c. 1998 Religion News Service

Alabama school board settles prayer dispute with Jewish family

(RNS) An Alabama school board has voted to settle a lawsuit filed by a Jewish family contending their children were teased, mocked and forced to pray by Christian students and teachers.

In voting to approve the settlement, the board members also agreed to abide by a federal judge’s ruling involving another Alabama county restricting public and coercive religious practices in public schools.

In the suit, filed last year, Wayne and Sue Willis charged their four children _ ages 5 through 14 _ faced harassment while attending classes in Pike County, where they were the only Jewish students.

They said one of the children was forced to bow his head during a Christian prayer and another was told to write a paper on”Why Jesus Loves Me.” School officials acknowledged a number of the suit’s key allegations but admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement, the Associated Press reported. The agreement, which also includes a list of what is and is not permissible concerning religion in public schools, must still be approved by a judge.

The settlement follows many of the guidelines laid out in a decision last year by U.S. District Court Judge Ira DeMent, who barred DeKalb County, Alabama, school officials from promoting religious practices in the public schools.

Pope appeals to Texas governor to stop execution

(RNS) Pope John Paul II has written to Texas Gov. George Bush Jr. asking him to spare the life of convicted murderer 38-year-old Joseph Cannon, according to news reports from Rome.

Cannon, who has spent more than half of his life in prison, is scheduled to be executed about 7 p.m. EDT Wednesday (April 22).

John Paul has sought to intervene in a number of recent U.S. death penalty cases _ all to no avail. Most recently, the pope called for clemency in the cases of Joseph O’Dell and Karla Faye Tucker.

Cannon is the latest death row inmate whose cause has been taken up by Italian anti-death penalty campaigners, who are among the most vocal opponents of the death penalty worldwide.

Cannon’s case has also been taken up in the Italian parliament, Reuters reported. On Monday (April 20), its foreign affairs committee adopted a resolution urging the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi to try to stop the execution.

Vatican sources said John Paul’s letter to Bush did not go into questions of innocence or guilt but was based on humanitarian grounds. Roman Catholic teaching opposes the death penalty in all but extreme cases and teaches that instances in which it can be justified are”virtually non-existent”in the contemporary world.

Cannon was sentenced to be executed for murdering a woman when he was 17 years old.”I want people to know I have repented for what I have done and if I could do something, anything to change what has been, I would,”Cannon said in an interview broadcast on Italian television.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a resolution urging a general moratorium on executions and an official of the agency accused the United States of applying capital punishment in an unfair and arbitrary way.

Famed Buddhist temple in Bhutan destroyed in fire

(RNS) The Taktsang Monastery, a 1,200-year-old Buddhist shrine in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, was destroyed by fire Sunday (April 19).

The monastery, built on the face of a 2,500-foot cliff only accessible by a steep path that takes three hours to traverse, was built over a cave where the Buddhist saint known both as Padmasambhava and Guru Rinpoche is said to have spent months in meditation in the 8th century. Padmasambhava is credited with having established Buddhism in what are today Tibet and Bhutan.

Taktsang _ which translates as tiger’s lair _ was the most venerated monastery in Bhutan. Buddhist tradition says that Padmasambhava was brought to the site by a miraculous flying tiger.

While the cause of the blaze is unknown, reports said Bhutanese officials are investigating the possibility that a ceremonial lamp or lightning started the fire. A caretaker monk, the only person at the monastery at the time of the fire, was missing.

Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel, Bhutan’s only newspaper, said the wooden monastery was totally destroyed in the fire, The New York Times reported.

Tashi Tsering, a Bhutanese diplomat at the United Nations, called Taktsang”one of our most sacred monasteries.” Taktsang was filled with sacred silk Buddhist wall hangings known as thangkas, statues and holy relics. Entry to the monastery’s inner shrine was barred to most non-Buddhist foreigners.

Bhutan, with a population of about 600,000, is a reclusive nation that limits outside influences and is the world’s only remaining Buddhist kingdom.

U.N. commission drops Cuba from list of human rights violators

(RNS) For the first time since 1991, the U.N. Human Rights Commission failed Tuesday (April 21) to condemn Cuba’s human rights record, citing January’s visit by Pope John Paul II as one example of how the island nation is becoming more free.

While denouncing the human rights records of Iraq, Nigeria, Congo and Sudan, the commission, meeting in Geneva, voted 19-16 not to include Cuba in its list of offending nations.

The commission’s action is the latest sign that Cuban President Fidel Castro’s gamble in bringing the outspoken pope to Cuba is paying off. While in Cuba, John Paul was highly critical of Cuba’s lack of full religious freedom and Castro’s tight control over his communist nation’s political life.

However, the pope also called for the end of U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, which he said hurt Cuba’s poorest citizens most.

In Washington, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin criticized the commission’s vote, saying”some members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission … have chosen to turn their backs on the suffering of the Cuban people. The United States will redouble efforts to promote freedom in Cuba.” In Cuba, human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, who spent eight years in Cuban jails for his political activities, said the vote reflected the world community’s”tiredness”with the issue of Cuba. The Cuban human rights picture”continues to be very unfavorable,”he told the Associated Press.

Conservative anti-Castro members of the U.S. Congress told the Washington Times that the U.N. vote would set back attempts to get Congress to pay the United Nations the $1 billion it is owed by the United States.

World Catholic population hits 1 billion

(RNS) The Vatican announced Wednesday (April 22) that there are now 1 billion Roman Catholics in the world.

The total includes an estimated 5 million Catholics in China and North Korea, where the figures are projections base on the number of Roman Catholics in those two nations prior to the installation of communist governments. The church has no official representatives in either nation.

The 1 billion figure _ 995 million plus the estimated 5 million in China and North Korea _ is for 1996, the last year surveyed. For 1995, the Vatican counted 989 million Catholics, plus those in China and North Korea.

Quote of the day: abortion foe Joseph Scheidler

(RNS)”A million dollars, a billion dollars, a trillion dollars, the national debt _ they won’t get it. You can’t get blood from a turnip _ and we’re turnips.” _ Abortion foe Joseph Scheidler, held liable for violence at abortion clinics, telling reporters Tuesday (April 21) he and other abortion opponents can’t pay millions of dollars in damages and legal fees as a result of the court decision.

DEA END RNS