Rights group says Pakistan among leading executioners
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A Pakistani rights group says that the nation has executed 464 prisoners since it lifted a moratorium on capital punishment, after a Taliban attack on a school in late 2014. The Justice Project Pakistan, which is opposed to capital punishment, says Pakistan now has the fifth highest rate of executions in the world, after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Associated Press reported. The rights group says Pakistan has executed 44 people this year, around the same rate as the previous year, in which 87 people were executed.Pakistan halted executions in 2008 due to pressure from rights groups but reinstated capital punishment following an attack by militants on an army-run school in Peshawar on 16 December, 2014, that killed some 150 people, mostly children.The European Parliament last month criticized Pakistan's human rights record, calling for the abolition of the death penalty and to commute all death sentences to various terms of imprisonment. In a resol...
A Pakistani rights group says that the nation has executed 464 prisoners since it lifted a moratorium on capital punishment, after a Taliban attack on a school in late 2014. The Justice Project Pakistan, which is opposed to capital punishment, says Pakistan now has the fifth highest rate of executions in the world, after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Associated Press reported. The rights group says Pakistan has executed 44 people this year, around the same rate as the previous year, in which 87 people were executed.
Pakistan halted executions in 2008 due to pressure from rights groups but reinstated capital punishment following an attack by militants on an army-run school in Peshawar on 16 December, 2014, that killed some 150 people, mostly children.
The European Parliament last month criticized Pakistan's human rights record, calling for the abolition of the death penalty and to commute all death sentences to various terms of imprisonment. In a resolution endorsed unanimously on 13 June, EU parliament members said Pakistan was abusing the capital punishment to fulfil its political aims in trials related to civilians.
Last month, Pakistan sentenced a man to death in what has become the first ever capital punishment for online blasphemy. An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on 10 June convicted Taimoor Raza for sharing offensive content about Islam on social media, the Dawn reported. Shafiq Qureshi, public prosecutor in Bahawalpur, south of provincial capital Lahore said the 30-year-old man community had allegedly posted derogatory content about prominent Sunni religious figures and wives of the Holy Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. (Source: AP/…)
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Outer details of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Chicago. / Credit: Eric Allix RogersCNA Staff, May 15, 2024 / 12:12 pm (CNA).Catholics and city preservationists in Chicago are scrambling to try to preserve a historic parish on the city's North Side, one that has survived a century of the city's development including being fully moved to a new location after it was first built. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish will hold its final Mass on Sunday, May 19, before the parish merges with nearby St. Mary of the Lake. The consolidation is part of the Archdiocese of Chicago's ongoing "Renew My Church" initiative that has closed and merged dozens of parishes in order to address shrinking budgets and priest shortages. The archdiocese announced the Lourdes parish merger in 2021. Katerina Garcia, the president of the Our Lady of Lourdes Church Preservation Society, told "EWTN News Nightly" anchor Tracy Sabol this week that parishioners at the parish dispute ...
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Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan, SJ, archbishop of Hong Kong, China. / Credit: Daniel IbáñezRome Newsroom, May 15, 2024 / 14:17 pm (CNA).Cardinal Stephen Chow recently visited three Catholic dioceses in mainland China, one year after the bishop of Hong Kong's first historic trip to Beijing.Chow led a 10-person delegation of Catholics from Hong Kong to the southern Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Shantou, and Shenzhen in April in his second official visit to China since becoming bishop of Hong Kong."We brought our people to have an encounter … where we share common concerns, for example, youth ministry, catechism, marriage and family," Chow said in a video interview published May 5.Here is a look at some of the Catholic communities Chow visited:St. Joseph's Cathedral in ShantouSt. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou, China. Credit: Kc1446 at Chinese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsHundreds of Chinese Catholics attended a Mass in St. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou concelebrated...
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Stained-glass window at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis. / Credit: Ella Manthey/ShutterstockSt. Louis, Mo., May 15, 2024 / 14:47 pm (CNA).Two St. Louis parishes that appealed to the Vatican after Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski ordered them to merge last year have had their appeals upheld by the Holy See, reversing the archbishop's prior decision.As part of the archdiocese's major pastoral planning initiative dubbed "All Things New," Rozanski announced a year ago that the number of parishes would be reduced by nearly 50 by way of parish mergers and closures.Under canon law, a diocesan bishop has the authority to alter parishes, but only for a just reason specific to each parish. Concern for souls must be the principal motivation for modifying a parish.Amid the All Things New process, a number of parishes announced their intention to send appeals to the Vatican, putting aspects of the mergers planned for the parishes on hold until the Dicastery for the Clergy's rulings. Af...