Nun Cracks Mozambique Organ-Theft Ring

INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, Jan. 21— A Brazilian Spiritan sister working in Nampula, Mozambique, made a horrifying discovery last year when a kidnapper arrived by mistake at her door, offering to sell her a child for his organs.

Once she got over her disbelief, Sister Maria Elida dos Santos started digging and discovered a ring of racketeers selling helpless children to organ traffickers serving the black market in transplants, according to Independent Catholic News.

Sister dos Santos documented multiple instances of kidnapping, which ended in the discovery of the missing children's bodies, minus vital organs. She also discovered that local authorities were slow to investigate these crimes.

Father John Kilcrann of the Holy Ghost missionaries in Rome asked Catholics to write to their local Mozambiqan ambassador, insisting that Sister dos Santos be protected and the organ traffickers brought to justice.

Ban on Religious Garb in France Causes Strife

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Jan. 22 — French President Jacques Chirac in December proposed a law to the country's parliament banning students in public schools from wearing religious symbols, ranging from Islamic head scarves to Jewish yarmulkes and Christian crosses. Predictably, the ban has caused more conflict than concord.

The foreign minister of Chirac's government, Dominique de Villepin, has admitted that the law has damaged France's relations with Arab nations and the United States, Agence France-Presse reported.

De Villepin pointed to angry demonstrations in many Arab capitals — and in Paris — against the proposed ban and an official protest from a U.S. diplomat.

The president of Germany, Johannes Rau, spoke out against local attempts to enforce a ban on Islamic dress in German states, saying, “I fear that it could become a first step toward a secular state, which would ban religious symbols and signs from public places. I don't want that.”

Many Are Depraved, a Few Are Afflicted

REUTERS, Jan. 21 — Belgian Cardinal Gustaaf Joos has sparked a controversy in his country by suggesting that 90%-95% of those who describe themselves as “gay” or “lesbian” are not in fact exclusively oriented toward the same sex but rather are “sexual perverts” who choose to act on disordered impulses.

“Real homosexuals don't wander in the streets in colorful suits. Those are people who have a serious problem and have to live with that. And if they make a mistake they will be forgiven. We have to help these people and not judge them,” Cardinal Joos said in an interview published by Belgium's P-Magazine. “The Church … rejects homosexuality, not the homosexual.”

A local Church spokesman said Cardinal Joos, an 80-year-old parish priest and retired professor of moral theology who was appointed a cardinal last October, “doesn't speak on behalf of the Belgian bishops. He is not a member of the Belgian conference of bishops.”

In response to Joos’ comments, a local pressure group, the Center for Equal Opportunities and Struggle Against Racism, announced it would sue the cardinal, accusing him of violating Belgium's strict anti-discrimination laws, which restrict free speech considered offensive to certain minority groups.