Catholic News 2

Washington D.C., Jul 23, 2016 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After several shootings and increased racial tensions around the country, the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for a national day of prayer and appointed a task force devoted to peace and unity.

"I have stressed the need to look toward additional ways of nurturing an open, honest and civil dialogue on issues of race relations, restorative justice, mental health, economic opportunity, and addressing the question of pervasive gun violence," said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, the USCCB president.

"The Day of Prayer and special Task Force will help us advance in that direction. By stepping forward to embrace the suffering, through unified, concrete action animated by the love of Christ, we hope to nurture peace and build bridges of communication and mutual aid in our own communities."

The newest statement and task force reflect sentiments in a previous statement from Archbishop Kurtz released earlier this month, urging prayer, reflection, and dialogue following racially-related shootings and violence in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, and Dallas.

“To all people of good will, let us beg for the strength to resist the hatred that blinds us to our common humanity. To my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us gather at the Cross of Jesus. Our Savior suffered at the hands of humanity's worst impulses, but He did not lose hope in us or in His heavenly father. Love overcomes evil,” he said in his July 8 statement.

Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot July 5 after an encounter with police in Baton Rouge.

One day after Sterling’s death, an African American man in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was shot four times by a police officer and later died. Philando Castile, age 32, had been pulled over for an alleged broken tail-light.

On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed in what authorities called a “sniper ambush” at the end of a peaceful protest against police shootings of African Americans.

In the following days, police officers were also shot and killed in racially-related incidents in Baton Rouge and Kansas City, Kan.

The National Day of Prayer for Peace in Our Communities will be celebrated Sept. 9, the feast of St. Peter Claver, the patron saint of African Americans.

The task force, which will be headed by former USCCB president Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, will collect and distribute resources, listen to concerns of community members and law enforcement, and work to rebuild relationships and resolve conflicts. The group will also present a report on their activities and recommendations at the November meeting of the USCCB.

"I am honored to lead this Task Force which will assist my brother bishops, individually and as a group, to accompany suffering communities on the path toward peace and reconciliation," Archbishop Gregory said in a statement.

"We are one body in Christ, so we must walk with our brothers and sisters and renew our commitment to promote healing. The suffering is not somewhere else, or someone else's; it is our own, in our very dioceses."

The announcement of the day of prayer and the creation of the task force follows several prayer vigils and peace efforts in the Catholic Church, and comes at the end of a novena for peace launched by the Knights of Columbus following the shootings.

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Catholic and Protestant Church leaders have denounced a U.S. Christian news report that claimed 91,000 Muslims across Bangladesh have converted to Christianity.

The July 20 report from The Christian Post claims the surge happened over the last six years. "Even though persecution against Christians in Bangladesh is on the rise, so is the number of Muslims converting to Christianity," the report reads.

The report references a U.S.-based Christian human rights organization, Christian Freedom International as its primary source of information.  It goes on to estimate that there are 1.6 million Christians in Bangladesh, accounting for 1 percent of country’s 160 million people, 90 percent of whom are Sunni Muslim.

But, according to data from the Catholic Church and a major Protestant church forum, there are only 600,000 Christians making up less than a half percent of country’s population.

Church leaders termed the report "baseless" and warned that it poses a "great danger" to Bangladeshi Christians who are already reeling from recent attacks.

"This is a totally false and fabricated report, there is no credible information that the number of Christians is rising in Bangladesh let alone through conversion of Muslims," Father Albert Thomas Rozario, convener of the Justice and Peace Commission in Dhaka Archdiocese told ucanews.com.

"Religious minorities including Christians are being targeted by militants, and these kinds of "fake reports" might enrage Islamic radicals and invite more attacks," the priest said.

A senior pastor from the Bangladesh Baptist Church, the largest Protestant church, also denounced the report as "false" and "disappointing."

"Based on experience and information, the reported increase is baseless. It will make Islamic extremists angry and provoke abuse and persecution," said the 65-year-old pastor, who requested not to be named.

The pastor noted that some fake churches who proselytize among poor people in order to collect foreign donations might account for the mistake.

"I suspect those fake churches provide cooked up information to donors for their own vested interests," said the pastor. "It might bring them money but it puts the whole Christian community at risk. Christian leaders need to stand up against those false churches."

Though Islam is officially the state religion, Bangladesh's constitution established the country as a secular state. The charter also protects the right to profess, practice and propagate any religion freely, but bans proselytizing.

(Source: UCANews.com)

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