c. 1998 Religion News Service

Latin American Lutherans urged to join jubilee debt campaign

(RNS) The Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, has called on LWF member churches in Latin America and the Caribbean to join the Jubilee 2000 Campaign seeking the forgiveness of Third World nations’ foreign debts.

The LWF has already endorsed the debt reduction campaign.

The campaign was sparked in part by comments Pope John Paul II made in an apostolic letter setting forth his hopes for the Roman Catholic Church’s celebration of the millennium and has been embraced by church leaders around the world.

Supporters of the campaign are calling on global lending agencies, such as those associated with the World Bank, to cancel the staggering international debts of the poorest nations so their resources can be directed to social services and poverty elimination efforts.”We must try to create sustainable communities and strengthen regional communion, integral ministries, theological education and ecumenical commitment,”Noko also told the ninth Latin American Lutheran Congress meeting Sept. 28-Oct. 2 in Joinville, Brazil.

In a separate but related development, the National Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada also announced its support of the Jubilee 2000 campaign. In a letter to Paul Martin, Canada’s finance minister, the council said the”approach of a new millennium presents an extraordinary opportunity for giving new hope to the impoverished people of the world.” Council leaders signed a Jubilee 2000 campaign petition calling on leaders of lending nations to cancel the backlog of bilateral and multilateral debt owed by the 50 most indebted poor countries and urging them to”take effective steps to prevent high levels of debt from building up again.”

Update: Guatemala charges priest in bishop’s slaying

(RNS) Prosecutors in Guatemala have formally charged a Roman Catholic priest with killing Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, the church’s human rights head who was killed in April just after releasing a report critical of the Guatemalan military.

The formal charges, filed Wednesday (Oct. 21), came despite the protests of the church, which urged that the charges against the Rev. Mario Lionel Orantes Najera be dropped.

A spokesman for the church called the prosecutors’ action”lamentable.” On Tuesday, Archbishop Victor Jugo Martinez criticized the investigation of Gerardi’s death and accused prosecutors of ignoring”the hidden forces who were behind the crime,”the Associated Press reported.

Both the church and human rights investigators have accused prosecutors of arresting Orantes to deflect blame from the military.

Orantes, who was living in Gerardi’s residence at the time of the killing, was arrested July 22 based on what prosecutors said was evidence that Orantes’ dog had bitten the bishop before he died. A panel of U.S. investigators who examined Gerardi’s exhumed body, however, concluded that the dog did not attack the slain bishop, accusing the Guatemalan medical examiners of incompetence.

On Wednesday, a Guatemalan judge ruled that Orantes will have to remain jailed while the case continues.

Group prays to unionize Los Angeles Catholic hospital

(RNS) Religious and labor activists in California have begun a”prayer campaign”in an effort to convince a Roman Catholic hospital to allow its workers to be represented by a labor union.

Some 40 union activists spent Tuesday night (Oct. 20) at St. Emydius Roman Catholic Church in a 24-hour vigil in support of the union campaign at St. Francis Medical Center.”It’s a prayer campaign; this particular action is a pure prayer action,”said St. Emydius’ Monsignor Dennis O’Neil. Several hundred people attended a post-vigil rally and candlelight march Wednesday to the hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood.

St. Francis is a 478-bed facility with 305 medical staff and 1,500 other employees run by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. It is one of about 40 hospitals in the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West chain.

The Service Employees International Union Local 391 in Los Angeles has been working for a year to unionize its workers. Five other California Catholic medical facilities face similar union pushes.

St. Francis executives issued a statement Wednesday saying hospital nurses voted to join a nurse’s union 10 years ago and it supports secret-ballot elections.”To date, SEIU has only gathered a small number of pro-union supporters from St. Francis employees,”the hospital said.”Our employees know that we support their right to seek third party representationâÂ?¦” ADL says honoring Jewish-born Catholic cardinal `inappropriate’

(RNS) The Anti-Defamation League says it was”inappropriate”for”a Jewish organization”to honor Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Paris, who was born a Jew but left the faith.

Lustiger _ born Aron Lustiger _ converted to Catholicism when he was 14 after surviving the Nazi era in France by hiding out with a Catholic family. He has described himself as”a fulfilled Jew.” He was honored Tuesday (Oct. 20) by the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, an interfaith group housed on the campus of Sacred Heart University, a Catholic school, in Fairfield, Conn.

Also honored was Rabbi Rene-Samuel Sirat, who has served both as the chief rabbi of France and the grand rabbi of Europe. The two were given the center’s Nostra Aetate Award for advancing Catholic-Jewish relations.”It’s fine to have him speak at a conference or colloquium,”said ADL national director Abraham Foxman.”But I don’t think he should be honored by a Jewish organization because he converted out, which makes him a poor example.” Foxman _ himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor who spent the war years in his native Lithuania living with a Catholic woman who had him baptized _ said he respected Lustiger’s right to convert.”But I was baptized also. It saved my life also, I don’t think I deserve to be honored for that either,”Foxman said.

Although the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding is headed by a rabbi and receives substantial donations from Jewish contributors, it is technically not a Jewish institution. However, Foxman said”in every respect it’s a Jewish institution. That’s how people regard it.” Lustiger was sent by his mother to live with a Catholic family in Orleans, France, to save him from the Nazis. His mother perished at Auschwitz.

He has said that his upbringing was devoid of all but the most minimal Jewish practice and that he became enamored of the family that gave him haven and saved his life.

Considered a close associate of Pope John Paul II, Lustiger has played a key role in efforts to improve Catholic-Jewish relations. He helped convince Carmelite nuns to vacate their convent at Auschwitz and was instrumental in the issuing of last year’s statement by the French bishops’ conference that took responsibility for the church’s inaction on behalf of Jews during the Holocaust.

Foxman said he was not formally invited to the center event, but would not have attended had he been.

Quote of the day: United Nations official Olara Otunnu

(RNS)”Words on paper cannot save children in peril.” _ Olara Otunnu, the United Nation’s special envoy on children and armed conflict, who released a report Wednesday (Oct. 21) noting that 2 million children have been killed in wars since 1987 and complaining that nations are not adhering to international treaties on the rights of children.

DEA END RNS