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Boston, Mass., Mar 11, 2016 / 02:37 pm (CNA).- The Boston Globe has said it will no longer be running its Catholic news site Crux as of April 1. Vatican analyst and associate Crux editor John L. Allen Jr. says he hopes to continue the site with other partners.

The announcement comes after less than two years of operation for the Catholic site. The Boston Globe cited financial reasons for the decision. It said that Allen is “exploring the possibility of continuing it in some modified form, absent any contribution from the Globe.”

Allen, a longtime Vatican reporter who is widely respected in his field, told CNA that he and Crux Vatican correspondent Ines San Martin will continue the site.

“What’s happening is that the Boston Globe will no longer be sponsoring Crux, but that doesn't mean Crux is closing,” he said March 11. “I and Ines San Martin are committed to keeping it going, and we are actively pursuing potential partners, sponsors and donors to make that possible. So the story here is not that Crux is ending, but that it’s transitioning.”

In a letter to newsroom staff, Globe editor Brian McGrory and managing editor and vice president for digital David Skok discussed the end of the Globe’s connection with Crux. Professor and former media critic Dan Kennedy posted the full text of the letter on his website.

“We’ve made the deeply difficult decision to shut it down as of April 1 – difficult because we’re beyond proud of the journalism and the journalists who have produced it, day after day, month over month, for the past year and a half,” McGrory and Skok said.

“The problem is the business. We simply haven’t been able to develop the financial model of big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers that was envisioned when we launched Crux back in September 2014.”

McGrory and Skok said there will be “several layoffs” involved in cutting ties with Crux. They described these layoffs as “our biggest regret.” Crux editor Teresa Hanafin will be redeployed in a position in the Boston Globe newsroom.

“We vowed to make Crux a place where all voices could be heard, and we stuck to that pledge,” Hanafin said on Crux March 11.

The Boston Globe is owned by businessman John Henry, who is also principal owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Crux was launched in September 2014. It aspired to cover “all things Catholic” with content to appeal to active Catholics, “casual” Catholics who may not be regular Mass attendees, and general readers interested in Pope Francis, religion and spirituality.

At the time of the news site’s launch, Allen told CNA that the Catholic Church’s global presence and rich traditions justify focused news coverage. “(T)he Catholic Church matters and needs to be taken seriously by mainstream news outlets,” he said.

 

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Cairo, Egypt, Mar 11, 2016 / 05:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Four Coptic Christian teenagers face up to five years in prison after an Egyptian court found them guilty of insulting Islam, continuing a trend of blasphemy accusations in a country whose Christian minority lacks many basic social and legal protections.

The charges are “only the latest case in a pattern that can be seen since the Egyptian revolution” according to Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“Most of these cases target Christians, although we’ve had 10 targeting non-Christians,” he told CNA March 10.

Since the 2011 revolution against President Hosni Mubarak, there have been many legal charges of insulting Islam. Sometimes the charges concern something as simple as a Facebook post. In some cases, Christians faced action merely for being tagged in a post on Facebook.

“They’re not even the ones posting it, but they’re still accused of insulting Islam,” Tadros said.

The latest legal action came at a Feb. 25 hearing.

The teenagers from Minya province, south of Cairo, were accused of making a 32-second video that allegedly mocked the Muslim way of praying, the New York Times reports. A Muslim classmate discovered the video, and three of the teenagers were sentenced to five years in prison. The fourth is still under age 18 and is in a juvenile facility.

The accused did not attend the hearing.

“Their parents have sent them to uncles and aunts outside of Minya,” their lawyer Maher Naguib told the New York Times. “They feared for their safety. They are all terrified and crying now.”

The video shows one student kneeling on the ground, apparently pretending to recite Quran verses as his friends stand and laugh behind him. One of the students places a hand under another student’s neck as if to behead him.

The clip was filmed by a teacher, who is also a Christian. In a separate trial, he was convicted of showing contempt for Islam.

Coptic Christians in the Minya province suffered attacks in summer 2013 after the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, who had links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Tadros said that most of the accusations of insults to Islam happen in villages or small towns.

There can be major consequences for rumors that a Christian student, teacher, or headmaster has insulted Islam. A mob can gather and begin to attack, somethings throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails. Mobs have targeted churches as well as Christian homes and businesses.

When police finally arrive, they arrest the person accused of the crime of blasphemy “basically in order to make the mob happy, to regain control of the village, to maintain basic order,” Tadros said.

The legal process against an accused person often means that the whole family is forced to leave the village.

Mob attacks can be driven by blasphemy accusations, a rumor that a church is being built, or that a Christian had a sexual relationship with a Muslim woman.

“There’s no police protection, no one tries to stop them,” Tadros said. “More importantly, there’s no legal punishment. Every single one of these attacks go on and not a single person involved in them has received any legal verdict. That’s a serious problem because it creates a culture of impunity which in turn becomes a culture of encouragement.”

“Many people believe that the Christians are alien, that they are enemies and that attacking them is permissible,” he lamented.

About ten percent of Egypt’s 90 million people are Coptic Christians. But strict laws and mob violence mean they cannot easily build new churches, or repair the ones they have.

Tadros said that unofficial quotas in the military, the government and all levels of society mean less than one percent of the military and police force is Christian. Christian presence in the universities and schools is also limited.  

“Christian history and the Christian presence in the story of Egypt is extremely marginalized,” he said. “History books in Egyptian schools would discuss the Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Roman period, and then there’s a 300-year gap in history where it’s left to the students’ imagination to think what happened before the Arab Muslim armies came.”

Tadros said it is most important to ensure that the state enforce the law for crimes targeting Copts.

“What Copts are asking for is not preferable treatment, what they want is basic law and order,” Tadros said. “If someone burns a shop then he should be punished for it legally. If a Christian is killed in mob violence, her murderers should get sentences.”

The marginalization of Christians in Egypt has financial implications, where they have traditionally played a strong economic role. Christians tend to be better educated and more open to bridging the gap between cultures.

Tadros noted the many successful Copts who have emigrated abroad, to countries like the United States.

“You wonder: it’s America’s gain, but it’s Egypt’s loss,” he said. “Egypt has lost a lot of its citizens that could make it a much better place.”

“It’s not just a question of ‘we need to be nice’. It’s that your policies are impacting your whole country’s economic trajectory.”

Tadros suggested the U.S. government can influence the situation in a positive way.

“Obviously the U.S. has a strong relationship with Egypt. The U.S. provides $1.3 billion in aid to Egypt every year. That aid mainly goes to the Egyptian military,” he said. “There is a very strong relationship there that allows the United States to talk to its Egyptian partners and tell them they can’t have these incidents continue.”

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Sam Lucero, The Compass

By Sam Lucero

DE PERE, Wis. (CNS) -- Lisa Kristine was 11 when her aunt and uncle gave her an Olympus 35 mm camera. From a converted darkroom in her home in California, she developed black-and-white film and printed images of family and friends.

"They weren't the typical 'everybody say cheese' images," said Kristine. Even then, her photos had depth and emotion. "They were definitely more about solitude and looking for the infinity in somebody."

It is this creative, photographic eye and a deep fascination with people that has taken Kristine around the world photographing indigenous people in remote locations. It is also those two traits that have launched a new mission in her work: humanitarian photographer who captures images of modern slavery.

Kristine's work to expose global human trafficking led to her invitation at a ceremony Dec. 2, 2014, at the Vatican. Held on the U.N. Day for the Abolition of Slavery, Kristine witnessed 12 religious leaders, including Pope Francis, sign a pledge to help end modern slavery in the world by 2020.

On March 1, Kristine was guest lecturer at St. Norbert College in De Pere. Her address, "The Faces of Modern-Day Slavery," was part of the Norman and Louis Miller Lecture in Public Understanding series. A free photography exhibition, "Enslaved: A Visual Story of Modern-Day Slavery" also was unveiled at the Baer Gallery, located at the college's Bush Art Center.

In an interview with The Compass, newspaper of the Diocese of Green Bay, Kristine said her fascination with different cultures launched a career in humanitarian photography. She has traveled to more than 100 countries in six continents capturing images of people from indigenous cultures.

"Initially it was to go out and learn from these people, who I felt had such a rich history, to see what it was that brought them meaning," she said. "That's always been a huge curiosity to me."

Through her work, Kristine was invited to exhibit photographs at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009. "It was there that I learned about human slavery," she said.

"I knew ... there was some trafficking, but then when I learned there are 30-plus million people, I was so taken aback," said Kristine. She began a relationship with Free the Slaves, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington. It led her to places such as India, Ghana and Nepal where she has photographed children, women and families who are modern-day slaves working as fishermen, gold miners, quarry laborers and prostitutes.

"That entire body of work is specifically intended to raise awareness about (human slavery), to raise funding and to help groups eradicate it," said Kristine. "People often ask me, 'How can I help? I really want to go out there and volunteer in the field.' But it's really not a simple thing to liberate people. I'm in it constantly and I don't have the where-with-all to do it. There are experts who know how to do it and I'm just about really supporting them to do their work."

During her presentation to some 500 people at the Walter Theatre, Kristine shared many of her images, projected onto a large screen, of people living as slaves.

"Every day I think of these people," she told the audience. "People who I've had the tremendous honor of meeting. I want to shine a light on slavery and I want all of you to find it in yourselves to make a difference."

She also stated that human slavery is not limited to developing countries. One of her projects was photographing young women caught in sex trafficking in Washington. Working with Courtney's House, an agency that searches and rescues children caught in domestic sex trafficking, she learned that young girls under 18 "have endured such grave tragedies of being raped over and over again."

Kristine told The Compass that she has not worked directly with religious communities in the fight against human slavery, but she encouraged them, especially local women religious in the Green Bay Diocese, to continue their awareness campaign.

"The fascinating and frightening thing to me about slavery is that, all of this time, it's been existing right in front of us without us knowing," she said. "It's sort of hidden in plain sight because the idea is that it doesn't exist. ... There are signs and I think that the more we become aware of them, the greater the propensity we have to change the situation."

Kristine said being part of the Vatican gathering in 2014 was an honor.

"If you could imagine, when I started this in 2009, not only was I not significantly aware, but nobody was aware. Organizations couldn't get funding because people didn't' believe it existed," she said. "To see now, faith leaders (seeking to eradicate human slavery by 2020), it's unbelievable."

The "coolest thing" about the Vatican meeting, she added, was seeing people from all different faiths "that sometimes have conflict but were together in total unison and motivation to end slavery."

"I just sat there the whole time and wept," she added. "It was just so moving."

Kristine said she has been invited to a follow-up meeting at the Vatican March 18.

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Editors: To view images from Kristine's collection on human trafficking, or to listen to her TED Talk presentation on human slavery, visit www.lisakristine.com.

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Lucero is the news and information manager at The Compass, newspaper of the Diocese of Green Bay.

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