c. 2008 Religion News Service
Alleged church shooter sought anonymity in Ga. town
NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) After gunning down his wife, her cousin and a would-be rescuer in a Clifton, N.J., church, Joseph Pallipurath dumped his pistol, abandoned his Jeep and stepped aboard a bus with the hopes of fading into obscurity, said authorities who nabbed the accused fugitive early Tuesday (Nov. 25).
His destination was Monroe, Ga., in rural Walton County, a sleepy town of about 20,000 residents that boasts a historic downtown and classic Southern antebellum homes.
“He said that this was just a square little town he thought he could get lost in. He knew someone who used to live here, and he got a room down at the Monroe Motor Inn,” Walton County Deputy District Attorney Eric Crawford said. “The fact he ended up in our small town was kind of amazing. We’re not on any main road you would travel.”
Pallipurath had relatives in Atlanta, and one lived in the Walton County area years ago, authorities said. His simple escape plan could have stumped fugitive hunters for a long time, said Passaic County Prosecutor James Avigliano, had authorities not gotten a tip.
“Then it was a matter of regular police work,” he said. “They just canvassed all the hotels and motels in the area, and one of the motel clerks said his picture matched a guy who had checked in.”
Georgia authorities believe Pallipurath, 27, arrived in town Monday afternoon, after taking a bus from New Jersey to Atlanta, where he boarded another bus headed for Savannah _ by way of Monroe. When Monroe police and U.S. marshals went to the door of his motel room, Pallipurath answered and quietly surrendered.
“He was taken without incident,” Crawford said. “And he gave about an hour-and-a- half-long statement, pretty much detailing everything.”
Adding a chilling detail to the tragedy, Crawford said Pallipurath told investigators he would have killed everyone in the church if he’d had a machine gun. He allegedly said he was unhappy church members were blocking his attempts to contact his wife, who had left him three months ago.
The alleged killer had been renting a room for two weeks and plotting his actions, which culminated in the shootings at St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church just after 11:30 a.m. Sunday.
Avigliano also said Pallipurath, who is being held without bail in the Walton County Detention Center, confessed to the shootings and gave police information about his drive from his home in Sacramento, Calif., to New Jersey to pursue his estranged wife, 24-year-old Reshma James.
James died after being shot in the head at point-blank range, as did Dennis John Malloosseril of Hawthorne. Authorities said Malloosseril, 25, was shot as he tried to intervene in Pallipurath’s attempts to get his wife to leave the church vestibule.
Also shot, and still hospitalized in grave condition, was James’ cousin, 47-year-old Silvy Perincheril of Hawthorne, who also tried to intervene.
The victims and Pallipurath all were part of a close-knit community of immigrant Christians from the southwestern Indian state of Kerala. The immigrant church is associated with a southern Indian diocese of the Syrian Orthodox Christian Church.
Pallipurath has been charged with two counts of homicide.
_ Brian T. Murray
Boys returned to families as abuse investigation continues
ONEONTA, Ala. (RNS) Eleven juveniles who had been at a faith-based home for troubled boys have been returned to their parents and guardians while a probe continues into charges of abuse at the facility.
The boys, who had lived at Reclamation Ranch Ministries’ Lighthouse Academy, were the subject of a court hearing to determine if they should stay in the custody of the Department of Human Resources. The boys, who hailed from places including California, Kentucky and an Amish community in Ohio, were released by the court to parents, relatives or other adults.
Some of the boys said their time at the academy had changed them for the better. But some foster parents said the facility seemed unduly harsh.
According to Reclamation Ranch’s Web site, Lighthouse “is a minimum one-year program that incorporates Bible teaching, character training and respect for family.” The site also calls the abuse allegations “false and misleading.”
The 11 boys, all younger than 18, as well as some 18-year-olds living at the academy, had been placed by state officials in other residential settings after authorities removed them from the academy on Saturday (Nov. 22). Sheriff’s deputies and Alabama Bureau of Investigation agents were acting on a complaint of “severe abuse, beating and torture” of a 17-year-old at the facility, according to the Blount County District Attorney’s Office.
Some former academy residents interviewed after the court hearing had good things to say about their time at Lighthouse.
“They changed my life,” said 18-year-old Roman Lupekah, who said he had spent a year there. “They restored my relationship with my family, with my sister, got me saved, you know.”
But Kenneth and Jean Johnson, local foster parents who had housed three academy boys at the state’s request, said they were troubled by what the youths had told them, which included eating outdated cereal and not receiving contributions that churches and other groups had provided for them.
“They had to have permission to go to the bathroom, had to have permission to get a glass a water,” Kenneth Johnson said. “They had to have permission to go to bed _ you name it. And they would let them call home one time a month � and talk for four minutes, and that was it.”
_ Tom Gordon
Muslim convert baptized by pope forms new political party
ROME (RNS) Magdi Allam, the former Muslim whose baptism as a Catholic by Pope Benedict XVI made world news earlier this year, has started a political party to promote “Judeo-Christian” values in Europe.
Allam made the announcement Monday (Dec. 1) at a press conference in Rome.
The party, “Protagonists for Christian Europe,” will present candidates for the June 2009 elections to the European Parliament and seeks to promote a “model of coexistence based on respect for fundamental human rights and shared, non-negotiable values,” Allam said.
Among the values that Allam cited as non-negotiable were the sacredness of human life, the security of Israel, equality between the sexes, and religious liberty. He pledged to fight against “relativism,” “Islamic extremism,” and a “savage capitalism sponsored by the Chinese Communist regime.”
Denying that his new party is “anti-Islamic,” Allam said he welcomed the participation of Muslims and all other Europeans of “good will.”
Yet he denounced what he characterized as inappropriate European acceptance of Muslim customs, including a recent decision in Britain to recognize traditional Sharia courts as arbitrators with legally binding powers.
A native of Egypt, Allam has been an outspoken critic of Muslim intolerance of Christianity and other faiths, and his baptism by Pope Benedict in St. Peter’s Basilica on the day before Easter this year drew complaints from some Muslim leaders.
He later wrote a book about his conversion, entitled “Thank You, Jesus.”
Until recently vice-director of Corriere Della Sera, one of Italy’s leading newspapers, Allam has resigned from that position in order to lead his new party, he said.
_ Francis X. Rocca
Money, good deeds memorialize Jewish victims in Mumbai attacks
NEW YORK (RNS) Pledges of money and mitzvot (good deeds) have poured into a Web site set up by the New York-based Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the wake of the massacre in Mumbai, India, that claimed six victims at Mumbai’s Chabad House.
Chabad, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish outreach program that aims to bring Jews closer to their faith, runs community centers in more than 70 countries, with three in other Indian cities. The Mumbai center, directed by Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, provided religious instruction, kosher food and hospitality for the region’s estimated 5,000 Jewish residents and countless tourists and business travelers.
The Holtzbergs were among more than 170 people killed in last week’s terrorist attacks. The couple had moved to Mumbai after their wedding five years ago to open a Chabad House. Several other young couples have already offered to help rebuild the center, with funds donated to the new Chabad of Mumbai Relief Fund, officials said.
The fund will also help support the Holtzberg children _ Moshe, the toddler rescued by his nanny during last week’s siege and taken to Israel to live with his grandparents, and another child born with Tay-Sachs Disease, a genetic condition, who is hospitalized in Israel.
Chabad officials have asked Jews around the world to commemorate the Holtzbergs by performing good deeds. In addition to acts of charity, women can pledge to light Sabbath candles, men can put on tefillin (phylacteries) containing biblical verses, and any Jew can pray and make sure the mezuzah _ biblical parchment affixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home _ is properly maintained.
“Through doing good things, the victims live on and the work that the Holtzbergs were doing continues,” said Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson.
Within two days, more than 1,000 mitzvot had been pledged on the Web site, http://www.chabad.org. Chabad has not yet tallied the monetary contributions received as of Monday (Dec. 1) afternoon, which have come from around the world, he added.
“Chabad is going to rebuild in Mumbai,” Seligson said. “Right now, we’re just focusing on the child and on the funerals, but we are definitely going to rebuild in Mumbai.”
Funeral services for the Holtzbergs will be held Tuesday afternoon in Israel. Memorial services for the couple and the other victims have also been held in Mumbai and at Jewish centers around the world.
_ Nicole Neroulias
N.Y. cathedral rededicated after 2001 fire
(RNS) New York City’s landmark Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine was rededicated Sunday (Nov. 30), nearly seven years after an electrical fire severely damaged what is called the world’s largest Gothic cathedral.
More than 3,000 people attended Sunday’s ceremony, including New York Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Catholic Cardinal Edward Egan.
“The rededication of this magnificent cathedral church speaks to all of us with such a wonderful sense of not only resurrection and renewal but of a recognition that through all that we have come together there is a constant sense of resilience arising from this cathedral in this great city,” Clinton said, according to published reports.
In December, 2001, just two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a six-alarm fire ignited in a gift shop located in the cathedral’s north transept. Numerous works of art, including tapestries, statuettes and stained-glass windows throughout the 600-foot-long cathedral were damaged by the fire and water. It cost $41 million to repair the cathedral and remove soot from its enormous interior.
Construction on St. John’s began in 1892, and the interior was dedicated in 1941, but after the interruption of two world wars, parts of the cathedral remain unfinished.
Still, the cathedral, one of the largest Anglican churches in the world, remains a Manhattan landmark.
“Cathedrals are planted down to stay and span history,” said the Very Rev. James Kowalski, dean of St. John the Divine, according to published reports. “This cathedral has done that and engaged its culture, this city, our nation, the world.”
_ Daniel Burke
Disney corrupts children, top British Catholic charges
LONDON (RNS)_ A top Roman Catholic cleric in England has accused Disney of corrupting children, encouraging greed and turning its make-believe world into a latter-day pilgrimage site.
Christopher Jamison, the abbot of Worth Abbey, in southern England, charges Disney with “exploiting spirituality” and helping to generate a culture of materialism while pretending to provide movie, book and theme park stories with a moral message.
Jamison, the star of a British Broadcasting Corp. television series, “The Monastery,” and a candidate to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor as leader of the Catholic population of England and Wales, lodged the accusations in his new book, “Finding Happiness.”
In it, he cites Disney films such as “Sleeping Beauty” and “101 Dalmatians” as examples of products the corporation uses to entice children to buy its products if they want to see themselves as part of “a good and happy family.”
According to the cleric, “the message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt, is that our children’s world needs Disney.”
This, he said, “is basically the commercial exploitation of spirituality.”
The message is, Jamison added, “they will be happier if they live the full Disney experience, and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland.”
“This is the new pilgrimage that children desire, a rite of passage into the meaning of life according to Disney,” the cleric said. “Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products.”
The sprawling corporation, founded by brothers Walt and Roy Disney in the United States in 1923, has produced more than 200 films in the 85 years since, and today owns 11 theme parks and several television networks around the world.
_ Al Webb
Zoo drops plans to partner with Creation Museum after complaints
(RNS) The Cincinnati Zoo has dropped a business arrangement with the nearby Creation Museum after it received numerous complaints about a joint Christmas promotion.
Officials at the museum expressed disappointment that their plans to offer a reduced price on a package of tickets to both attractions had ended after less than three days.
“I am � personally saddened that this organization I esteem so highly would find it necessary to back out of this relationship,” said Ken Ham, founder and president of the museum in Petersburg, Ky. “At the same time, I have learned that the zoo received hundreds of complaints from what appear to be some very intolerant people, and so I understand the zoo’s perspective.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer said zoo officials found themselves embroiled in a debate between creationists who support the museum and evolutionists who oppose it after agreeing to a deal that would reduce entry to the zoo’s “Festival of Lights” and the museum’s “Bethlehem’s Blessings.”
“It’s not about us endorsing them or them endorsing us,” said Chad Yelton, a spokesman for the zoo, told the newspaper. “That’s wasn’t the intention of anything we were doing.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Week: President George W. Bush
(RNS) “I would advise politicians, however, to be careful about faith in the public arena …. They should recognize _ at least I have recognized that I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption and therefore have been very careful about saying … if you don’t accept what I believe, you’re a bad person.”
_ President George W. Bush, in an interview with StoryCorps’ National Day of Listening project.
DSB END RNS
