c. 2003 Religion News Service
Muslim Army Chaplain Released, Receives More Charges
(RNS) Army Chaplain (Capt.) Yousef Yee, a Muslim accused of mishandling classified material, has been released from custody and charged with adultery and storing pornography on a government computer, the military said.
The military released Yee, 35, from custody Tuesday (Nov. 25) and will permit him to return to duty at a base in Georgia, said Raul Duany, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command.
Yee, who was accused of taking classified material from the U.S. prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will not be allowed to have contact with prisoners at that site, the Associated Press reported.
Authorities arrested Yee in September and charged him with disobeying an order for allegedly taking the material from Guantanamo and transporting it improperly.
The new charges include storing pornography on a government computer, making a false statement, and having sexual relations outside marriage, which is in violation of military law.
Yee, who also has been identified with the first name James, will be assigned to the base chaplain at Fort Benning, Ga., said Capt. Tom Crosson, another spokesman at the U.S. Southern Command.
In a statement issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, his wife, Huda Suboh, said: “I believe emphatically that my husband is innocent of all these charges. I stand by him. It is clear to me that the U.S. government only wants to destroy his reputation and his family. They will not succeed.”
Yee’s lawyer had asked President Bush in a Monday letter to release him for Eid al Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
“To bring adultery into a case that began with public allegations of aiding the enemy is really outrageous, and the type of thing that can give military justice a bad name,” said Eugene Fidell, the lawyer.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Fidell’s letter to Bush said Yee has been held under harsh conditions at a Navy brig in South Carolina and has been barred from practicing his faith.
U.N. Says Hunger, AIDS on the Rise
(RNS) The number of people living with HIV and AIDS worldwide is growing steadily, and global hunger is again on the rise, according to new reports from the United Nations.
About 40 million people worldwide are now infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, with 5 million new cases reported in 2003. Of the 3 million AIDS-related deaths this year, one-sixth were of children under the age of 15.
The grim figures were announced Tuesday (Nov. 25) by UNAIDS, a joint program of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank, in its annual report.
While infections decreased in a few regions of Africa, the epidemic is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe, India and China, the report said.
UNAIDS officials said that although HIV and AIDS infections are at their highest numbers ever, they are buoyed to see more money for fighting AIDS on the horizon.
“I feel strongly that this year, we really are entering a new phase of the global response,” said Peter Piot, the Belgian physician and epidemiologist who heads UNAIDS.
“There is a growing political momentum never seen for any public health problem,” Piot told the Washington Post.
Among new AIDS-fighting initiatives is the five-year, $15 billion “emergency relief plan” announced by the Bush administration earlier this year, which will combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa and the Caribbean.
Worldwide hunger is also on the rise, after falling during the first half of the 1990s, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s annual report on hunger.
An estimated 842 million people were undernourished in 1999-2001, with 10 million in industrialized countries, 34 million in countries in transition, and 798 million in developing countries, the report said.
Hunger rates had fallen by 37 million during the first half of the 1990s, but increased by 18 million in the latter half. The latest numbers “signal a setback in the war against hunger,” the report said.
Drought and AIDS both contribute to the hunger crisis.
While drought ravages crops, AIDS cuts into the work force on farms. The report pointed to southern Africa, where 60 percent to 70 percent of farms have suffered labor losses due to the disease, the report said.
_ Christina Denny
American Baptist Churches Send Clergy to the Gym
(RNS) The American Baptist Churches USA have awarded 35 “wellness grants” to ministerial leaders to use toward such health-related activities as a membership in a local fitness club.
The $300 grants were distributed during what the denomination’s Ministerial Leadership Commission called “`Clergy Appreciation Season.”
That season, from October to November, is part of the commission’s Clergy Health Initiative that has sought to make clergy health a priority for American Baptists.
“The ministerial leaders cannot be healthy by themselves,” said the Rev. Ivan George, the commission’s executive director, in a statement. “Providing the wellness grant and performing other acts of support during Clergy Appreciation Season and throughout the year are ways in which the local congregation or other American Baptist agency becomes a partner with the ministerial leader in the pursuit of healthy lifestyles.”
The grants can be used for “wellness opportunities,” such as a one-year membership in a local health or fitness club, a family membership at the “Y,” or a retreat at an American Baptist conference center or camp, the commission said on its Web site. It sought nominations for grant recipients on its Web site.
Pastors from across the country and an executive minister of a local Baptist association were among the recipients.
The commission previously created a definition of “clergy health” that includes balanced nutrition, emotional well-being, periods of spiritual reflection and a sense of fulfillment from one’s job.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Program Hopes to Bring Fair Trade Coffee to Catholic Parishes
(RNS) A new partnership hopes to convince American Catholic churches to buy and serve “fair trade” coffee that helps support poor Third World coffee growers.
Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services launched a program Tuesday (Nov. 25) to quadruple the number of Catholic parishes that serve coffee that is sold at a higher price to help support coffee growers.
The program hopes the 350 parishes that currently participate will grow to 1,900 _ 10 percent of the country’s 19,000 Catholic parishes _ within a year. The program will also market the coffee to colleges, retreat houses and schools, as well as sell wholesale to individuals.
“We want to give U.S. Catholics and other people of goodwill the chance to put their faith into action, to do the right thing and not just a good thing,” said Joan Neal, CRS’ deputy director for U.S. programs.
Equal Exchange, a Canton, Mass.-based fair trade importer, hopes to replicate the success of a similar program in 7,000 U.S. churches that last year bought 118 tons of fair trade coffee. Equal Exchange has partnerships with seven major Protestant denominations and relief agencies.
Coffee growers who participate in the program are guaranteed a higher price for their crop _ $1.26 a pound for conventional coffee ($1.41 for organic), compared with the average 42 cents a pound on the open market.
The higher prices help the farmers support their families and invest in new technologies and products. Officials say a collapse in the global coffee market has thrown farmers into chronic poverty.
In Nicaragua, for example, production has fallen from 200 million pounds a year to about 70 million pounds, and 30,000 coffee jobs were lost in El Salvador. The average per-pound price farmers receive has dropped by about two-thirds since 2001.
“With the little money we make from the sale of the coffee, we barely make enough to buy rice and sugar, and from time to time clothing for the children and medicine when we get sick,” said Encarnacion Suarez, a 60-year-old Nicaraguan farmer who participated in a teleconference.
Officials say the program will help Catholics put the church’s social teaching about the poor into practice, even though the fair trade coffee may cost more than traditional coffee. “The bottom line is, justice isn’t cheap,” Neal said.
Program leaders say they do not have any plans to involve commercial companies, such as Starbucks, in the program, but insist their product is as good as any other bean.
“We’ve found that when they enter (tasting) competitions, they compete very well,” said Erbin Crowell, director of the Interfaith Program for Equal Exchange.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
American Priest Tapped to Oversee Catholic Education for Vatican
(RNS) An American priest was named Tuesday (Nov. 25) by Pope John Paul II to oversee the world’s 1,200 Catholic universities as secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education.
The Rev. J. Michael Miller, currently president of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, will be made an archbishop by the pope in early January.
“I am not so much honored by it, but humbled by it,” Miller told students at the school Tuesday, according to the Houston Chronicle. “It is an extraordinary reflection of the mercy of God who calls frail human creatures to do his work.”
Miller will oversee the congregation’s day-to-day operations, which include oversight of thousands of elementary and secondary schools as well as church seminaries. He will report directly to the department’s prefect, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, and the pope.
Miller has served as president of the Houston university since 1997 and has taught there since 1979 while also serving as chair of the theology department and dean of its School of Theology. Between 1992 and 1997, he served in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
A member of the Basilian Fathers, Miller was born in Canada and received his U.S. citizenship last year. “He was born in Canada, but he goes to Rome as a Texan,” said Galveston-Houston Bishop Joseph Fiorenza.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Quote of the Day: All Africa Conference of Churches President Kwesi Dickson
(RNS) “If small arms were edible, no one would go hungry in Africa.”
_ All Africa Conference of Churches President Kwesi Dickson, in a Monday (Nov. 24) address at the conference’s General Assembly in Yaounde, Cameroon. Dickson, who was quoted in a conference news release, was referring to the millions of small arms and light weapons that have proliferated in Africa.
KRE END RNS
