Bishops Join With Christians in the Holy Land

FIDES, Jan. 17 — A group of Catholic bishops from Europe and North America visited the Holy Land from Jan. 12-15 to show solidarity with the harassed, dwindling Christian population there, the Vatican missionary news service Fides reported.

“We came here to demonstrate the solidarity of Catholics throughout the world with the Church of the Holy Land,” the bishops said in a statement. “For the third time in as many years, we have come in friendship for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Christian, Jew and Muslim alike. We have seen the devastating effect of the wall currently being built through the land and homes of Palestinian communities.”

The bishops also deplored the difficulties Christian clergy, religious and laity have in gaining permission from the Israeli government to work and study in that country and its occupied territories, according to Fides.

The bishops visiting included Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Church leaders from Great Britain and continental Europe.

Return of the Jacobins in France?

REUTERS, Jan. 15 — A recent decision by French President Jacques Chirac has afflicted members of three historic religions: Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Out of a desire to reduce the visibility of Islamic immigrants in France, Chirac pushed a law through Parliament forbidding Islamic head scarves on girls in public schools — and for good measure, banning Jewish yarmulkes and visible crosses.

Since the law was announced, Christians have been targeted even outside public schools, according to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. He cited reports from bishops around the country of dozens of cases of Catholic girls being harassed for wearing a cross and nuns for wearing their habits.

France has a long past of anticlericalism; its republican regime was born in a revolution that ordered the execution of thousands of priests and religious on the guillotine and the wholesale slaughter of Catholic rebels — sometimes through mass drownings of men, women and children, as in the Vendee region.

As recently as 1905, all religious orders were expelled, en masse, from the country.

Indian Bishops Back AIDS Tests Before Marriage

NEWS24.COM, Jan. 13 — The Catholic bishops of India have asked their country's government to make AIDS and HIV tests mandatory for people getting married, News24.com reported.

Bishop Yoohanan Chrysostom of Marthandam explained that the Church wished to help stop people from transmitting the disease, sometimes without even knowing they are infected.

The bishop said the Church planned to annul marriages in which one partner had deceived the other about his or her HIV status.

“The efforts of the Church would be strengthened only if appropriate legislation is enacted by the government,” read a statement from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. The Church in India operates some 4,745 hospitals, 39 dedicated solely to AIDS patients.

“Because of the increasing cases of AIDS in India,” Bishop Chrysostom said, “the Church feels that priests should be convinced of the health status of couples before solemnizing their marriage.”