c. 1999 Religion News Service
Vatican says pope hopes to visit Iraq later this year
(RNS) Pope John Paul II hopes to travel to Iraq later this year, where he would visit the traditional birthplace of the biblical patriarch Abraham and likely meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Vatican said Thursday (May 20).
The pope has repeatedly spoken out against international sanctions and air strikes on Iraq, saying that innocent Iraqi citizens have been the most hurt. Should John Paul meet with Saddam Hussein, it would likely be viewed as a boost for the Iraqi leader, the Associated Press reported.
Iraqi dissidents have urged the pope not to visit Iraq, saying it would gain undeserved international sympathy for a regime guilty of persistent human rights violations. Normal Vatican practice is for the pope to meet with the head of state of any country he visits.
The pope has made clear his desire to visit the ruins of Ur, the traditional home of the prophet Abraham in ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq, as part of a millennium tour of Middle East holy sites.
A Vatican spokesman said no date or itinerary have as yet been set. Nor has the usual advance planning trip been undertaken by Vatican officials, added the Rev. Ciro Benedettini. “Right now, it’s only a plan,” he said.
Confirmation of a papal visit generally comes from the host country at least two months before a trip.
Past papal trips have brought him in contact with other leaders isolated by the United States and other Western countries The pope visited Nigeria in March 1998, urging then-ruler Gen. Sani Abacha to free political detainees. He made the same appeal to Fidel Castro in a momentous trip to Cuba the same year.
Christians make up about 5 percent of Iraq’s 22 million people, most of whom are Muslim.
The international community imposed economic sanctions on Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Air strikes continue as the United Nations tries to gain Iraqi cooperation in an effort to make sure Baghdad has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction.
Religious groups renew call for end to Yugoslav bombing
(RNS) Religious and peace organizations from across the United States launched a coalition on Tuesday (May 20) to condemn the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia and call for increased diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.
“We urge an immediate cease-fire, a halt to NATO air attacks, and (we urge) negotiations involving all interested parties. An end to the bombing is a prerequisite for any peace process to begin,” said Nancy Small of Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace group.
Pax Christi USA joined 17 other religious and peace groups in the appeal, which also condemned violence committed by Serb military forces but insisted that bombing would not solve the crisis. They also called for an international peacekeeping operation to monitor the Serb military and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The groups have generally opposed the NATO air strikes since their inception. Joining together as the National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia was an effort to raise their profile on the issue.
The coalition seemed unclear, however, on how it would convince Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo should air strikes end. However, coalition members agreed that the bombing has only aggravated the situation.
“This war is not stopping the terrible human rights violations in Kosovo so we need to try something else. This is worth the risk. Clinton took a risk with military action _ he lost the gamble,” said Joe Volk, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobbying organization.
The announcement came just one day after another coalition of religious and ethnic organizations _ including the American Jewish Congress and the National Albanian American Council _ issued its own statement supporting military action against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia because of its actions in Kosovo.
But members of the coalition against the air strikes say they are convinced that military operations do not offer a solution.
“A cease-fire would put more pressure on Milosevic than one more day of bombing,” said Gordon Clark, executive director of Peace Action, a national disarmament and economic justice organization.
Paralyzed woman dies after court says that’s her right
(RNS) A woman left paralyzed after her mother shot her died Wednesday (May 19), one day after winning the right to be taken off life support.
The frail and aged mother of Georgette Smith, 42, of Orlando, Fla., could now face charges of murder.
Smith won the right to be removed from the ventilator that had kept her alive when Judge Richard Conrad ruled in her favor Tuesday. “Ms. Smith has made a difficult choice, a choice which she has the right to make,” the judge said.
Smith, who was paralyzed from the neck down, could not swallow, needed a feeding tube and could speak only with some effort. She had no control over her bowels or bladder and ran a high risk of pneumonia, infections, ulcers and bedsores.
Last week, her attorneys asked the judge to permit doctors to disconnect the ventilator because she did not want to continue living in her condition.
Prosecutors had said they probably would seek to indict Shirley Egan on murder once her daughter died. Egan, 68, already was charged with attempted murder. Egan allegedly shot her daughter in the neck in March after overhearing Smith in a discussion about putting Egan into a nursing home.
Chicago bank to generate more than $20 million in church loans
(RNS) A Chicago bank that emphasizes community development announced Tuesday (May 18) that it plans to generate more than $20 million in loans to help churches complete building projects.
The announcement, made to about 100 African-American preachers in Chicago, will help congregations that want to refurbish church buildings, construct community centers, complete day-care facilities and finance other construction.
“The satisfaction in approving church loans is measured in more than dollars and cents,” said Clyde White, associate minister at Trinity United Church in Chicago and president of South Shore Bank’s Chatham Banking Center. “These churches reach out to communities and provide much-needed services like day care and housing.”
White helped develop the bank’s Church Program, which since 1996 has generated between $35 million and $40 million in loans for similar church projects.
Many of the loan recipients are predominantly African-American and Latino churches.
Donna Potts, director of membership and marketing services for the National Congress for Community Economic Development, said the bank’s effort fits into the growing popularity of faith-based economic and community development.
“This is a trend now that has had a foothold for a while but the surge of it is really being felt everywhere,” she said.
Potts cited as an example a marked increase in recent years in membership of faith-based organizations in her Washington-based congress.
Through a collaboration with banks, faith-based organizations have been encouraged to join the congress. About 49 of the congress’ 900 members are now faith-based organizations, an increase of at least 50 percent, she said.
L.A. rabbi stands by harsh criticism of Pope Pius XII
(RNS) Rabbi Marvin Hier of Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance said he plans to keep publicly opposing moves to canonize Pope Pius XII, saying that to do so “desecrates the memory of the Holocaust.”
Catholic officials have criticized Hier for his remarks, calling them inappropriate.
Speaking in New York on May 13,, Hier said Pius XII, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, “sat on the throne of Saint Peter in stony silence, without ever lifting a finger, as each day thousands of Jews from all over Europe were sent to the gas chambers with his full knowledge.”
Hier also called on the Vatican to, “open its files and to let the world finally know the truth about those years.” Hier told Religion News Service Monday (May 17) that he doubts the Vatican files would exonerate Pius, saying if they did “they would have long ago released those documents.”
“This is too important to be swept under the rug,” said Hier, who believes efforts to canonize Pius XII will be stepped up after a long anticipated trip by Pope John Paul II to the Holy Land next year.
Out of respect for those Holocaust survivors still living, Hier thinks the Vatican should “postpone the candidacy in his case for another 50 years, and let the historians take a look at it rather than rush through it right now. You ask survivors of the Holocaust if they thought Pius XII was a saint.”
The Vatican was officially neutral during World War II and is credited with helping rescue some Jews from Nazis. As pope, however, Pius XII did not stop Father Josef Tiso from actually governing the pro-Nazi puppet state of Slovakia, in which 70,000 Slovak Jews were killed or sent to concentration camps. Vatican neutrality did allow the city-state to shelter Italian Jews and downed Allied airmen, but the pope’s full record is incomplete due to Vatican secrecy over wartime files.
Hier’s New York speech prompted a quick response from Eugene Fisher, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ chief official for Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
“It’s not very helpful,” Fisher said. “What we need is to get solid,responsible scholars together going through the evidence. The papacy for Catholics is a sacred institution and it needs to be respected and approached responsibly,” Fisher said, adding that during the war, the Vatican “saw both Nazism and communism as threats.
Michael Berenbaum, president of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles, sided with Hier.
Jews “generally should not have any say in whom Roman Catholics regard as saints because that’s the business of Roman Catholicism,” Berenbaum said. But regarding Pius XII, Berenbaum said “his canonization represents a role model that is problematic for Jews. Rabbi Hier pointed put what most Jews feel and what most sense. Surely I don’t believe any religion wants saints with dubious records.”
Orthodox patriarch begins first official visit to Greece
(RNS) Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew blessed a crowd in central Athens and walked with political leaders and clergymen to a church Thursday (May 20) during his first official visit to the seat of Greek Orthodoxy.
“You opened your heart to the mother church,” said Bartholomew, considered the “first among equals” of the Orthodox patriarchs.
Relations between Bartholomew and Greek clergy have been strained over his contacts with the Vatican and his ecclesiastic control of parts of Greece from his base in Istanbul, Turkey. Greece and Turkey are longtime rivals, and the Turkish government exerts considerable control over Bartholomew.
His visit is seen as a chance to close the rifts and enhance his standing as a crusader for unity among the world’s more than 200 million Orthodox faithful.
More than 90 percent of Greece’s 10.2 million people are baptized Orthodox Christians. Despite tensions between him and Greece’s Orthodox church, Bartholomew has direct authority over the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
Bartholomew, ecumenical patriarch since 1992, had until now never officially visited Greece at the invitation of the Greek Orthodox Church. He stopped in the northern port of Salonica in 1997 at the request of a cultural organization and visited the islands of Crete in 1992 and Patmos in 1995, but the former is autonomous and the latter falls within his religious jurisdiction, the Associated Press reported.
Nebraska lawmakers vote moratorium on death penalty executions
(RNS) The Nebraska Legislature has became the first in the nation to place a moratorium on executions.
The one-chamber, nonpartisan Legislature Thursday (May 20) voted 27-21 in favor of a bill that slaps a two-year ban on executions while a study is done to see if the death penalty is being applied fairly in the state. Death sentences could be imposed during the two years, but no executions would take place, the Associated Press reported.
The measure gained two more votes than the 25 it needed to pass.
Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns _ a Republican and Roman Catholic in his first year in office _ now must decide whether to maintain his longtime stance in favor of the death penalty and veto the bill, or sign it into law.
Johanns has said he would wait until the measure reaches his desk to make a decision, which was expected later Thursday. He has five days to consider it.
Johanns could choose to take no action on the Nebraska measure and it would become law automatically. State GOP chief Chuck Sigerson has urged the governor to veto it. “Support of the death penalty is essential to the (GOP) platform,” said Sigerson.
The American Bar Association and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops have called for such moratoriums. Other states have considered them but have not approved legislation.
The Illinois House recently passed a resolution endorsing a study of the death penalty that would include a six-month moratorium on executions and a task force to study the issue.
Three men have been put to death since Nebraska resumed executions in 1994 after a 35-year hiatus.
Quote of the day: Author and philosopher Ken Wilber
(RNS) “So here is the utterly bizarre structure of today’s world: A scientific framework that is global in its reach and omnipresent in its information and communications networks, forms a meaningless skeleton within which hundreds of subglobal, premodern religions create value and meaning for billions; and they each _ science and religion _ tend to deny significance, even reality, to each other.”
_ Author and philosopher Ken Wilber, from his book “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” (Broadway).
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AP-NY-05-20-99 1833EDT