c. 2004 Religion News Service

Billy Graham’s Crusades Postponed as Evangelist Recuperates

(RNS) Evangelist Billy Graham’s two 2004 crusades have been postponed until the fall to allow the 85-year-old preacher time to recuperate from a fractured pelvis.

The event originally scheduled for June 17-20 in Kansas City, Mo., is now planned for Oct. 7-10, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association announced. The dates for the Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade in Pasadena, Calif., have shifted from July 29-Aug. 1 to Nov. 18-21.

Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross said postponements have been rare in Graham’s six-decade career and the evangelist is looking ahead to a spring 2005 crusade at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“There’s only been one that has been postponed due to health,” Ross said, referring to a 1967 crusade in Houston. “They’ve been surprisingly few that he has had to miss due to health factors, a handful I would say.”

Graham continues to receive physical therapy at Mission Hospitals in Asheville, N.C., where he was admitted May 14 after a fall at his home.

“We believe that God has a plan for Kansas City, of which Billy Graham is a vital part, said G. Richard Hastings, chairman of the crusade and CEO of St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City, in a statement.

“This extension will not only allow Mr. Graham to recuperate, but will provide additional time of preparation to mobilize more churches for training and personal outreach, culminating in a crescendo of prayer this fall.”

The co-chairman of the November crusade that will take place at the Rose Bowl had a similar outlook.

“Even though his body has been laid low for a season, Billy Graham’s spirits are high,” said the Rev. Jack Hayford, founding pastor of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Calif. “We welcome the opportunity to see more fruit as a result of the extended time to prepare for this crusade _ including engaging more churches in prayer, friendship evangelism and discipleship.”

Graham is not the only one on his crusade team to have taken ill recently. George Beverly Shea, the longtime soloist at his crusades, had a mild heart attack on Wednesday (May 26) in Hickory, N.C., Ross said.

The 95-year-old singer has been transferred to the same hospital where Graham is located and is in good spirits.

“He was singing to the nurses,” Ross said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Assemblies of God Sunday School Classes to Send `Cammie’ Bibles to Troops

(RNS) Sunday school classes of the Assemblies of God plan to remember U.S. troops by collecting money to send them camouflage-covered Bibles and other spiritual aids.

“Project Spiritual Shelter” will be marked from Sunday (May 30), the day before Memorial Day, through July 4, reported Assemblies of God News and Information Service.

A zippered camouflage kit will include a “cammie New Testament,” a metal dog tag that reads “United We Stand! Enduring Freedom,” and a Bible study called “Now What?”

“It’s distressing to hear daily reports about the casualties of war,” said Sharon Ellard, promotions coordinator for the denomination’s Sunday School Department. “One good way for Christians to respond to uncertain times is by joining together to send a blessing right into the middle of the conflict. None of us can bring peace to Iraq, but together we provide a means of spiritual shelter for our troops.”

The “military survival kits,” created by the Assemblies of God Chaplaincy Ministries, will be distributed by military chaplains to troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

Each kit costs $10 to assemble and deliver and children, youth and adults in the denomination’s Sunday schools are being encouraged to participate.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Cuban, U.S. Bishops Criticize Bush’s Economic Sanctions on Cuba

WASHINGTON (RNS) Cuban and American Catholic bishops have condemned new sanctions enacted by the Bush administration against Cuba, saying that sanctions will only make poor Cuban families suffer more.

“We consider the economic embargo to be morally unacceptable and politically counterproductive,” said Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a May 21 letter to President George W. Bush. “The embargo hurts ordinary people in Cuba _ the poor, the aged and the infirm.”

Cuba’s bishops said Cubans should find solutions to their own economic problems, but said President Fidel Castro’s response was also damaging, the Associated Press said.

“It hurts us to see that the measures announced by the United States and those taken by the Cuban government affect, directly or indirectly, the poorest families of our nation,” the Cuban bishops said.

In its May 6 announcement, the Bush administration said it would reduce the number of visits Cuban Americans can make to Cuba, cut the amount of money they can spend during their trips by two-thirds, and allow Cuban-Americans to send money only to immediate family members.

The changes were recommended by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a panel established to provide Bush with suggestions to encourage a transition to democracy.

Castro responded to the sanctions by first freezing sales in dollars and then increasing prices by an average of 15 percent.

These steps “inflame the already anguished situation (of Cubans) and aggravate the separation of those who live in Cuba and in the United States,” the Cuban bishops said.

Both the American and Cuban bishops said open dialogue would be more fruitful than stricter sanctions.

“It would be far better, in our view, to work toward opening up Cuban society through increased trade and economic activity, lifting travel restrictions and engaging in more intense diplomatic activity,” Gregory said.

_ Juliana Finucane

Pope Tells U.S. Bishops to Speak With One Voice on Moral Issues

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II told a group of U.S. bishops Friday (May 28) to “speak courageously and with a united voice” on moral and spiritual issues in America’s increasingly secularized society.

The Catholic Church in America, he said, “is called to respond to the profound religious needs and aspirations of a society increasingly in danger of forgetting its spiritual roots and yielding to a purely materialistic and soulless vision of the world.”

Urging “a profound renewal of the missionary and prophetic sense of the whole People of God,” the pope said the church “must speak courageously and with a united voice in addressing the great moral and spiritual issues confronting the men and women of our time.”

John Paul addressed bishops from the ecclesiastical provinces of Indianapolis, Chicago and Milwaukee. They were the latest group of U.S. prelates visiting Rome to meet with the pope and Vatican officials.

All of America’s Catholic bishops will travel to Rome over a nine-month period, which began last month, to make the visits “ad limina apostolorum,” Latin for “to the threshold of the tombs of the apostles,” required of prelates every five years.

Speaking on the bishops’ “prophetic mission,” the pope said: “An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason’s ability to know the truth which alone satisfies the human heart’s restless quest for meaning.”

John Paul made no reference to the scandal over pedophile priests that swept the American church in 2002, but he praised the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for the letters it has written “on controversial social questions such as respect for human life, problems of justice and peace, immigration, the defense of family values and the sanctity of marriage.”

“This prophetic witness, presented with arguments drawn not only from religious convictions which Catholics share with many other Americans but also from the principles of right reason and law, is a significant service to the common good in a democracy like your own,” he said.

_ Peggy Polk

Aid Group Finds World Is `Warehousing’ Refugees

(RNS) More than 7 million refugees have lived in refugee camps or other impermanent settlements for 10 years or longer, according to a new report released by the U.S. Committee for Refugees released May 24.

The practice, called “warehousing,” deprives refugees of basic human rights and “the freedom necessary to pursue normal lives,” said Merrill Smith, editor of the committee’s 43rd annual survey on global refugees.

“Condemning people who fled persecution to stagnate in confinement for much of the remainder of their lives is unnecessary, wasteful, hypocritical, counterproductive, unlawful, and morally unacceptable,” Smith said.

The committee said the “warehousing” practice violates the 1951 Refugee Convention, which says legal refugees should be allowed to move about freely, earn money and own property.

“We can no longer defend the status quo,” said Lavinia Limon, executive director of the organization. “It is time for the world to honor its commitments under international law.”

Not only do many refugees live for years in uncertainty, many also live in danger, the report said. Many camps are in remote border areas where they are vulnerable to attacks or exploitation by militias or armies.

The total number of refugees and asylum seekers has declined from 13 million last year to 12 million this year. The decrease comes in part from the more than 60,000 Afghan refugees who returned home from Iran and Pakistan. Refugees also voluntarily returned to Angola, Burundi, Iraq and Sierra Leone.

Refugees from the former Palestine account for 3 million refugees, the largest group of refugees. Refugees from Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar and Congo-Kinshasa are the next largest groups. More than a quarter of the world’s refugees are from Africa.

The survey found that more than 42 percent of all refugees are hosted in the West Bank and Gaza, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Tanzania.

The report also found that more than 23 million people were internally displaced, with nearly 5 million in Sudan. Thirty-two countries house more than 100,000 internally displaced people.

_ Juliana Finucane

Quote of the Day: Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios (May 28)

(RNS) “Within this area, which experienced the horror of total catastrophe, which was the ultimate in human ugliness, you have this type of place which is not a house, not a business, not a museum, not a symphony hall. It’s a religious place, which opens the realm of holiness.: this total other, the transcendent.”

_ Archbishop Demetrios, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States, commenting about plans to rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed by falling rubble from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He was quoted by The New York Times.

DEA/JL END RNS