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Juba, South Sudan, May 23, 2016 / 02:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Slovak nun and medical doctor died Friday from gunshot wounds she suffered in an attack in Yei, South Sudan last week.

Sister Veronika Terézia Racková was shot and wounded by three soldiers on May 16, and died from her injuries on May 20, said Martin Kramara, spokesperson of the Slovak Bishops Conference (KBS), according to Slovak news sources.

The sister had been driving a patient to a nearby hospital when she was attacked and shot in the stomach and suffered multiple other injuries, including fractures to her pelvis, according to several reports. She underwent surgery at a local hospital before being flown to Nairobi, Kenya, for further treatment.

A member of the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters (SSpS), Sr. Veronika was the head of St Bakhita’s Medical Centre in Yei, South Sudan. She has also served in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and Ghana, according to the The News Agency of the Slovak Republic.

“Precious indeed is the life given for Mission,” said a tribute post to Sr. Veronika, posted on her order’s Facebook page.

“Thank you so much for all your precious prayers and support extended. Though we are in deep pain and sorrow for the death of Sr. Veronika we offer peace, healing and compassion to the people in South Sudan whom she gave her life, especially those who wounded her. May the love of the Triune GOD be sown in every heart,” the message read.

A Mass was celebrated in memory of Sr. Veronika Rackova over the weekend at Yei’s Christ the King Cathedral in South Sudan, according to Vatican Radio.

Vicar General of Yei Diocese, Fr. Zachariah Angutuwa Sebit told the tearful congregation at the Mass that Sr. Veronika had known she was dying.

According to media reports in South Sudan, three suspects have been arrested in connection with the shooting - soldiers from the ‘Joint Military Unit’ which provides security for civilians at night.

Earlier in the week, Secretary General of the Diocese of Yei, Fr. Emmanuel Sebit told media that he believed the shooting of Sr. Veronika was “a tragic accident,” since it happened on the eve of anniversary celebrations marking 30 years of Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLA), and the military had been deployed in large numbers that night to protect civilians.

At the Mass, Bishop of Yei, Erkolano Lodu Tombe, spoke of his sadness at the death of Sr. Veronika, especially at a time when the war-torn country had just begun to take steps towards peace. He also urged the government to punish soldiers who abuse their role while protecting civilians.

Yei River State Information Minister, Stephen Lodu Onesimo, said the shooting of Sr. Racková was an “undisciplined and barbaric act” and the perpetrators “must be brought to justice.”

Provincial Regional Superior of the SSpS sisters, Sister Maria Jerly told journalists that the death of Sr. Veronika was a tragedy for all her sisters, especially those working in South Sudan. Still, she reiterated the order’s commitment to staying in the area despite the risks, reported Vatican Radio.  

“It is our hope to continue to serve the needy people of this great nation of Africa despite this unfortunate incident,” Sister Jerly said.

 

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Washington D.C., May 23, 2016 / 04:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the U.S. lifted its decades-long arms embargo with Vietnam during President Barack Obama’s visit there, human rights advocates argued that the country had not sufficiently improved its human rights record to warrant the deal.  

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch expressed serious disappointment over the deal. “President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don't deserve,” John Sifton, Asia policy director for the group, said May 23.

After the U.S. had pressured Vietnam “for years” to improve its “human rights record,” he continued, it had not responded in kind. “It has not repealed any repressive laws, nor released any significant number of political prisoners, nor made any substantial pledges,” he said.

Weeks in advance of President Obama’s visit to Vietnam, human rights advocates were insisting that the U.S. make any deal with the country contingent upon human rights concessions. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) asked that the trip not even be made unless the Vietnamese government released religious prisoners. There should be no agreement struck “until there is significant, verifiable, and irreversible improvements in human rights in Vietnam,” he said.

At a joint press conference on Monday, President Obama said the lifting of the embargo stemmed from “a lengthy process of moving towards normalization with Vietnam.”

Human rights, he continued, were “not directly tied” to the lifting of the embargo, and he admitted that “this is an area where we still have differences.” Vietnam’s President Quang said, through an interpreter, that “the consistent position and viewpoint of the Vietnamese state and government is to protect and promote human rights.”

The White House has said that it is pushing Vietnam to improve its record. “During the April 25-26 annual U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue, the United States called on Vietnam to release all prisoners of conscience and cease harassment of individuals exercising their fundamental freedoms, including those relating to expression, assembly, and religion,” the White House said Monday.

Yet human rights advocates say that words have not been supported by actions from the administration.  

Shortly before the president’s visit, the government released a Catholic priest and well-known religious prisoner, Fr. Nguyen Van Ly, two months away from the end of his sentence. However, “the Vietnamese government has insulted the president by detaining or harassing dissidents yesterday and today,” Sifton said Monday.

The release of Fr. Ly was no “major human rights breakthrough,” cautioned Rep. Smith.

And overall, the human rights situation in Vietnam remains “dire,” Human Rights Watch reports, because the Communist government “maintains a monopoly on political power” and the state is responsible for widespread human rights abuses like torture, seizing of private property “without adequate compensation,” and the jailing of human rights and democracy activists.

As for religious freedom in the country, the overall situation is “nuanced and complex,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted in its 2016 annual report, and because of the government’s maltreatment of certain religious groups, the commission has recommended it as a “country of particular concern” since 2001.

That term is an official State Department designation given to countries “the government of which has engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

Vietnam meets this criteria because government harassment, imprisonment, and physical abuse of members of certain religions has continued for years and has not stopped, the report explained.

While the Vietnamese government has allowed for the opening of new churches and a new Catholic university in the country, and “relations between the Vietnamese government and the Vatican improved in 2015,” the report noted, not all Catholics enjoy religious freedom.

There have been reports of Catholic schools being threatened with destruction by authorities, and “Catholics, including nuns” have been attacked in the Gia Lai province. Other Christian pastors or priests have been imprisoned, attacked, or threatened by the government; some activists were attacked even after they were released from prison.

Vietnam reportedly has between 100 to 150 “prisoners of conscience” detained for their religious beliefs.

The wife of an imprisoned Christian human rights lawyer, Vu Minh Khanh, testified before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations on May 10. In her written testimony, she said her husband was arrested in 2007 for “conducting propaganda against the state.”

After his prison sentence – four years in prison and four more years in house arrest – he was taken again by authorities in December and faces anywhere from 3 to 20 years in prison, she said.

“My husband has been detained for almost 5 months now, yet I have not received any information about him,” she stated, noting he has no access to lawyers or family. She added that “if in fact my husband has been tortured physically and/or mentally, or even given false information, I would not know.”

Now that the arms deal is in place, the U.S. must work with it “to create incentives for Vietnam to improve its human rights record,” Sifton stressed in his statement.

“President Obama and the US Congress will need to tell Hanoi clearly that specific arms sales will be restricted if the government doesn't start releasing political prisoners, repealing the laws that are used to prosecute them, and easing up on harassment and restrictions on dissidents and journalists.”

Photo credit: Dejan Lazarevic via www.shutterstock.com. 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Christina Lee Knauss, The Catholic Miscellany

By Christina Lee Knauss

ST. MATTHEWS, S.C. (CNS) -- For years, Matthew Quay picked up paper clips from desks and absent-mindedly straightened them while listening to discussions or presentations at work.

He also carried some in his pockets to straighten during Mass at Holy Trinity Church in Orangeburg.

It was simply something to do with his hands to help him stay focused, he said.

He never figured that simple action would eventually turn into works of art that help persecuted Christians overseas.

Last fall, Quay started to experiment with twisting the straightened clips into various shapes. He made a cross. With a few more twists, he formed the corpus of Christ.

Within days, he was making beautiful crucifixes out of paper clips, sacred art formed from the simplest of office supplies.

Since then, Quay's creations have been displayed at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center. Sales of the artwork have raised thousands of dollars to help persecuted and displaced Christians in the Middle East.

Around the same time he made his first paper-clip crucifix, Quay was feeling helpless and sad about the plight of families fleeing Syria and other war-torn parts of the Mideast.

"In September of 2015, I saw all those images of the refugees, especially that little boy who washed up on the shore in Turkey," he told The Catholic Miscellany, newspaper of the Diocese of Charleston. "It really bothered me because I felt we were so comfortable over here and it seemed like there was nothing we could do. I never thought my feelings about the refugees and my art would come together."

In December, his mother, Deni Quay, asked him to sell his work at Holy Trinity's annual Christmas bazaar. Quay, who belongs to Knights of Columbus Council 6891, had recently learned of the Knights' nationwide efforts to raise money for Christian refugees in the Middle East.

Finally, he said, he saw a way for his art to help the people who haunted his thoughts.

By December, his crucifixes had evolved from simple crosses in one or two colors to larger, more elaborate ones made with clips of varying sizes in many hues. In two days, he made more than $1,400 for the refugee effort.

That success prompted Quay to devote even more time to his creations, to expand the complexity and variety of detail, size and color.

He purchased paper clips from office supply stores and online sources. People started giving him extras they had around the house. He especially treasures a donation of hundreds of vintage ones that came from the home of a former schoolteacher. Older clips, he said, come in darker, more burnished hues of silver and gold which add a special look to the crucifixes.

He found some about 4 inches long in a sale bin at a store. Those large clips ended up being ideal for his big crucifixes, which can be up to 17 inches long and use more than 200 clips. These large pieces take about 18 hours of work to complete, while smaller ones take about four hours.

Quay said his inspiration for the colors comes from the seasonal vestments worn by Father Wilbroad Mwape, administrator at Holy Trinity, where he's a member.

He also has made crucifixes on request: a gold and white one in the shape of an anchor for a woman who lost a brother in a boating accident, dark blue for a police officer, another with a medal of St. Peregrine for a woman whose family member has cancer. For Christmas, he incorporated clips in Southwestern hues of turquoise and red for his father-in-law, who lives in Texas and loves Native American culture.

When he's working, Quay said he spends a lot of time in "meditative thought" but doesn't have a specific prayer routine. Sometimes he prays "lots of Hail Marys," he said, or for various prayer intentions.

He is most aware that the crucifixes are God's work through him, especially when he considers what their sales have accomplished in only a few months.

A series of simpler figures of Christ affixed to wooden crosses raised more than $950 when his council sold them after Masses. That, combined with money raised from the bazaar and the exhibit, means more than $5,500 will be donated to help refugees.

All because of paper clips.

"The reaction has been overwhelming," Quay said. "This whole process has really been a series of little discoveries. It's taking a very insignificant thing and making it into something beautiful."

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Knauss is on the staff of The Catholic Miscellany, newspaper of the Diocese of Charleston.

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(Vatican Radio) Amongst the key catch phrases at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul is the need to “re-think” and “re-shape” humanitarian assistance.

The Sovereign Order of Malta is present at the Summit with a series of commitments, proposals and testimonies as well as its century old mission to uphold the principles at the heart of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.

Ambassador Stefano Ronca, the diplomatic advisor of the Grand Chancellor of the Sovereign Order of Malta told Linda Bordoni that the Order has in fact been closely involved in the years of preparation leading up to the Summit:

Listen:

“I believe the Order of Malta has something to say in the context of humanitarian assistance” he says and refers to its leadership in last year’s Symposium, the gist of which was the role of the faith based institution organizations, especially to help populations in areas of conflict.  

He points out that the Order of Malta has much to offer to the process because it is a religious institution:

 “with all the advantages that religious institutions have on the ground,  connecting with local populations more than lay institutions can do because they have a wide base of people of the same confession; because they arrive first and stay longer than other organizations, because they are independent, impartial and politically not bound to any country or force”.

 But this, he says, is something that belongs to other religious institutions as well.

Ambassador Ronca says he believes the Order of Malta has much to contribute also thanks to its particular status.

“What the Order of Malta has is that we are a Sovereign entity with a wide diplomatic network in the world. We are represented  at a diplomatic level in 106 countries and in about 30 international organizations with ambassadors and this gives us a status which implies the possibility of connecting at a diplomatic and political level with important interlocutors in the international world and have an access which is an additional element we can play” he says.

Regarding the Summit in Istanbul, Ambassador Ronca says it is necessary to be able to sit down together and make plans to restructure the way humanitarian assistance is conceived and delivered.

He points out that humanitarian aid was conceived at a time – some 30 years ago – when the world had a completely different configuration.

“Today we are in a situation where the  principle of inviolability of frontiers is put into question; where you see other actors which did not exist 30 years ago – non state actors – with very powerful political, mediatic and military force” he says.

And these are only a couple of reasons, Ambassador Ronca says, that “necessarily imply that we rethink the way that we conceive humanitarian assistance today”.

For more on the participation of the Sovereign Order of Malta's participation at the World Humanitarian Summit click here.

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