Activists Say States Continue Religious Persecution

WASHINGTON — Religious rights activists, including Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, said Christians and people of other faiths continue to suffer at the hands of governments throughout the world.

Speaking at a Dec. 14 forum, “Christmas Under Siege Around the World,” inside the Capitol hosted by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who is co-chairman of the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom, they painted a picture that showed Christmas as just another day when believers could be subjected to oppression, harassment and even torture because of their beliefs.

He said, “Anti-Christian discrimination and violence seem to be growing throughout the Islamic world,” said Archbishop Chaput, who is a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “In the past several years, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and even Muslim-controlled areas of the heavily Catholic Philippines have all seen extraordinary acts of bloodshed against Christians.”

 (CNS)

Ohio-Born Nun’s Brazilian Killers Convicted

BELEM, Brazil — Two Brazilian men were convicted of killing an Ohio-born woman religious who worked with the poor and tried to save the Amazon rain forest.

Rayfran das Neves Sales and Clodoaldo Carlos Batista were found guilty Dec. 10 of killing Sister Dorothy Stang, 73, of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, on Feb. 12 in Para state, the Associated Press reported. The jury sentenced Sales, who shot Sister Stang, to 27 years in prison. Batista, charged as an accomplice, received 17 years.

Prosecutors alleged Sales and Batista were offered $25,000 by ranchers to kill the nun. The convicted killers, however, did not receive the maximum sentence allowed by law. The public defender’s office said it would appeal the decision. Three other suspects, accused of being the ones who gave the orders to kill the nun, remain in jail awaiting trial.

(Zenit and CNS)

Ex-Law Officer Sentenced in Cardinal’s Death

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A court has sentenced a former police commander to 40 years in prison in the 1993 shooting death of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo at the Guadalajara airport.

The court in Jalisco said Humberto Rodríguez Banuelos was part of a gang of gunmen that shot the cardinal while he was sitting in his car, officials said Dec. 9. Six others also were killed in the attack.

Church figures have long disputed the official version of the slaying, arguing that the cardinal was killed because he knew about relationships between drug dealers and government officials, the Associated Press noted. Last month the Mexican attorney general’s office announced it had reopened investigations into the 1993 slaying.

(Zenit)

Hurricane Victims Still Need Help, Says Bishop

WASHINGTON — Two months after the remnants of Hurricane Stan passed over Central America, Guatemalans are still desperate for emergency housing and have not yet come to grips with concerns about destroyed crops, flooded fields and a broken economy, said a U.S. bishop.

“People are still kind of dazed,” Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., said Dec. 2. “The worst has not hit them, unfortunately.” The bishop, treasurer of Catholic Relief Services’ board of directors, traveled with Catholic Relief Services officials to Guatemala in late November to show solidarity, “emphasize the traumatic situation there, see for ourselves and bring attention to it,” he said.

Bishop DiMarzio and officials from the U.S. bishops’ international relief and development agency, met with victims from the storm, Catholic Relief Services workers and Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of San Marcos, Guatemala. In a telephone interview, Bishop DiMarzio said that the Guatemalan victims need “infrastructure assistance, food assistance and continued emergency housing.”

(CNS)