c. 2000 Religion News Service
Elian’s Grandmothers Plead Boy’s Case on U.S. Soil
(RNS) The grandmothers of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy caught in a custody battle between U.S. and Cuban relatives, arrived in New York Friday (Jan. 21) accompanied by a delegation from the National Council of Churches. They plan to encourage his return to his father in Cuba.”Nobody has the right to make him an American citizen,”said Mariela Quintana, Elian’s paternal grandmother.”He is a Cuban.” Raquel Rodriguez, Elian’s maternal grandmother told a news conference at Kennedy Airport in New York that the family in Cuba spoke with the 6-year-old boy every day by telephone.”The child say to me and to his father (that) he want to return. … He say please take me to Cuba.” She said the family had not come before because they had been promised”the child would be returned very quickly. … This didn’t happen. … We decided not to wait anymore. We also came because the church invited us to come.” The trip is designed to”make an appeal to the American people,”the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the NCC, said.
It marked a change of mind on the part of at least one of the grandmothers. Quintana had said she would make the trip only if she could be assured she could bring her grandson back to Cuba when she departed.”For the past 24 hours we have been in delicate and emotional conversations with Elian Gonzalez’s family, a loving family,”Edgar said in Havana before the plane took off.”We are very pleased that Elian’s grandmothers have agreed to accompany us to New York City to have an opportunity to speak to the American public, particularly to ask that Elian Gonzalez come home.” The U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba issued visas on Thursday (Jan. 20) to the grandmothers, the Associated Press reported. Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, saw them off in Havana but remained behind.
Elian’s great-uncle in Miami, Delfin Gonzalez, said the family did not plan to permit Elian to go to New York to meet his grandmothers. Gonzalez said the women would be welcome to visit him in Miami but would not be allowed to take him to Cuba.”That has to go to court so that justice and the law of this country can resolve this problem,”Gonzalez said.”The boy is going to be raised here with a healthy and clean mind.” Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez was granted custody of the boy in late November after he was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Florida. Elian’s mother and several others died in an apparent attempt to immigrate illegally to the United States.
Since that time, his case has prompted an international debate and federal and state courts are considering the matter.
Officials of the National Council of Churches, which previously sent a delegation to visit with Elian’s relatives in Cuba, believe the boy should be returned to his father in Cuba.
Anti-Castro activists argue he would have a better life in the United States.
Christians Fleeing Increased Violence in Indonesia
(RNS) Some 600 Christians refugees fled to Bali Friday (Jan. 21) from the Indonesian island of Lombok, fearful of a revival of religious violence in the wake of a three-day rampage on Christians that left five people dead.
The attack on Christians followed Muslim protests on the island demanding the Indonesian government put a stop to fighting between Christians and Muslims on the country’s eastern Maluku Islands, or Spice Islands, where about 2,000 people have died in the past year. Christians once held a small majority in the islands, but an influx of Muslims from other parts of Indonesia changed the area’s religious makeup.
During the three-day rampage on the tourist island of Lombok, Christian churches were burned and their homes and businesses attacked by Muslims, according to the Associated Press. The havoc led to the evacuation of hundreds of tourists from the island’s resorts.
Seventeen people were hospitalized, according to the Associated Press, victims of riot police.
Anti-Christian protests were also under way in Ambon, Maluku’s capital, where protesters demanded the resignation of local military chief Brig. Gen. Max Tamaela. Protesters claimed Tamaela, a Christian, is anti-Muslim.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid announced earlier this month his intention to replace both Tamaela and the region’s Muslim governor, both of whom were perceived as biased in favor of their own faiths, but he has not set a date for the replacement.
Tennessee Dioceses, Nashville Government Sued in Abuse Case
(RNS) Nashville’s city government as well as two Roman Catholic dioceses in Tennessee face charges they failed to protect a boy who was sexually abused by a former priest in a $35 million lawsuit filed this week.
The lawsuit alleges that the boy, now 16, was molested and raped repeatedly by Edward McKeown, who worked as a priest in Nashville in 1971, and then moved on to Knoxville. He later worked in juvenile court in Nashville.
Last year McKeown was sentenced to 25 years in jail without parole after confessing to molesting at least 20 minors. He also confessed to sexual battery and rape.
The first suit, filed in Davidson County Circuit Court, alleges the Nashville diocese became aware of McKeown’s misconduct in the mid-1980s, but allowed him to return to Nashville after six months of treatment in Connecticut. The suit claims McKeown continued abusing boys while working in Nashville and Knoxville, and eventually was forced to leave the priesthood after giving a boy a condom as a Christmas gift in 1989.
Frank Richards, a former Catholic priest who now resides in Florida, is also named as a defendant. The suit claims he did not report McKeown’s behavior to the proper authorities.
The lawsuit further alleges that Nashville’s city authorities took no action once they learned of McKeown’s past, allowing him to work with juveniles and even gain custody of one boy whom he molested.
Nashville police did begin investigating McKeown, but dropped the matter, according to Reuters. After the boy’s mother pushed for a resolution of the matter, McKeown was arrested and later confessed.
A second $35 million lawsuit _ filed on behalf of another boy and his mother _ names the Nashville diocese and city government as defendants in a sexual abuse claim. More plaintiffs may join that lawsuit, according to attorney John Day.
Both suits seek $25 million in punitive damages and an additional $10 million in compensatory damages for the boys and their mothers.
A spokesman for the Diocese of Nashville said the diocese is aware of the allegations, but he declined to comment further on the case.”Our legal counsel hasn’t had a chance to take a look at everything yet,”said Rick Musacchio, a spokesman for the diocese.”It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the case at this time.” The Diocese of Knoxville declined to comment on the matter.
World Lutherans Number 63.1 Million People
(RNS) The number of Lutherans around the world climbed by 1.6 million between 1998 and 1999, boosting the denomination’s worldwide membership from 61.5 million to 63.1 million.
Membership in the Lutheran World Federation rose as well, jumping 1.6 million to 59.4 million. The number of churches within the federation also grew, from 124 to 128.
Africa still boasts the largest number of federation churches, whose memberships total 9.6 million, but Asia witnessed the largest growth in new membership last year, from 4.8 million to about 6.5 million.
Membership in federation member churches in North America dropped slightly, from 8.58 million in 1998 to 8.57 million last year, as did the number of Lutherans in North America, which went from 5.4 million to 5.39 million.
Membership in the world’s largest Lutheran church _ the Church of Sweden _ remained constant from 1998 to 1999 at 7.5 million. Membership in the federation’s second-largest church _ the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America _ declined slightly from 5.18 million to 5.17 million.
In Europe, where more than half of the world’s Lutheran population resides,federation membership declined 79,000 to about 37 million in 1999. That same year in Latin America, federation membership dropped from 1.13 million to 834,000.
Vatican Museums Hope to End Long Lines with New Entrance and Flow Plan
(RNS) The Vatican Museums will open a new four-story entrance next month as part of a plan to speed up the processing of visitors and do away with long lines of tourists waiting for hours in the open air.
Pope John Paul II on Feb. 7 will inaugurate and bless the new entrance complex built into the centuries-old walls that circle the Vatican city-state, the Vatican said Friday (Jan. 21).
The Vatican said the new entrance was needed because of the growing number of visitors to the museums, which house important Egyptian, Etruscan and Roman collections, rooms decorated by the 16th century master Raphael and the Sistine Chapel.
The number of visitors has doubled over the past 20 years to some 3 million a year, the Vatican said.
In addition to speeding up ticket sales and security checks, the new building will provide space for a cloakroom, currency exchange bureau, information offices, book shop, nursery, first aid facilities, temporary exhibitions, meetings and a restaurant, cafeteria and pizzeria.
The new entrance also will complete the museums’ one-way traffic flow, allowing the old entrance to serve solely as an exit.
Pope Says Not Even He Can Dissolve a Valid Roman Catholic Marriage
VATICAN CITY _ Attacking the”current divorcist mentality”of a secularized society, Pope John Paul II said Friday that not even he has the power to dissolve a valid Roman Catholic marriage.
John Paul strongly upheld the church view that marriage is indissoluble in his annual address to the judges, officials and lawyers of the Tribunals of the Roman Rota, the Vatican appeals court that hears requests for annulments of marriages.
In his address, the pope contrasted”the current divorcist mentality, which seeks the annulment of marriage,”with”the doctrine of the absolute indissolubility of confirmed and consummated marriage”and”the limit of the power of the supreme pontiff”over such marriages.”It is undeniable that the current mentality of the society in which we live has difficulty in accepting the indissolubility of the matrimonial tie,”the pope said. He criticized the view of some secular courts that marriage is”so soluble”that it can be based solely on the mutual consent of husband and wife.
Even the granting of annulments by church tribunals does not contradict the principle of indissolubility, he said, because an annulment declares”the marriage has never existed, and in such a case the parties are free to marry save for natural obligations deriving from a previous union.””It is necessary to reaffirm,”the pope said,”that a sacramentally confirmed and consummated marriage can never be untied, not even by the power of the Roman pontiff.
John Paul said the”non-existence of the power of the Roman pontiff over sacramentally confirmed and consummated marriages”is part of the magisterium of the church _ the basic church teachings on the Catholic faith.”Even though it has not been declared in solemn form by a defining act,”he said,”such a doctrine has, in fact, been explicitly put forward by the Roman pontiffs in categorical terms, consistently and over a sufficiently long period of time.”
Police Look for Motive, Suspect in Murder of Moscow Jewish Leader
(RNS) An elderly Jewish leader found murdered in his apartment this week was buried Friday (Jan. 21) as city police continued their search for a motive in the killing.
Following at least half a dozen separate anti-Semitic attacks in the last year, leaders of Moscow’s 200,000 Jews are keeping a watchful eye on the investigation into the stabbing death of Rakhamim Yukhanov, 68.
So far, there is no indication the killing was religiously motivated, said Zinovy Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Communities in Russia.
Kogan’s office in Moscow’s Choral Synagogue is directly above the small prayer hall where Yukhanov worked for 10 years.”He would come in absolutely every day,”Kogan said.”So when he didn’t show up for two days, we got very worried and figured something had happened.” On Wednesday, Yukhanov’s son found his father’s body in the northern Moscow apartment where Yukhanov had lived alone.
Kogan said Yukhanov was a Mountain Jew from the North Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union. Mountain Jews are a Sephardic people numbering about 100,000. They have lived on the west coast of the Caspian Sea for centuries.
Following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, thousands of Mountain Jews searching for work moved north to Moscow. A focal point of the transplanted community became the Choral Synagogue’s 10-meter-square Sephardic prayer hall where Yukhanov worked as the administrator.
Over the last two years, there has been a noticeable increase in anti-Semitic violence in Russia. The most recent high-profile incidents in the Russian capital came last July, when an attacker repeatedly stabbed the director of the Jewish Cultural Synagogue on a staircase inside the Choral Synagogue. That same month, the son of a rabbi found a bomb planted in a Lubavitch synagogue in central Moscow.
Scottish Church Leaders Split on Repealing Anti-Gay Law
(RNS) Church leaders in Scotland are split over the Scottish Executive’s proposal to repeal a law that forbids local authorities from promoting”the teaching in any maintained (state-supported) school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” Repeal is vigorously opposed by Roman Catholic Cardinal Thomas Winning, archbishop of Glasgow, who urged Scotland’s”silent majority”to speak out against it and who reportedly denounced homosexual behavior as a”perversion,”adding:”I will not stand for this type of behavior which is now being described as wholesome and healthy when it is far from it.” But the moderator of the General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, the Rev. John Cairns, has backed the Executive’s proposal and said he was”perturbed”there did not seem to be an objective discussion about what was being proposed.”It is very easy to project the extreme view which is not the reality,”he added.”It does not seem to me that the proposal is in effect promoting anything other than what would be considered a reasonable and appropriate education for people in the modern day and age.” Calling for”a rational discussion,”he said:”It ought to be possible to devise sex education in such a way that, without promoting any kind of sexual activity, you can talk about what actually happens in the world. That is what children should be educated to deal with.” Cairns said he was speaking for himself and not the church because the denomination has no policy on the matter and policy can only be decided by the church’s general assembly.
Other Church of Scotland officials noted there would be many people in the the denomination”deeply dismayed”by Cairns’ view.”We are inundated with people in the Church of Scotland who are very dismayed that the church as a whole has not come out against repeal,”said Ann Allen, convenor the denomination’s board of social responsibility.”We do not discriminate in any way, but we do not condone homosexual practice, as we do not condone adultery or promiscuity,”she added.
Quote of the day: Josie Schwartz, Amish buggy shop owner”We don’t believe in pressing charges and going to courts. Instead, let’s sit down and be friends and try to prevent this from happening again. That’s the only way to solve things.” _ Josie Schwartz, an Amish buggy shop owner in Seymour, Mo., after a meeting with alleged hit-and-run truck driver Marvin Hampton whose vehicle is believed to have killed Leah Graber, an Amish mother of 13. Schwartz was quoted by the Associated Press on Thursday (Jan. 20).
DEA END RNS
