c. 1996 Religion News Service
Evangelical leader optimistic about New Era settlement
(RNS)-A spokesman for evangelical ministries hit last year by a scandal involving the now-bankrupt Foundation for New Era Philanthropy is optimistic that a settlement can be reached that will prevent years of litigation.”We believe we have an agreement in principle which must now be approved by all of the clients,”said Paul Nelson, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in Herndon, Va.
Evangelical ministries were among the non-profit groups who bought into a New Era”matching grant”program that promised to double their money. Federal investigators say the program was a Ponzi scheme, which created the illusion of financial success by using contributions from new investors to pay previous ones.
The essence of the proposed settlement-first suggested by the evangelical ministries-is that those who benefited positively from investments with New Era would return money to help those who lost funds. Information released by the bankruptcy trustee has indicated that about $136 million was lost by charities and ministries. Investors who were ahead when New Era went bankrupt gained a total of about $85 million.
Nelson said the plan recognizes the”hardship”on charities that have received money and spent it in good faith and is asking them to return a portion of what they received.
He said a March 6 meeting of attorneys of parties affected by the scandal was crucial in the ongoing negotiations.”If this is a marathon race with hurdles in it, last week’s meeting may have been the highest hurdle in the whole race,”Nelson said Wednesday (March 13).
Although Nelson’s council formed an organization of 184 evangelical groups called”United Response to New Era,”the council itself will no longer be actively engaged in the process after March, he said. The council, which will continue to support the proposed settlement plan, is pulling out because it has spent about $400,000 in legal fees, Nelson said.
Two priests, nun reported killed in Burundi attack on seminary
(RNS)-State-run Burundi radio reported Thursday (March 14) that two Roman Catholic priests and a nun were killed when a mob of 200 people attacked a seminary in northern Burundi.
The report provided few details but said the seminary was ransacked in the attack and church officials closed it for repairs, Reuters reported.
Violence in northern Burundi has claimed more than 70 lives over the past month as Hutu rebels, infiltrating from refugee camps in Zaire, have clashed with the Tutsi-dominated Burundian army.
On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi, condemned the ongoing violence in the African nation and appealed for all sides to work for peace.
Also on Wednesday, Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Reilly of Worcester, Mass., chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s international policy committee, said the continued violence in Burundi threatens the stability of the entire east central African region.
More than 100,000 people have died since civil war broke out in 1994 between the two ethnic groups. Similar ethnic-based fighting in Rwanda resulted in more than 500,000 deaths between April and August of 1994.”Since the start of the civil war in 1994, neighboring countries have supplied the guns, grenades, land mines and ammunition which have fueled this protracted civil war,”Reilly said in a statement.”The daily death tolls from political and criminal killings are staggering,”he added.”Women, children, the elderly, and even the disabled are unfortunately among the most frequent victims of this horrible violence.” Burundian government officials, along with officials from neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire, are scheduled to meet this weekend (March 16-18) in Tunis, Tunisia, at a summit convened by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Former Tanzania President Julius Nyerere, one of Africa’s most respected elder statesmen, is to act as mediator in the effort to end the violence in the region.
Donald Miller retiring as general secretary of the Church of the Brethren
(RNS)-Donald Miller, 66, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren since 1986, has announced his retirement, effective Dec. 31.
As the top administrative official in the 144,000-member denomination, Miller supervised the church’s day-to-day operations at the denomination’s headquarters in Elgin, Ill., and its offices in New Windsor, Md., and Geneva, Switzerland.
A strong supporter of ecumenism, Miller is on the executive coordinating committee of the National Council of Churches and is a member of the 150-person central committee of the World Council of Churches.
Before becoming general secretary, Miller served for 25 years as a professor at Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Ill.
The Church of the Brethren, a historic peace church that is opposed to all war, began in Germany in 1708. The first members to come to the United States arrived in 1719.
Update: A new round of clashes over priest in Cyprus.
(RNS)-Thousands of demonstrators, many throwing stones and other objects, clashed with police Thursday outside the Archbishop’s Palace of the Greek Orthodox Church in Nicosia, Cyprus.
The clashes came as the island’s Orthodox bishops met for a second hearing on a popular priest facing charges of improper sexual activities with a male student.
More than 50 people were injured as police in riot gear fired tear gas to stop about 3,000 supporters of Archimandrite Pangratios Meraclis from approaching the palace, Reuters reported.
Inside, the bishops met to hear testimony on the charges against Meraclis. Like a previous meeting on Monday (March 11), however, Thursday’s hearing ended without a verdict.
On Monday, some 500 pro-Meraclis demonstrators broke through the gates and into the courtyard at the palace, throwing rocks and breaking windows before being dispersed by police.
Meraclis was elected earlier this by a large majority as bishop of the Morphou district of Cyprus. But Archbishop Chrysostomos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church on Cyprus, refuses to ordain him because of the charges, which Meraclis denies.
Dispute breaks out over plan to build shops near Auschwitz
(RNS)-A spokesman for the Israeli Knesset (parliament), the leader of the Anti-Defamation League, and the president of Poland are each calling for a Polish entrepreneur to abandon plans to build a shopping mall across the street from the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp.”There is no pain that the victims of the Holocaust did not endure on earth,”said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the ADL in a Thursday (March 14) letter to Mayor Andrzej Telka of Oswiecim, Poland, the site of Auschwitz.”The very least the world can do is to give them the peace in death to which they are entitled.” Foxman’s letter was prompted by reports earlier this week that a Polish entrepreneur, Janusz Marszalek, and a German financier, Georg Schreg, want to build a mini-mall in several warehouse buildings across the street from the former death camp.
The plans have sparked criticism from around the world.
Shevah Weiss, the Israeli Knesset spokesman, called the plan a”terrible, surrealist thing.”Ignatz Bubis, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the plan”simply is not acceptable.”Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, condemned the project on national television but is powerless to stop it.
An estimated 1.5 million people were killed and cremated at Auschwitz.
Pope John Paul II reported feeling better after running a fever
(RNS)-Pope John Paul II, who was forced to cancel a general audience on Wednesday because he was running a fever and not feeling well, is almost back to normal, the Vatican said Thursday (March 14).”His health is good and so are his spirits,”Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls said. The spokesman said a decision would be made on Friday on whether the pope, who is 75, would go ahead with his next public activity-a beatification ceremony scheduled for Sunday.
Navarro Valls said John Paul’s temperature was nearly back to normal and the Vatican was awaiting test results to determine what caused the illness.
Wire services reported that a wave of influenza is sweeping Rome.
Quote of the day: Raul Suarez, Baptist professor at the Matanzas Evangelical Seminary, Havana, Cuba.
(RNS)-Raul Suarez, a Baptist professor at the Matanzas Evangelical Seminary and director of the Martin Luther King Study Center in Havana, Cuba, at a news conference (March 12) in Geneva, Switzerland, on the need for Cuba to return to the ideals of its 1959 revolution:”We don’t want capitalism, and much less capitalism in the way it has been imposed on Latin America. We don’t want what was called socialism, although it had its achievements. We want an alternative to both systems.”JC END ANDERSON
