c. 2000 Religion News Service

National Council of Churches Welcomes Elian Court Decision

(RNS) The National Council of Churches, which has been instrumental in trying to reunite Elian Gonzalez with his father, welcomed Thursday’s (June 1) decision by a federal appeals court that may allow the boy and his father to return to Cuba.

Ever since the 6-year-old boy was found floating off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving, NCC officials have lobbied on behalf of Juan Miguel Gonzalez in his bid to regain custody of his son. The Rev. Bob Edgar, the NCC general secretary, said he only wished the decision had come sooner.

“All along, we have maintained that except in cases of abuse, children are best served when they are with their parents,” Edgar said in a statement. “Juan Miguel has demonstrated a thousand times over that he is a good, loving father.”

Former NCC general secretary Joan Brown Campbell has been at the front lines of the custody battle. Often joining her was the Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, head of the General Board of Church and Society for the United Methodist Church. Both Fassett and Campbell worked closely with the Cuban Council of Churches to seek his return to Cuba.

The NCC facilitated a visit by the boy’s grandmothers to Miami in January. The NCC also has control of a legal aid fund set up by Fassett to pay for Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s lawyers. The fund had been run through the United Methodist Church, but church officials said the money had been improperly raised and must be transferred to the NCC.

While many religious groups have supported the boy’s unification with his father, some conservative leaders have opposed it. On Thursday (June 1), former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer denounced the court ruling and said returning Elian to Cuba is “tantamount to child abuse.”

“The court may have had no alternative, given the fact that Elian’s father withdrew his son’s asylum petition,” Bauer said in a statement. “But the now uncertain fate of this little boy stands as an indictment of (the Clinton) administration’s willingness to do business with any and all tyrants.”

Washington Area Bishops Call for Death Penalty Moratorium

(RNS) Three leaders of the Roman Catholic Church from the Baltimore-Washington area on Thursday (June 1) called on Maryland’s governor to halt the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer on June 12, joining an increasingly vocal chorus of church officials speaking out against capital punishment.

Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler, Washington Cardinal James Hickey and Wilmington, Del., Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli joined in a letter to Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening urging him to halt the execution of Eugene Colvin-El, who is scheduled to die for the 1980 stabbing death of an elderly woman in Pikesville, Md.

The letter follows a similar appeal last week by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who wrote to California Gov. Gray Davis asking for a statewide moratorium on capital punishment. Mahony was the first leading Catholic official to call for a statewide moratorium.

In their letter to Glendening, Hickey, Keeler and Saltarelli pleaded for the life of Colvin-El and said the state has other measures _ such as life in prison without parole _ to consider besides death.

“We hope that the governor and all Marylanders will take the Holy Father’s message to heart by responding to the biblical imperative, and by rejecting all forms of violence and vengeance as incompatible with the life and teachings of our savior, Jesus Christ,” Saltarelli said at a news conference.

The three leaders also presented a letter from Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the pope’s representative in Washington, urging Glendening to halt the execution.

The public protests by the four church leaders is the latest chapter in a growing campaign to encourage governors and legislatures to take a second look at capital punishment. In January, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a death penalty supporter, imposed a statewide moratorium while officials investigate why more death sentences have been overturned than carried out.

Last month in New Hampshire, the state legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, but the measure was quickly vetoed by Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Several religious groups have asked President Clinton to impose a federal moratorium, but Clinton has refused to do so and urged individual states to re-examine their own policies.

U.N. Report Says Women Worldwide Threatened By Violence

(RNS) Violence against women _ such as incest, rape and dowry burnings _ is on the rise globally, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday (May 31), and more countries could take steps to stop it.

“Violence against women and girls continues to be a global epidemic that kills, tortures and maims _ physically, psychologically, sexually and economically,” concluded the 21-page report by UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.

As many as 20 percent to 50 percent of all women in any given country suffered from neglect as a child or suffered abused from a partner or relative, the report said, pointing to a study that found 26 percent of women in Zimbabwe report being forced to have sex against their will and another study that revealed 28 percent of a representative sample of women in the United States said they had experienced physical violence from their partners at least once.

Without the violence, if demographic trends had continued uninterrupted, 60 million women would have either not died or have been born, the report concluded.

“Many countries and many societies … are reluctant to take this issue seriously because they regard it to be a private matter,” said Mehr Khan, director of the UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy. “There is a stigma attached to talking about it that results in lack of information. And there’s a reluctance on the part of state authorities to intervene because of that.”

Women worldwide face violence in the form of incest, female circumcision, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, beatings and dowry burnings, forced marriage and domestic violence, the report said. Though domestic violence cuts across all income levels, poverty makes women particularly vulnerable.

“Poverty exacerbates and perpetuates domestic violence,” Khan said. “When women are uneducated, when they are financially totally dependent on their partners and without any prospects for generating income or support they are more subject to violence.”

Some 44 countries have introduced legislation to combat domestic violence, the report noted, though enforcement of those laws varies.

The report was released to mark next week’s special session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York _ “Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace in the 21st Century” _ which is a follow-up to the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, according to Reuters news agency.

Protesters Rally Against New Non-Religious Greek Identity Cards

(RNS) About 3,000 protesters marched to the Greek Parliament Wednesday (May 31) to protest the government’s decision to exclude religious affiliation from new state-issued identity cards.

The demonstrators _ among them priests and nuns _ delivered a letter to Parliament protesting the ruling, which arrived less than two weeks ago.

“We are not an extreme religious group,” said one protester, according to the New York Times. “We are the body of Christ.”

The government plan is strongly opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church, which views the move as a threat to unity between the Orthodox Church and the Greek government. The measure is “part of a group of measures aiming to diminish the impact of religion in our nation and to marginalize the role of the church,” said Archbishop Christodoulos, leader of the Greek Orthodox church.

“The Greek church and people are one and the same,” he said at a news conference Wednesday (May 31), according to the Associated Press. “Greeks are Christian Orthodox.”

But Greek officials say their decision is not about religion.

“This issue does not concern religion,” said Prime Minister Costas Simitis, according to Reuters news agency. “It concerns the citizen’s right to keep to himself what he believes.”

Though Christodoulos has discouraged violence and declared “Jews have no reason to be scared,” the country’s small Jewish population fears they will suffer from a backlash against the plan _ fears exacerbated following a vandal attack Friday (May 26) at Greece’s largest Jewish cemetery _ the third attack on Jews or Jewish sites in Greece in a month _ in which more than 90 graves were defaced with Nazi symbols and slogans.

Some critics of the government’s plan contend it is backed by a “conspiracy” of Jews and members of the European Union.

“We ask our politicians: Are they listening to the Greek Orthodox people or the Jewish lobby?” asked Panayiotis Lyras, a leader in Wednesday’s protest. “Those who lay a hand on Orthodoxy will pay for it. There are battles ahead.”

Pakistani Christians Fearful of Flip-Flop on Blasphemy Laws

(RNS) A decision by Pakistan’s military ruler not to amend the nation’s blasphemy laws has the nation’s Christian minority fearful that they could be tried for blasphemy against Islam and face harsh sentences.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October, said earlier this year that he would amend the nation’s laws against blasphemy so that blasphemy charges could only be filed after a thorough investigation.

Minority religious faiths in Pakistan, including Christians and the Ahmadi sect, say the blasphemy laws unfairly targeted them. Those convicted of blasphemy against Islam, a capital crime, face death sentences.

Several Christians have been sentenced to death for violating the blasphemy laws in recent years, according to Ecumenical News International, but those sentences were later overturned. Two Christians who had their sentences overturned, however, were later murdered.

But under pressure from hardline Islamic groups, Musharraf announced May 17 that he would not amend the laws.

“Since the (scholars) and the people are unanimous in their stance, the government has decided to restore the previous procedure,” Musharraf said in May, according to the Associated Press.

That decision has upset the nation’s Christian minority. The Rev. Boney Mendis, a Catholic priest and director of the Development Center in Faislabad, told ENI that the blasphemy laws are “hanging like a sword on the head of Christians.” Mendis said he would fight to overturn the laws.

Victor Azariahs, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan, blamed the decision on the powerful Muslim clerics in the country.

“The Easter joy (among Christians) is gone,” Azariahs told ENI, a Geneva-based religious news agency. “The government has bowed down to the (Muslim clerics). They put pressure on the government. They got what they wanted.”

Russian Orthodox Church Quashes Speculation About Pope Visit

(RNS) The Russian Orthodox Church, quashing speculation, said Thursday (June 1) that an upcoming visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Vatican is unlikely to lead to the first visit to Russia by a reigning pope in nearly a millennium.

A church spokesman reacted to rumors in the Vatican that Putin’s scheduled visit on Monday with Pope John Paul II could set the course for a Moscow trip by the 80-year-old pontiff.

The spokesman said tensions between the rival faiths make such a visit remote, Reuters reported. No such visit has taken place since the Great Schism into Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054.

“The main problems (between the churches) remain unresolved,” said the spokesman for the Orthodox Church’s Danilov Monastery headquarters in Moscow.

Asked whether the pope could visit Moscow before those tensions are eased, he said: “By all appearances, no.”

Recently, relations between the two churches have warmed. The Russian Orthodox Church, which boycotted some Vatican ecumenical events in the 1990s, has sent representatives to several recent events featuring the pope.

The spokesman said the Orthodox Church opposes what it views as attempts by the Roman Catholic Church to steal congregations in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, where 5 million Eastern Rite Catholics reside.

He also reiterated concerns the Orthodox have over Ukraine’s Uniate Church, which recognizes the pope as its spiritual leader while holding Orthodox-style services usually in the local language. That church began claiming church buildings from the pro-Moscow Orthodox Church after the 1991 collapse of communism.

The spokesman said dialogue between the two Christian faiths remains open, but “all of this is spoiling the possible solution to our problems.”

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin have invited Pope John Paul II to Moscow, but he also would need to be invited by the Russian Orthodox Church before a trip could take place.

Quote of the Day: Sybil Hambly, a parishioner at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brockton, Mass.

(RNS) “I wouldn’t go back in that church if my life depended on it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s in the devil’s hands.”

_ Hambly, a dissident member of St. Paul’s, referring to a recent court decision that ruled the church property belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, not the parishioners. A group of church members upset by the diocese’s liberal views on homosexuality and other issues tried to leave the denomination and take the church with them, but the court ruled against them. Hambly was quoted in the Brockton (Mass.) Enterprise.

KRE END RNS