Rajapaksa, who lost to Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 and ‎is now an opposition legislator, was out of the country on Thursday. But Samaraweera said the government was trying to safeguard the military by looking into the allegations leveled against them and to maintain their reputation internationally.   The United Nations and rights groups have long urged justice for the families of those who disappeared during the war, including those who were alleged to have been secretly abducted by state-backed groups and paramilitary outfits.

Sri Lanka has already acknowledged that some 65,000 people were missing, mostly ethnic minority Tamils from its 26-year war with Tamil Tiger rebels and a separate Marxist insurrection.  President Sirisena's coalition government has agreed to address past human rights violations through independent investigations and to implement a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Rajapaksa's government had rejected the U.N. recommendations, saying it wanted to address rights concerns without any international pressure. M.A. Sumanthiran, an opposition legislator from the main

Tamil party hailed the said the new law as the "first baby step" in the process of reconciliation.  "There cannot be a reconciliation without the ascertainment of truth and in this process the most important issue is the missing person, persons who have been made to disappear during the course of a protracted war in this country," he said.

The office of missing persons will trace those disappeared during the war for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka and an armed revolt by a radical Marxist group against the government in 1987-89.  (Source: Reuters)

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Berlin, Germany, Aug 12, 2016 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Vatican bishop spoke out last week stressing that while few Muslims are terrorists, there are passages in the Quran advocating violence that can’t be ignored, and must be clarified from within the Muslim community.

“It would be naive to pretend that there are not certain episodes in the Koran and the Hadith that may lend themselves to a violent interpretation,” Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, said Aug. 5.

He added that “how the Muslim community worldwide can give a peaceful hermeneutic to these passages is a task which I imagine will be made more difficult with too much pressure ‘from outside,’” and that thus “I wouldn't dream of telling Muslims how to interpret their faith.”

“But those who want to work towards that end from within will find a strong ally and friend in the Catholic Church, ready to accompany on the way.”

Bishop Sánchez delivered this reflection during a “Meditation for Peace” hosted by The Art of Living, an India-based Hindu organization.

His speech came just days after Pope Francis on his July 31 return flight from Krakow voiced his belief that it is not right to identify Islam with violence. “This is not right and it is not true,” he said.

In his speech Bishop Sánchez agreed with the Pope, but noted how the “religious-inspired terrorism” of the last few decades has been “propagated by a few individuals who insist that they alone have the correct interpretation of Islam.”

These individuals persist “in the face of the billion other adherents of Islam who testify to a tolerant religion which does not recognize the legitimacy of the actions of these few wicked individuals,” he said.

Bishop Sánchez acknowledged that most Muslims are not guilty of the violence perpetrated “in the name of their religion,” and that Muslims themselves were killed in the July 15 act of terrorism in Nice, when a truck plowed through crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing 84 people and wounding roughly 50 others.

He also noted how an “overwhelming majority” of the victims of terrorist groups in the Middle East such as the Islamic State are Muslim.

“It therefore falls upon all leaders of moral authority in these times to do all they can to calm an increasingly tense situation – made all the more tense by the actions of the few,” he said.

The bishop quoted a prayer Pope Francis offered July 30 at World Youth Day in Krakow for the conversion of terrorists to the “way of peace and goodness, of respect for the life and dignity of every human being.”

“I think this is also the sincere hope of everybody – of whichever faith tradition,” he said.

In light of continued terrorism around the world, “every single person, irrespective of personal faith, has the responsibility to speak – and to act – with the utmost prudence … Only ever appealing to our neighbor’s most noble sentiments and never to his worst instincts,” Bishop Sánchez said.

He concluded his speech by emphasizing that “what I want to say – and this is my central message for the Meditation for Peace today – is that perhaps it is the case that this generation has been entrusted with the last opportunity of preserving peace throughout our societies…across the European Union and the wider world.”

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