c. 2003 Religion News Service
Rwandan Pastor, Son Convicted for Roles in 1994 Genocide
(RNS) A Rwandan pastor and his son were convicted Wednesday (Feb. 19) of aiding genocide when they helped engineer the slaughter of ethnic Tutsis in 1994.
The Rev. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, 78, and his son, Gerald Ntakirutimana, 45, were found guilty of genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity by a United Nations tribunal.
The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ruled that the two men rounded up the minority Tutsis into their church and hospital complex in Kibuye on April 16, 1994. The father ordered the roof taken off his Seventh-day Adventist church so it could not be used as a shelter.
Between 500,000 and 800,000 people were slaughtered in the three-month massacre.
The elder Ntakirutimana was sentenced to 10 years in prison; his son, a doctor, was sentenced to 25 years. Norwegian judge Erik Mose said the son deserved a harsher sentence because he had “abused the trust bestowed on him as” a doctor, according to the Associated Press.
Both men left the country soon after the genocide. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana fled to Texas and was arrested there in 1996. After 14 months in jail, he was released, but was arrested again in 1998. His extradition fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to stop the extradition. His son was arrested in Ivory Coast in 1996.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the elder man’s defense lawyer, promised an appeal. At the start of their trial in 2001, Clark said the pastor had “always been involved in saving souls, just as Gerard … was involved in saving lives,” according to the Reuters news agency.
Ray Dabrowski, director of communications for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said the Silver Spring, Md.-based denomination was “saddened” by the outcome of the trial.
“We acknowledge with sadness that some of our church members turned against their fellow members and their neighbors,” he said in a statement. “We are saddened that the accused did not act in harmony with the principles of their church. We offer an apology.”
Chicago Archdiocese Forgives $27 Million in Debt
(RNS) The Archdiocese of Chicago has forgiven $27 million owed by 123 parishes and schools since the Jubilee initiative of 2000.
Cardinal Francis George said the program “makes parishes stronger now and increases the likelihood for long-term viability.” The program follows a biblical model that every 50 years, slaves are set free, debts are forgiven and fields are left untilled.
About $19 million of the total aid was given in direct write-offs. An additional $4 million was used for matching grants, and another $4 million were write-offs with a contingency.
In order to qualify for the program, a parish had to meet one or more of five conditions: receiving grants from the archdiocese; facing rapid demographic changes that made ministry difficult; moved from a deficit or break-even parish to better fiscal health; be under new leadership to fix past deficiencies; or have a budget surplus with improved financial and ministerial health.
Bishop Raymond Goedert, the archdiocesan vicar general, said the church saw an 7.6 percent increase in donations for the 2002 fiscal year. “Several good things have resulted because of this program,” he said, “not the least of which is that many examples of good business practices were brought to the attention of parishes, and the establishment of financial councils in parishes brought knowledgeable parishioners into the mix.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Missouri Baptist Newspaper Employees Ousted From Their Offices
ST. LOUIS (RNS) An editorial in a recent edition of the 107-year-old Word & Way, the former official weekly newspaper for Missouri Baptists, proclaimed, “The other shoe has dropped.”
And apparently the shoe has dropped right on the backside of the newspaper because Missouri Baptists are kicking the news journal employees out of the Missouri Baptist Convention headquarters in Jefferson City.
It’s the latest chapter in a saga that eventually led to a split in Missouri’s Southern Baptist state convention. A group of churches that could be characterized as moderate broke away last April and formed the Baptist General Convention of Missouri.
Five Baptist agencies, including the newspaper, and the Missouri Baptist Convention are embroiled in a lawsuit over who controls the agencies, which also include a conference center, Missouri Baptist College, the Baptist Home and Missouri Baptist Foundation. The agencies decided to elect their own trustees more than a year ago, and battles over money and decision-making ensued. Formerly, a committee from the MBC had nominated the agencies’ boards.
With just 30 days’ notice, Word & Way Editor Bill Webb said the newspaper has signed a lease for new office space in Jefferson City. The paper and its staff of six need to be out of headquarters by the end of February.
Webb is concerned about how the struggling paper will come up with the rent. It had been operating rent-free in the Baptist Building.
“We will be hoping some friends will step up to assist us,” Webb said.
The Word & Way has published since 1896 but has been affiliated with the MBC only since 1946. That relationship came to an abrupt end when the MBC began publishing The Pathway and chose to make it the official MBC news journal.
Webb says his paper will continue to publish.
“Generally we’re doing well. We’re always dealing with circulation and income,” he said. “But as a 107-year-old newspaper in the state, we have all intentions of continuing.”
In the meantime, at least 22 Missouri Baptist Convention employees have been laid off as a result of tough economic times. In a recent letter to pastors, David Clippard, convention executive director, wrote that a 2002 budget shortfall forced the convention to reduce its staff by 20 percent.
_ Hillary Wicai
Christian Activists Try to Shut Gay Club in Russia
MOSCOW (RNS) Orthodox Christian activists in Russia’s third-largest city are campaigning to shut down a gay nightclub by staging street protests, collecting signatures and, most recently, pledging to start fasting.
“If the mayor doesn’t close down the homosexual Clone club, we will go on a hunger strike right outside city hall,” said Abbott Flavian on Wednesday (Feb. 19) in a telephone interview from his monastery in Yekaterinburg, a city of 1.3 million in the Ural Mountains.
Flavian, along with a local parish priest and a novice in the monastery, are vowing to stop eating March 1 as part of their campaign to protect the city’s youth from the “militant homosexual” influence of Clone, a nightclub that holds gay and lesbian nights twice a week.
Earlier this month, several dozen members of the Brotherhood of Orthodox Students twice picketed the club and later collected 1,400 signatures on a petition demanding the club’s closure.
Gay activists responded with a five-person demonstration of their own Feb. 8 outside the local diocesan offices of the Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodox Christians responded by throwing snowballs, soaking the gay activists with holy water and burning placards that read “No to Homophobia!” and “Tolerance!,” according to Sergei Tonkov, a witness and Clone’s art director.
Sergei Dmitriev, a local gay leader, estimates that Yekaterinburg has a gay population of up to 40,000. He dismissed the Orthodox protests as aimed at discrediting the mayor rather than shutting down Clone. A previous gay club, which closed in January, was sometimes frequented by local Orthodox monks, he said.
Flavian said this was untrue, but bemoaned the lack of wholesome entertainment in the city.
“In Yekaterinburg, there are very few places where a priest can go without ruining his reputation,” Flavian said. “We need a nice cafe for people who simply love peaceful music.”
The Russian Orthodox Diocese of Yekaterinburg is no stranger to gay-related controversy. In one of the worst recent scandals to rock the church, lay people and clergy in 1999 petitioned the ruling Holy Synod to remove Bishop Nikon (Mironov) for, among other things, demanding sexual favors from seminarians and monks in exchange for ordination and promotion. With extreme reluctance, the Holy Synod eventually demoted Nikon, who now serves a parish in Moscow.
_ Frank Brown
Quote of the Day: Joachim Joseph, whose miniature Torah was lost in the shuttle Columbia disaster
(RNS) “I’m not sorry that it is gone. It did what it, perhaps, was destined to do.”
_ Joachim Joseph, a 71-year-old Israeli physicist whose miniature Torah survived the Holocaust but was lost in the space shuttle Columbia disaster. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
