Tag: Religious issues

Prominent Chicago priest accused of sexual abuse of minor

CHICAGO — A Catholic priest who gained national fame as an activist has been asked to step away from his ministry while allegations that he sexually abused a minor decades ago are investigated.

The development came a little more than a year after another probe cleared the priest, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, of allegations that he sexually abused children.

In a letter sent Saturday, Cardinal Blase Cupich said Pfleger was asked to relinquish his duties at the church, Faith Community of Saint Sabina, after allegations were made that he sexually abused a minor decades ago.

Pfleger “has agreed to cooperate fully with this request,” Cupich said, adding that the archdiocese has notified the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and law enforcement officials as required by archdiocese policies.

The accuser is a man in his late 40s who said Pfleger on two occasions abused him in the late 1980s during choir rehearsals in the Saint Sabina rectory, according to a statement released by a spokesperson for the man’s attorney, Eugene Hollander. The attorney did not elaborate on the allegations.

In his own statement to the parish on the city’s South Side that he has led for decades, Pfleger said he had done nothing wrong.

“Let me be clear – I am completely innocent of this accusation,” he wrote, telling his parish he was confident that the allegation would be “determined to be unfounded” and that he would be reinstated.

Pfleger, who is white, leads a Black church in Chicago’s largely Black and low-income Auburn Gresham neighborhood. His activism captured the attention of film director Spike Lee, who based a character played by actor John Cusack in the 2015 film “Chi-Raq” on Pfleger.

Pfleger has made national headlines for his activism on an array of issues, opposing cigarette and alcohol advertising, taking on drug dealers and stores that sell drug paraphernalia, and leading countless protests. He has even been sued for his activism and once said it “has resulted in jealousy, attacks and hate.”

In May of last year, four months after Pfleger was asked to step aside from his duties while similar allegations involving a minor more than 40 years earlier were investigated, he was reinstated by the archdiocese after the probe found “insufficient reason to suspect” he sexually abused children.

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October 15, 2022
Native American boarding school victims to speak of abuse

MISSION, S.D. — Native American victims of abuse at government-backed boarding schools are expected to testify Saturday as U.S Interior Secretary Deb Haaland continues her yearlong tour aimed at airing the troubled history of the institutions that were forced upon tribes.

The meeting is being held at the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in southern South Dakota, where tribal members said they were forced to attend schools that forbade their native language and customs.

Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the U.S. enacted laws and policies to establish and support Native American Boarding Schools. The stated goal was to “civilize” Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, but that was often carried out through abusive practices. Religious and private institutions often received federal funding and were willing partners.

More than 400 boarding schools with U.S. government ties have been documented. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition says it has documented about 100 more boarding schools not on the government list that were run by groups such as churches.

“They all had the same missions, the same goals: ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,’” said Lacey Kinnart, who works for the Minnesota-based coalition. The idea, she said, was “to assimilate them and steal everything Indian out of them except their blood, make them despise who they are, their culture, and forget their language.”

Although most closed their doors long ago and none still exist to strip students of their identities, some still function as schools, albeit with drastically different missions that celebrate the cultural backgrounds of their Native students.

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October 15, 2022
Assailants fatally shoot Hindu man in Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India — Assailants on Saturday fatally shot a Kashmiri Hindu man in violence police blamed on militants fighting against Indian rule in the disputed region.

Police said militants fired at Puran Krishan Bhat, who is from the minority community of Kashmiri Hindus, at his home in southern Shopian district. He was taken to a hospital where he died, police said in a statement.

Police and soldiers cordoned off the area and launched a search for the attackers.

In August, a local Hindu man was killed and his brother injured in Shopian in a shooting that police also blamed on insurgents.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in its entirety.

Rebels in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Kashmir has witnessed a spate of targeted killings since October last year. Several Hindus, including immigrant workers from Indian states, have been killed. Police say the killings — including that of Muslim village councilors, police officers and civilians — have been carried out by anti-India rebels.

The spate of killings come as Indian troops have continued their counterinsurgency operations across the region amid a clampdown on dissent and press freedom, which critics have likened to a militaristic policy.

Kashmir’s minority Hindus, who are locally known as Pandits, have long fretted over their place in the region. Most of an estimated 200,000 of them fled Kashmir in the 1990s, when an armed rebellion against Indian rule began. Some 4,000 returned after 2010 as part of a government resettlement plan that provided them with jobs and housing.

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October 15, 2022
Holocaust survivor opens Senate as far-right to govern Italy

ROME — Italy’s Fascist past and its future governed by a party with neo-fascist roots came to an emotional head Thursday when a Holocaust survivor presided over the first seating of Parliament since general elections last month.

Liliana Segre, a 92-year-old senator-for-life, opened the session in the upper chamber, subbing in for a more senior life senator who couldn’t attend. Her speech formally launched the sequence of events that is expected to bring the Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Sept. 25 elections and has its origins in a neo-fascist movement, to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II.

Speaking to the Senate, Segre marveled at the “symbolic value” of the coincidence of her role and the historic moment that Italy is witnessing. She noted that she was presiding over the Senate as Italy soon marks the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome, which brought Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to power, and as war rages once again in Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today, I am particularly moved by the role that fate holds for me,” Segre told the hushed chamber. “In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome that began the Fascist dictatorship, it falls to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy, which is the Senate of the Republic.”

Segre was one of the few Italian children who survived deportation to a Nazi death camp, and she has spent recent decades telling Italian schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Her advocacy led President Sergio Mattarella to name her a senator-for-life in 2018 as Italy marked the anniversary of the introduction of fascist-era racial laws discriminating against Jews.

In her speech, Segre choked up as she recalled that those laws forbade Jewish children like her from attending school.

“It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo, remembering that that same little girl who on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by the racist laws to leave her elementary school bench empty. And that, by some strange fate, that same girl today finds herself on the most prestigious bench, in the Senate.”

Her emotional remarks brought the 200 senators to their feet in applause, including the Brothers of Italy delegation headed by Ignazio La Russa. La Russa, who once proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia, was later elected Senate speaker.

The Brothers of Italy, headed by Giorgia Meloni, has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials and drew fascist sympathizers into its ranks. It remained a small far-right party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance and worked to distance itself from its neo-fascist past.

Meloni was a member of the youth branches of MSI and the National Alliance and founded Brothers of Italy in 2012, keeping the tricolor flame symbol of the MSI in her party logo.

During the campaign, amid Democratic warnings that she represented a danger to democracy, Meloni insisted that the Italian right had “ handed fascism over to history for decades now, ” and had condemned racial laws and the suppression of democracy.

Segre didn’t refer to the party by name in her speech, but she said Italian voters had expressed their will at the ballot box.

“The people have decided. It is the essence of democracy,” Segre said. “The majority emerging from the ballot has the right to govern, and the minority has the similarly fundamental obligation to be in the opposition.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming legislature, she called for a civilized debate that does not degenerate into hateful speech and respects the Italian Constitution.

She cited in particular the Constitution’s Article 3, which states that all Italian citizens are equal under the law “without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion or personal or social condition.”

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October 13, 2022
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Dylann Roof, who killed 9

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Dylann Roof, who challenged his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.

Roof had asked the court to decide how to handle disputes over mental illness-related evidence between capital defendants and their attorneys. The justices did not comment Tuesday in turning away the appeal.

Roof fired his attorneys and represented himself during the sentencing phase of his capital trial, part of his effort to block evidence potentially portraying him as mentally ill.

Roof shot participants at a Bible study session at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

A panel of appellate judges had previously upheld his conviction and death sentence.

Roof, 28, is on federal death row at a maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. He can still pursue other appeals.

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October 11, 2022
Iran’s crackdown on protests intensifies in Kurdish region

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran intensified its crackdown Tuesday on Kurdish areas in the country’s west as protests sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police rage on, activists said.

Riot police fired into at least one neighborhood in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as Amnesty International and the White House’s national security adviser criticized the violence targeting demonstrators angered by the death of Mahsa Amini.

Meanwhile, some oil workers Monday joined the protests at two key refinery complexes, for the first time linking an industry key to Iran’s theocracy to the unrest.

Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

From the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere, videos have emerged online despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos on Monday showed university and high school students demonstrating and chanting, with some women and girls marching through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.

One video posted online by a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed darkened streets with apparent gunfire going off and a bonfire burning in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran.

Another showed riot police carrying shotguns moving in formation with a vehicle, apparently firing at homes.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran posted another video showing what it described as a phalanx of motorcycle-riding security forces moving through Sanandaj.

“They reportedly broke the windows of hundreds of cars in the Baharan neighborhood,” the center said.

Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there after her death the day before.

Amnesty International criticized Iranian security forces for “using firearms and firing tear gas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes.” It urged the world to pressure Iran to end the crackdown as Tehran continues to disrupt internet and mobile phone networks “to hide their crimes.”

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the renewed crackdown in Sanandaj. However, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador over the United Kingdom sanctioning members of the country’s morality police and security officials due to the crackdown.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the sanctions “arbitrary and baseless,” even while threatening to potentially take countermeasures against London.

Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, similarly noted that “the world is watching what is happening in Iran.”

“These protestors are Iranian citizens, led by women and girls, demanding dignity and basic rights,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “We stand with them, and we will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence their voices.”

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP

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October 10, 2022
United Methodists are breaking up in a slow-motion schism

United Methodists have for generations been a mainstay of the American religious landscape — one of the most geographically widespread of the major Protestant denominations, their steeples visible on urban streets, in county seats and along country roads, their ethos marked by a firm yet quiet faith, simple worship and earnest social service.

But the United Methodist Church is also the latest of several mainline Protestant denominations in America to begin fracturing, just as Episcopal, Lutheran and Presbyterian denominations lost significant minorities of churches and members this century amid debates over sexuality and theology.

In annual regional gatherings across the U.S. earlier this year, United Methodists approved requests of about 300 congregations to quit the denomination, according to United Methodist News Service. Special meetings in the second half of the year are expected to vote on as many as 1,000 more, according to the conservative advocacy group Wesleyan Covenant Association.

Scores of churches in Georgia, and hundreds in Texas, are considering disaffiliation. Some aren’t waiting for permission to leave: More than 100 congregations in Florida and North Carolina have filed or threatened lawsuits to break out.

Those departing are still a fraction of the estimated 30,000 congregations in the United States alone, with nearly 13,000 more abroad, according to recent UMC statistics.

But large United Methodist congregations are moving to the exits, including some of the largest in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

The flashpoints are the denomination’s bans on same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy — though many see these as symptoms for deeper differences in views on justice, theology and scriptural authority. The denomination has repeatedly upheld these bans at legislative General Conferences, but some U.S. churches and clergy have defied them.

This spring, conservatives launched a new Global Methodist Church, where they are determined both to maintain and to enforce such bans.

A proposal to amicably divide the denomination and its assets, unveiled in early 2020, has lost its once-broad support after years of pandemic-related delays to the legislative General Conference, whose vote was needed to ratify it.

Now the breakup and the negotiations are happening piecemeal — one regional conference at a time.

New York Bishop Thomas Bickerton, president of the Council of Bishops, issued a statement in August denouncing “a constant barrage of negative rhetoric that is filled with falsehood and inaccuracies” by breakaway groups. In particular, he disputed allegations that the church is changing core doctrines.

But he said the denomination seeks to find a balance between encouraging churches to stay yet enabling them to go.

“It’s a both/and,” Bickerton said in an interview. “We want people to know straight up front that we don’t want them to leave. We need traditionalists, we need centrists, we need progressives willing to engage in a healthy debate to discern what God’s will is.”

But more departures are expected next year.

In just the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, about 300 of its 800 churches have begun inquiring about the process of leaving by the end of 2023, according to the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Not all may follow through, but some see it as inevitable.

“We feel like to stay the same in our mission and theology, we need to change denominations,” said the Rev. Steve Cordle, lead pastor of Crossroads Church. Based in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, it’s one of the largest congregations in the conference. It’s considering going independent or joining the Global Methodist Church.

A few miles away in Bethel Park, another Pittsburgh suburb, Christ United Methodist Church remains committed to the denomination.

The Rev. Chris Morgan said his church has a “big tent” of liberals and conservatives with most congregants “leaning in toward the center.” The church recently hosted an educational series on hot topics including the schism, guns, abortion and COVID-19.

“Instead of becoming like society, we’re trying to become an example of what it looks like to disagree and still treat people with respect and care and love,” Morgan said.

He was far from the only one to see a parallel between the Methodist debates and broader societal polarization.

“We live in a world of division. Just look at our political front,” said Bishop David Graves, who oversees the South Georgia and Alabama-West Florida conferences. Both conferences have dozens of congregations moving to the exits, though the large majority are staying so far.

Graves said he wants to help enable churches to leave if they want to but has spent long hours urging them to consider all the factors and be sure it is God’s will.

“It’s very taxing,” he said. “Those are intense meetings.”

Conservatives say denominational leaders are making it difficult for those who want to leave to do so, however.

Currently churches may leave after paying two years’ worth of “apportionments” — essentially denominational dues — plus their share of unfunded pension liabilities. Conferences may also impose additional requirements, and some are asking for a percentage of the property value of church buildings.

“In many cases, (the requirements) are onerous, they are punitive,” said the Rev. Jay Therrell, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a conservative advocacy group that is working to help churches jump to the Global Methodist Church.

Bishop Karen Oliveto of the UMC’s Mountain Sky region — who in 2016 became the UMC’s first openly lesbian bishop — said via email it is “extremely wounding to LGBTQ persons that our very personhood is being used as a wedge to disrupt unity in the church.” She expressed hope that UMC churches “will be safe places for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Conservatives have lamented that UMC has failed to enforce its Book of Discipline on standards for ordination and marriage.

Oliveto said, however, that sometimes “the Holy Spirit runs ahead of us and gives us a glimpse of the future to which we are called. This is certainly the case across the denomination, where LGBTQ persons have been examined at every step of the ordination process and found to possess the gifts and graces for ordained ministry.”

United Methodists are part of a global movement that traces their origins to the 18th-century English revivalist John Wesley, who emphasized personal piety, evangelism and social service.

American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s. Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the U.S., fueled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa.

It’s too early to say if there will be widespread departures from international churches. African churches, for instance, often combine conservative stances on sexual issues with progressive views on the economy and colonialism’s legacy.

Several African bishops issued a statement denouncing conservative advocacy groups, including one called the Africa Initiative, for collaborating to “destroy our United Methodist Church.”

The Africa Initiative replied that it respected the bishops but would continue its efforts “to see biblical Christianity taught, lived and sustained.”

Neal Christie of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition, a partnership of progressive and ethnically based Methodist advocacy groups, said the “notion that outside the United States there’s one monolithic voice is a caricature.”

The coalition is promoting a more decentralized church where regions could make their own decisions on issues such as LGBTQ inclusion based on their cultural contexts.

“We believe this is a big tent church, that the church is big enough for all,” he said.

But after decades of controversy, some are done.

“The traditionalists decided this is like a toxic relationship now, and we’re just harming each other,” said the Rev. Laura Saffell, chairperson of the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. “The best we can do is bless and send” each other their separate ways.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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October 10, 2022
2 killed as demonstrations around Iran enter 4th week

SULIMANIYAH, Iraq — Anti-government demonstrations erupted Saturday in several locations across Iran as the most sustained protests in years against a deeply entrenched theocracy entered their fourth week. At least two people were killed.

Marchers chanted anti-government slogans and twirled headscarves in repudiation of coercive religious dress codes. In some areas, merchants shuttered shops in response to a call by activists for a commercial strike or to protect their wares from damage.

Later Saturday, hackers broke into the evening news on Iran’s state TV for 15 seconds, just as footage of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was being broadcast. The hackers flashed an image of Khamenei surrounded by flames. A caption read “Join us and stand up!” and “The blood of our youth is dripping from your claws,” a reference to Khamenei.

A song with the lyrics “Woman. Life. Freedom” — a common chant of the protesters — played in the background.

The protests erupted Sept. 17, after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who had died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women. Since then, protests spread across the country and were met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.

In the city of Sanandaj in the Kurdish-majority northern region, one man was shot dead Saturday while driving a car in a major thoroughfare, rights monitors said. The France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said the man was shot after honking at security forces stationed on the street. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience. Video circulating online showed the slain man slumped over the steering wheel, as distraught witnesses shouted for help.

The semi-official Fars news agency, believed to be close to the elite paramilitary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdistan’s police chief denied reports of using live rounds against protesters.

Fars claimed that people in Sanandaj’s Pasdaran Street said the victim was shot from inside the car without elaborating. But photos of the dead man indicate that he was shot from his left side, meaning he likely was not shot from inside the car. The blood can be seen running down the inside of the door on the driver’s side.

A second protester was killed after security forces fired gunshots to disperse crowds in the city and 10 protesters were wounded, the rights monitors said.

A general strike was observed in the city’s main streets amid a heavy security presence and protesters burned tires in some areas. Patrols have deterred mass gatherings in Sanandaj but isolated protests have continued in the city’s densely populated neighborhoods.

Demonstrations were also reported in the capital Tehran on Saturday, including small ones near the Sharif University of Technology, one of Iran’s premier centers of learning and the scene of a violent government crackdown last weekend. Authorities have closed the campus until further notice.

Images on social media showed protests also took place in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

Other protests erupted at Azad University in northern Tehran, in other neighborhoods of the capital and in the city’s bazaar. Many shops were closed in central Tehran and near the University of Tehran.

President Ebrahim Raisi in a meeting with students from the all-female Al-Zahra University in Tehran alleged again that foreign enemies were responsible for fomenting the protests. He has made the claim without giving specifics or providing any evidence.

“The enemy thought that it can pursue its desires in universities while unaware that our students and teachers are aware and they will not allow the enemies’ vain plans to be realized,” he said.

Meanwhile, thousands of people in The Hague, Netherlands chanted and sang in a solidarity demonstration in support of the protesters in Iran.

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October 8, 2022
Texas inmate who fought prayer, touch rules to be executed

HOUSTON — A Texas death row inmate whose case clarified the role of spiritual advisers in death chambers nationwide is scheduled for execution Wednesday, despite efforts by a district attorney to stop his lethal injection.

John Henry Ramirez, 38, was sentenced to death for killing 46-year-old Pablo Castro, a convenience store clerk, in 2004. Prosecutors said Castro was taking the trash out from the store in Corpus Christi when Ramirez robbed him of $1.25 and stabbed him 29 times.

Castro’s killing took place during a series of robberies; Ramirez and two women had been stealing money following a three-day drug binge. Ramirez fled to Mexico but was arrested 3½ years later.

Ramirez challenged state prison rules that prevented his pastor from touching him and praying aloud during his execution, saying his religious freedom was being violated. That challenge led to his execution being delayed as well as the executions of others.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Ramirez, saying states must accommodate the wishes of death row inmates who want to have their faith leaders pray and touch them during their executions.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Ramirez’s death sentence to a lesser penalty. According to his attorney, Ramirez has exhausted all possible appeals and no final request to the U.S. Supreme Court is planned.

The lead prosecutor at Ramirez’s trial in 2008, Mark Skurka, said it was unfair that Ramirez would have someone praying over him as he dies when Castro didn’t have the same opportunity.

“It has been a long time coming, but Pablo Castro will probably finally get the justice that his family has sought for so long, despite the legal delays,” said Skurka, who later served as Nueces County district attorney before retiring.

Ramirez’s attorney, Seth Kretzer, said while he feels empathy for Castro’s family, his client’s challenge was about protecting religious freedoms for all. Ramirez was not asking for something new but something that has been part of jurisprudence throughout history, Kretzer said. He said even Nazi war criminals were provided ministers before their executions after World War II.

“That was not a reflection on some favor we were doing for the Nazis,” Kretzer said. “Providing religious administration at the time of death is a reflection of the relative moral strength of the captors.”

Kretzer said Ramirez’s spiritual adviser, Dana Moore, will also be able to hold a Bible in the death chamber, which hadn’t been allowed before.

Ramirez’s case took another turn in April when current Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez asked a judge to withdraw the death warrant and delay the execution, saying it had been requested by mistake. Gonzalez said he considers the death penalty “unethical.”

During a nearly 20-minute Facebook live video, Gonzalez said he believes the death penalty is one of the “many things wrong with our justice system.” Gonzalez said he would not seek the death penalty while he remains in office.

He did not return a phone call or email seeking comment.

Also in April, four of Castro’s children filed a motion asking that Ramirez’s execution order be left in place.

“I want my father to finally have his justice as well as the peace to finally move on with my life and let this nightmare be over,” Fernando Castro, one of his sons, said in the motion.

In June, a judge declined Gonzalez’ request to withdraw Wednesday’s execution date. Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to even consider the request.

If Ramirez is executed, he would be the third inmate put to death this year in Texas and the 11th in the U.S.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

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October 4, 2022
UN, abuse survivor groups seek Vatican investigation of Belo

VATICAN CITY — The United Nations and advocacy groups for survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging Pope Francis to authorize a full investigation of Catholic Church archives on three continents to ascertain who knew what and when about sexual abuse by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered independence hero of East Timor.

The Vatican’s sex abuse office said last week that it had secretly sanctioned Belo in 2020, forbidding him from having contact with minors or with East Timor, based on misconduct allegations that arrived in Rome in 2019. That was the year Francis approved a new church law that required all cases of predator prelates to be reported in-house and established a mechanism to investigate bishops, who had long escaped accountability for abuse or cover-up during the church’s decades-long scandal.

But a brief statement by the Vatican, issued after Dutch magazine De Groen Amsterdammer exposed the Belo scandal by quoting two of his alleged victims, didn’t reveal what church officials might have known before 2019.

Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with fellow East Timorese independence icon Jose Ramos-Horta for campaigning for a fair and peaceful solution to conflict in their home country as it struggled to gain independence from Indonesia. He is revered in East Timor and was celebrated abroad for his bravery in calling out human rights abuses by Indonesian rulers despite threats against his life.

But six years after winning the prize, in 2002, Belo suddenly retired as the head of the church in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony. At 54, he was two decades shy of the normal retirement age for bishops, and he never held an episcopal appointment after that.

He has said he retired for health reasons and because of stress and to give the newly independent East Timor different church leadership. But within a year of his retirement, Belo had been sent by the Vatican and his Salesian missionary order to another former Portuguese colony, Mozambique, to work as a missionary priest. There, he has said, he spent his time “teaching catechism to children, giving retreats to young people.”

He is currently in Portugal, where the Salesians have said they took him in at the request of their superiors. His whereabouts are unclear, and he didn’t respond when contacted by Portuguese media.

Advocates for survivors cite the in-house investigation that Francis authorized and published in 2020 into defrocked American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in calling for a similar forensic study of church archives for Belo.

The McCarrick investigation, which began after new allegations surfaced in 2018 that McCarrick sexually abused a teenage altar boy, exposed how a series of bishops, cardinals and even popes over two decades dismissed or downplayed reports that he slept with his seminarians and allowed him to rise through the church hierarchy.

There is no indication yet that Francis is prepared to authorize a similar investigation into Belo. There doesn’t appear to be any groundswell of indignation within East Timor’s Catholic community, as there was among U.S. Catholics over McCarrick. On the contrary, in the impoverished, overwhelmingly Catholic country, where the church holds enormous influence, many rallied behind Belo despite the allegations.

Francis did meet Saturday with his ambassador to Portugal as well as the head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference, who himself is reportedly accused of covering up for other abuser priests.

Anne Barrett-Doyle, of the online resource Bishop Accountability, called for Francis to order a “full and sweeping investigation of the Belo case including past and present church officials from all ranks and dicasteries and from every relevant region, from East Timor to Portugal to Rome to Mozambique.”

She noted that Belo’s Salesian superiors as well as Vatican officials, up to and including even Pope John Paul II, would have been involved in his 2002 retirement and subsequent transfers. East Timor is and was then under the jurisdiction of the powerful Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which handles all church matters in mission territories in Africa, Asia and some other regions. But ultimately a pope decides when bishops retire and whether they are subject to any sanction.

“The Vatican’s suggestion that it first learned of the allegations in the last few years doesn’t pass the smell test. It is wholly implausible,” Barrett-Doyle said in an email. “Signs point to the real possibility that Belo is another McCarrick – an acclaimed churchman whose predations were known to many church officials.”

The United Nations’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, also backed a full investigation.

“These allegations are truly shocking and need to be fully investigated,” he told The Associated Press. The United Nations organized a referendum on East Timor’s independence in 1999 and then provided a U.N. peacekeeping force to quell widespread violence that broke out until independence was finally declared in 2002.

The main U.S.-based advocacy group for survivors of priestly sex abuse, SNAP, joined the call for a more thorough inquest, especially given that Belo was allowed to continue ministering to children while in Mozambique.

“We learn from many allegations of sexual abuse against children that there are often more victims. In this tragedy, the Vatican set Belo free to have access to potentially more victims,” said SNAP communications manager, Mike McDonnell.

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October 1, 2022
Two prophets, century-old prayer duel inspire Zion mosque

ZION, Illinois — A holy miracle happened in Zion 115 years ago. Or so millions of Ahmadi Muslims around the world believe.

The Ahmadis view this small-sized city, 40 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, as a place of special religious significance for their global messianic faith. Their reverence for the community began more than a century ago — with fighting words, a prayer duel and a prophecy.

Zion was founded in 1900 as a Christian theocracy by John Alexander Dowie, an evangelical and early Pentecostal preacher who drew thousands to the city with his faith healing ministry. The Ahmadis believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, defended the faith from Dowie’s verbal attacks against Islam, and defeated him in a sensational face-off armed only with prayers.

Most current residents may not have an inkling of that high-stakes holy fight of a bygone era. But, for the Ahmadis, it is one that has created an eternal bond with the city of Zion.

This weekend, thousands of Ahmadi Muslims from around the world have congregated in the city to celebrate that century-old miracle and a significant milestone in the life of Zion and of their faith: The building of the city’s first mosque.

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Dowie was born in Scotland in 1847. His family immigrated in 1860 to Australia, where he was ordained and became pastor of a Congregational church.

Dowie left Australia in 1888 for the United States where he grew in popularity with his healing ministry. Stories of Dowie’s miracles abound, including one about Sadie Cody, a niece of Buffalo Bill Cody, a celebrity known for his Wild West Show, who said her spinal tumor was healed by Dowie’s prayers.

With money accumulated from the faithful, Dowie bought 6,000 acres of land in Lake County, Illinois, hoping to establish a Christian utopia. Dowie’s laws forbade gambling, theaters, circuses, alcohol and tobacco. He also banned swearing, spitting, dancing, pork, oysters and tan-colored shoes. Whistling on Sunday was punishable by jail time.

The massive 8,000-seat Shiloh Tabernacle, built in 1900, became Zion’s religious center. It was there that Dowie appeared with his flowing white beard, robed in the brightly embroidered garments of an Old Testament high priest, and declared himself “Elijah the Restorer.”

While he welcomed Black people and immigrants into Zion, Dowie had harsh words for politicians, medical doctors and Muslims, which he expressed in his journal.

In 1902, Dowie wrote: “This is my job to gather people from the East and West, North and South and inhabit Christians in this Zion City as well as other cities until the day comes when the Mohammedan religion is totally wiped out of this world. Oh God show us the day.”

———

In his palms on a recent September day, Tahir Ahmed Soofi cradled a crumbling, yellow newspaper from the 1900s bearing Dowie’s image.

“Dowie is a part of our history, too,” said Soofi, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Zion chapter, as he arranged these relics in glass displays that will become part of the new mosque’s museum. The community has named this mosque Fath-e-Azeem, which means “a great victory” in Arabic.

The $4 million building, with a large prayer hall and plush carpeting, will replace their older, retrofitted center less than two miles away, which has been the community’s home since 1983.

As he got the new space ready for the Oct. 1 inauguration, Soofi recounted the tale passed down to generations of Ahmadis. When Ahmad, the religion’s founder who lived in Qadian, India, heard about Dowie’s angry proclamations against Muslims, he urged him to stop, Soofi said.

Ahmadis believe that their founder, who was born in 1835, was the promised reformer the Prophet Muhammed predicted and the metaphorical second coming of Jesus Christ.

Soofi said when Dowie ignored Ahmad’s pleas, in 1902, he challenged Zion’s founder to a “prayer duel.”

In The New York Times and other U.S. publications at the time, this challenge was built up as a battle between two messiahs – to ascertain who was the true prophet and which was the true religion. Ahmad asserted in writing that, “whoever is the liar may perish first.”

Dowie refused to acknowledge Ahmad’s challenge and scoffed at his statements that Jesus was human, survived the crucifixion and lived out the rest of his life in Kashmir. He shot back writing: “Do you think that I should answer such gnats and flies?”

In the following years, Dowie’s fortunes began to fade. In 1905, one of his top lieutenants, Wilbur Voliva, took over leadership of the church after Dowie was accused of extravagance and misusing investments. Dowie’s health suffered thereafter. He died in 1907 after a paralytic stroke, at age 60.

While Ahmad died a year after Dowie passed, at age 73, his followers saw Dowie’s downfall and death as a great victory for their founder and faith.

For Ahmadis worldwide, the result of this prayer duel reaffirmed the truth of their messiah’s claims, said Amjad Mahmood Khan, U.S. spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It’s a story Ahmadi children grow up hearing at home and in their mosques worldwide.

“Whether you talk to an Ahmadi in Miami, Maine, South Dakota or Seattle, they will know this story and what a great victory it was,” Khan said, adding that it doesn’t mean they exult in Dowie’s demise. “It’s the triumph of what Islam stands for in the face of false allegations, and it’s about the victory of prayer over prejudice.”

—-

“Welcome to Shiloh House.”

Kathy Goodwin, who volunteers every week at the 1902 Swiss-inspired chalet that Dowie built at 1300 Shiloh Boulevard, greets visitors with these words before she takes them around the 25-room mansion. Dowie spent $90,000 (about $3 million in today’s dollars) to build it and $50,000 more to furnish it.

He brought fixtures from Europe, including a porcelain bath. The house had running water, electricity and phones, a rarity in that time.

Goodwin tells visitors about her family’s connection to Dowie. Her grandfather, a master carpenter from Switzerland, and his German wife went to hear Dowie speak in Chicago. Then and there, they decided to follow the preacher to Zion. Goodwin’s grandfather was chief carpenter for Shiloh House and her father, the last of 15 children, ran around the mansion as a child while his dad helped build it.

The house has numerous images of Dowie — painted, photographed and woven with lace. Dowie, who was 5-foot-2, had carpenters craft custom wooden step stools so he could reach the top shelves of his bookcases. The house even has on one wall, two framed pieces crafted with Dowie’s hair by his barber. One shows the Dowie’s greeting “Peace to thee” and another is a depiction of the Bible.

Goodwin is proud of Dowie’s legacy and wants it preserved.

“He believed in love, kindness, helping people,” she said. “I honestly believe people were healed here.”

She also believes Dowie, in his later years, “got carried away” and “did things with money he shouldn’t have.”

“But he paid for it,” she said. “I’m here because I want his story to stay alive.”

Goodwin also yearns to go back to a time when she was a little girl and the city played chimes at 9 in the morning and 9 at night.

“People stopped wherever they were and prayed,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s not like that any more.”

Mike McDowell’s great grandparents moved to Zion in 1905 from North Dakota because his great grandmother believed Dowie cured her whooping cough. McDowell sits on the board of the Zion Historical Society, which maintains Shiloh House. He is also a city commissioner and pastor at Christ Community Church, the remnant of Dowie’s original congregation.

McDowell says his congregation now identifies as evangelical and doesn’t adhere to Dowie’s teachings. But he credits the founder for innovative municipal planning.

“He came up with the idea of subdividing the community and making it self-sufficient,” McDowell said. “He created the city’s park system requiring every housing subdivision to have green spaces.”

McDowell said Dowie’s downfall began when “he started believing his own press and thought of himself more highly than he ought to have.”

He agrees what Dowie said about Muslims and Ahmed was “inflammatory,” but doesn’t believe the founder accepted Ahmad’s prayer duel.

“Both men had visions of grandeur about themselves,” McDowell said, “which probably weren’t appropriate.”

McDowell is happy to see the new mosque and lauds the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community for their many service projects in town, particularly food giveaways that were valuable to many during the pandemic.

—-

Just as McDowell’s and Goodwin’s ancestors moved to Zion following Dowie’s healing powers, Tayyib Rashid moved with his family to the area last year from Seattle when plans for the new mosque came to fruition.

“You can’t have a Zion mosque anywhere else,” he said, adding that he feels a deep connection to the prayer duel and prophecy. “Dowie had all the means and resources. (Ahmad) had God on his side.”

For community member Suriyya Latif, the new mosque reflects the Ahmadi community’s motto, which is painted in giant letters on the wall of their community center: “Love for all, hatred for none.”

“People pull up to the parking lot and take selfies with that sign,” she said.

The prayer duel, she said, is not an archaic tale, but a current manifestation of the community’s motto. Latif, who has toured the Shiloh House, wishes Dowie could have seen what his faith had in common with Islam.

Dowie banned pork and alcohol in Zion, which are also commands in Islam. Even Dowie’s greeting “Peace to thee” is synonymous with the Muslim greeting “Salam alaikum.”

The Ahmadis have struggled to gain acceptance even among mainstream Muslims, adding to the significance of establishing the mosque in Zion, said national spokesperson Khan. Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974.

Khan said the global Ahmadiyya community’s current leader and caliph, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is in Zion to inaugurate the new mosque this weekend — a momentous occasion for U.S. Ahmadis. Ahmad was forced into exile from Pakistan after his election in 2003 and resides in London.

—-

Over the years, Zion’s Ahmadiyya community has been buttressed by women who have assumed leadership roles, as well as African Americans who have accepted the faith in large numbers. About half of the community in Zion is African American.

Ahmadi women raised nearly half of the $4 million needed for the new mosque, said Dhiya Tahira Bakr, national president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s women’s auxiliary. Bakr, who is African American, converted to Islam nearly four decades ago. Transcending culture and language barriers has not been difficult because their faith has bound Ahmadis of all backgrounds together, she said.

“I didn’t grow up drinking chai or eating spicy food, but I enjoy it now,” Bakr said. “When you talk to one another, you forget about all that because you are bonding with the heart.”

The prayer duel and Dowie’s demise opened up a path in Zion for the Ahmadiyya Muslims to build on that foundation by serving the community, she said.

“We knock on doors and let people know that they don’t have to be afraid of us because we are Muslim or Black or Asian or whatever,” Bakr said. “It’s important we do this work for our children so we can dispel all these stereotypes.”

Mayor Billy McKinney’s family moved to Zion in 1962, as the civil rights movement was gathering momentum. For Black families, racially integrated Zion was an oasis in a nation where segregation was the norm, he said. The mayor believes a community partnership has emerged from this century-old feud.

Like many Zion residents, McKinney had not heard about the prayer duel and was initially surprised to learn about Dowie’s hostility toward Muslims.

He says now is the time to move forward in unity.

“History is history and I could take issue with anyone from the past if I wanted to,” McKinney said. “I’m about looking forward.”

The mayor will present Ahmad, the fifth successor to the sect’s founder who challenged Dowie, with a key to the city as a symbol of trust and friendship.

The Ahmadis are moving forward with the construction of their minaret, which they expect will be completed next year. The minaret is a global symbol of Islam and the faith’s call to prayer five times a day.

It would be a stark contrast from Dowie’s vision of a Christian utopia.

“The founding fathers of Zion are probably rolling in their graves,” said David Padfield, minister of Church of Christ, a non-denominational congregation around the corner from the mosque. “They didn’t even want our church here.”

Padfield, who supports the Ahmadiyya community, says it was the founders’ intolerance and exclusion of other faiths that “made it difficult for them to function.”

Soon, towering 70 feet above the ground, the mosque’s minaret will be the tallest structure in the city that Dowie built.

———

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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October 1, 2022
Mormon leader calls abuse ‘abomination’ amid policy scrutiny

SALT LAKE CITY — Russell M. Nelson, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told members of the faith on Saturday that abuse was “a grievous sin” that shouldn’t be tolerated and would bring down the wrath of God on perpetrators.

Though the leader of the nearly 17-million member faith did not mention it directly, the remarks were the first on abuse from a senior church leader since The Associated Press published an investigation into how the church handles reports of sexual abuse when brought to its attention.

“Let me be perfectly clear: any kind of abuse of women, children, or anyone is an abomination to the Lord,” Nelson told members of the faith gathered in Salt Lake City for its twice-yearly conference.

The AP’s investigation found the hotline the church uses for abuse reporting can be misused by its leaders to divert accusations away from law enforcement and toward church attorneys. The story, based on sealed records and court cases filed in Arizona and West Virginia, uncovered a host of concerns, including how church officials have cited exemptions to mandatory reporting laws, known as clergy-penitent privilege, as reason to not report abuse.

Since its publication, the church has said the investigation mischaracterizes its policies, while underlining how its teachings condemn abuse in the strongest terms.

The church has historically used its conference to set a tone for its members, reflect on current events and announce changes in doctrine. Nelson’s remarks on Saturday echoed the statements the church has released since the publication of the AP’s investigation — condemning abuse, while also defending the church’s policies.

“For decades now, the Church has taken extensive measures to protect — in particular — children from abuse,” Nelson, the church’s 98-year-old president, said sitting on a stool behind a conference center lectern, imploring listeners to research church policy themselves.

Nelson described abuse as an influence of “the adversary,” employing a term the church frequently uses to describe forces that oppose the gospel and its teachings.

Amid the church’s insistence that reporting mischaracterizes its sexual abuse hotline, Nelson also said “the adversary” worked “to blur the line between what is true and what is not true.”

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe Nelson is a prophet.

This weekend’s event, which runs Saturday and Sunday, is broadcast to members around the world.

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October 1, 2022
Two prophets, century-old prayer duel inspire Zion mosque

A holy miracle happened in Zion 115 years ago. Or so millions of Ahmadi Muslims around the world believe.

The Ahmadis view this small-sized city, 40 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, as a place of special religious significance for their global messianic faith. Their reverence for the community began more than a century ago — with fighting words, a prayer duel and a prophecy.

Zion was founded in 1900 as a Christian theocracy by John Alexander Dowie, an evangelical and early Pentecostal preacher who drew thousands to the city with his faith healing ministry. The Ahmadis believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, defended the faith from Dowie’s verbal attacks against Islam, and defeated him in a sensational face-off armed only with prayers.

Most current residents may not have an inkling of that high-stakes holy fight of a bygone era. But, for the Ahmadis, it is one that has created an eternal bond with the city of Zion.

This weekend, thousands of Ahmadi Muslims from around the world have congregated in the city to celebrate that century-old miracle and a significant milestone in the life of Zion and of their faith: The building of the city’s first mosque.

——

Dowie was born in Scotland in 1847. His family immigrated in 1860 to Australia, where he was ordained and became pastor of a Congregational church.

Dowie left Australia in 1888 for the United States where he grew in popularity with his healing ministry. Stories of Dowie’s miracles abound, including one about Sadie Cody, a niece of Buffalo Bill Cody, a celebrity known for his Wild West Show, who said her spinal tumor was healed by Dowie’s prayers.

With money accumulated from the faithful, Dowie bought 6,000 acres of land in Lake County, Illinois, hoping to establish a Christian utopia. Dowie’s laws forbade gambling, theaters, circuses, alcohol and tobacco. He also banned swearing, spitting, dancing, pork, oysters and tan-colored shoes. Whistling on Sunday was punishable by jail time.

The massive 8,000-seat Shiloh Tabernacle, built in 1900, became Zion’s religious center. It was there that Dowie appeared with his flowing white beard, robed in the brightly embroidered garments of an Old Testament high priest, and declared himself “Elijah the Restorer.”

While he welcomed Black people and immigrants into Zion, Dowie had harsh words for politicians, medical doctors and Muslims, which he expressed in his journal.

In 1902, Dowie wrote: “This is my job to gather people from the East and West, North and South and inhabit Christians in this Zion City as well as other cities until the day comes when the Mohammedan religion is totally wiped out of this world. Oh God show us the day.”

———

In his palms on a recent September day, Tahir Ahmed Soofi cradled a crumbling, yellow newspaper from the 1900s bearing Dowie’s image.

“Dowie is a part of our history, too,” said Soofi, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Zion chapter, as he arranged these relics in glass displays that will become part of the new mosque’s museum. The community has named this mosque Fath-e-Azeem, which means “a great victory” in Arabic.

The $4 million building, with a large prayer hall and plush carpeting, will replace their older center less than two miles away, which has been the community’s home since 1983.

As he got the new space ready for Satruday’s inauguration, Soofi recounted the tale passed down to generations of Ahmadis. When Ahmad, the religion’s founder who lived in Qadian, India, heard about Dowie’s angry proclamations against Muslims, he urged him to stop, Soofi said.

Ahmadis believe that their founder, who was born in 1835, was the promised reformer the Prophet Muhammed predicted and the metaphorical second coming of Jesus Christ.

Soofi said when Dowie ignored Ahmad’s pleas, in 1902, he challenged Zion’s founder to a “prayer duel.”

In The New York Times and other U.S. publications at the time, this challenge was built up as a battle between two messiahs – to ascertain who was the true prophet and which was the true religion. Ahmad asserted in writing that, “whoever is the liar may perish first.”

Dowie refused to acknowledge Ahmad’s challenge and scoffed at his statements that Jesus was human, survived the crucifixion and lived out the rest of his life in Kashmir. He shot back writing: “Do you think that I should answer such gnats and flies?”

In the following years, Dowie’s fortunes began to fade. In 1905, one of his top lieutenants, Wilbur Voliva, took over leadership of the church after Dowie was accused of extravagance and misusing investments. Dowie’s health suffered thereafter. He died in 1907 after a paralytic stroke, at age 60.

——

While Ahmad died a year after Dowie passed, at age 73, his followers saw Dowie’s downfall and death as a great victory for their founder and faith.

In Zion, Shiloh House, the 25-room mansion Dowie built in the 1900s still stands in his memory, cared for by the Zion Historical Society. Residents whose ancestors followed Dowie to this city — what they believed to be a place of healing — would like to see the founder and his grand vision memorialized.

For Ahmadis worldwide, the result of this prayer duel reaffirmed the truth of their messiah’s claims, said Amjad Mahmood Khan, U.S. spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It’s a story Ahmadi children grow up hearing at home and in their mosques worldwide.

“Whether you talk to an Ahmadi in Miami, Maine, South Dakota or Seattle, they will know this story and what a great victory it was,” Khan said, adding that it doesn’t mean they exult in Dowie’s demise. “It’s the triumph of what Islam stands for in the face of false allegations, and it’s about the victory of prayer over prejudice.”

——

The Ahmadis have struggled to gain acceptance even among mainstream Muslims, adding to the significance of establishing the mosque in Zion, said Khan. Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974.

Khan said the global Ahmadiyya community’s current leader and caliph, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is in Zion to inaugurate the new mosque this weekend — a momentous occasion for U.S. Ahmadis. Ahmad was forced into exile from Pakistan after his election in 2003 and resides in London.

Zion Mayor Billy McKinney will present Ahmad, the fifth successor to the sect’s founder who challenged Dowie, with a key to the city as a symbol of friendship.

The Ahmadis are moving forward with the construction of their minaret, to be completed next year. The minaret is a global symbol of Islam. It would be a stark contrast from Dowie’s vision of a Christian utopia.

“The founding fathers of Zion are probably rolling in their graves,” said David Padfield, minister of Church of Christ, a non-denominational congregation near the mosque. “They didn’t even want our church here.”

Padfield, who supports the Ahmadiyya community, says it was the founders’ intolerance and exclusion of other faiths that “made it difficult for them to function.”

Soon, towering 70 feet above the ground, the mosque’s minaret will be the tallest structure in the city that Dowie built.

——

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Source link

October 1, 2022