Geneva (ENI). Two leading organisations representing mainstream churches across Europe are organising an historic joint gathering on the future of Christian-Muslim relations in Europe. The theme of the meeting, which will take place in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from 16 to 21 September, is the "joint responsibility" of Christians and Muslims in Europe in "a pluralist and secular society". [485 words, ENI-01-0159]

27 April 2001

Lima (ENI). Church leaders are demanding an in-depth investigation into the controversial accident in which the Peruvian air force opened fire on a Cessna 185 floatplane last Friday, 20 April. The Peruvian officers mistakenly thought that the plane, flying from the Colombian border towards the city of Iquitos, 990 kilometres northeast of Lima, was ferrying drug-traffickers. Two of the passengers, an American missionary from the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), Veronica "Roni" Bowers, and her seven-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed instantly when bullets tore through the fuselage. [884 words, ENI-01-0157]

Zimbabwe students protest at rising fees at Catholic University

Harare (ENI). Students at the Catholic University in Zimbabwe (CUZ) ended a two-day class boycott on Wednesday which had been organised to protest against "gross mismanagement". In a petition last week to Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa, head of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 137 students protested against a 50 per cent increase in fees, a shortage of library books and equipment and a "lack of seriousness" towards their academic welfare. The students also accused the institution of a lack of "transparency" in its structures. [557 words, ENI-01-0158]

26 April 2001

New York (ENI). US religious leaders have in recent weeks taken outspoken stands in two high-profile crime cases, condemning what they say is excessively vindictive punishment. Daniel Buechlein, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Indianapolis, Indiana, and Bishop Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal (Anglican) Church have criticised the planned execution of Timothy McVeigh, scheduled for 16 May in Indiana. McVeigh has been found guilty of the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in which 168 people were killed - one of the most highly publicised crimes in US history. McVeigh will die by lethal injection. In the state of Florida, a group of Episcopal bishops have publicly criticised a sentence for 14-year-old Lionel Tate, who was sentenced in March to life imprisonment without parole for beating a six-year-old girl to death. [964 words, ENI-01-0156]

25 April 2001

Strasbourg (ENI). "Churches cannot live without the contribution of women, they will be poorer without it," according to Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter, who was installed as Lutheran bishop of Holstein-Lübeck, in northern Germany, on 1 April this year. Bishop Wartenberg-Potter, a prominent ecumenist and Germany's third woman bishop, was interviewed by ENI after speaking at a major ecumenical gathering in Strasbourg, France, at the weekend. She said that churches had to "empower women [and] prepare them for leadership". [571 words, ENI-01-0154]

Archbishop's appointment as Australia's head of state sparks debate

Sydney (ENI). Anglican Archbishop Peter Hollingworth has been appointed as the Governor-General of Australia. He will be the first churchman to hold the controversial post as representative of Queen Elizabeth II and Australia's constitutional head of state. The appointment has sparked a debate on the separation between church and state and renewed long-running controversy on the relevance of the British monarch, who is also Queen of Australia, and her representative to modern-day Australia. [764 words, ENI-01-0155]

24 April 2001

Johannesburg (ENI). South African Anglicans have launched a fund-raising appeal to provide a drug which reduces the risk of pregnant, HIV-positive women, transmitting the virus to their children at birth. The controversial move, by the 60 parishes of the Johannesburg diocese, comes amid mounting criticism of the government's slowness in responding to a health emergency which has already seen an estimated 4.7 million South Africans - or one in nine people - infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that leads to Aids. [543 words, ENI-01-0153]

23 April 2001

Strasbourg (ENI). A unique gathering in Strasbourg bringing together church leaders from Europe's main Christian traditions and young people from across the continent has ended with the solemn signing of an ecumenical charter intended to boost inter-church relations. At a packed ceremony yesterday (22 April) in Strasbourg's historic St Thomas' Lutheran Church, attended by leading church officials from throughout Europe, Orthodox Metropolitan Jérémie, the president of the Conference of European Churches (CEC), and Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague, president of the Council of European (Catholic) Bishops' Conferences (CCEE), signed the "Charta Oecumenica" - a set of "guidelines" to promote co-operation among churches in Europe. [1308 words, ENI-01-0150]

Albanian archbishop tells Europe's churches to challenge globalisation

Strasbourg (ENI). Albania's Orthodox Archbishop has warned Europe's churches that they risk "betraying the Gospel" if they allow "secular financial and political entities" to dominate the world. Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and All Albania called on European Christians to work to replace "economic globalisation which leads to the exploitation of many" by an "ecumenical brotherhood that rests upon freedom, respect for one another and love". [677 words, ENI-01-0151]

'Patients' right to life must have priority over pharmaceutical profits'

Johannesburg, London, New Delhi, Geneva (ENI). Christian officials throughout the world have hailed the decision of 39 pharmaceutical companies to drop their lawsuit against South Africa, permitting the Pretoria government to buy anti-Aids medicine at generic-drug prices. Churches and church agencies in several countries told ENI that the patients' right to life must come before the pharmaceutical companies' desire for profits. But their optimism was tempered by continued uncertainty over whether the medicine will soon be available to the estimated 4.7 million South Africans - or one in nine people - infected with HIV. [906 words, ENI-01-0152]

20 April 2001

Harare (ENI). The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) has blamed the death of a university student in Harare last week on the use of brutal force by the national police force, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Batanai Hadzidzi, a 21-year-old student at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, died on 9 April after being bludgeoned by baton-wielding policemen deployed to the campus to crush student demonstrations over low government grants for students. [825 words, ENI-01-0146]

Europe's churches set to sign agreement to boost co-operation

Strasbourg (ENI). A major European church gathering that will culminate in the signing of a charter intended to boost ecumenical work in Europe has opened in the city of Strasbourg in eastern France with an impassioned plea to church leaders to put aside their differences for the good of the continent. Preaching last night at the opening worship of the European Ecumenical Encounter, Dr Elisabeth Parmentier, a French Lutheran theologian, said that Europe had many places like Strasbourg that bore "the scars of national conflict, which have seen families, friendships and villages torn apart, quarrels between Christian confessions and struggles between cultures". Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace, a region which France and Germany fought over for many years. [1071 words, ENI-01-0147]

Inquiry calls for 'vigilance' to prevent priests from abusing children

London (ENI). An independent review has demanded a "culture of vigilance" throughout the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales to prevent further cases of sexual abuse of children by priests. The review, chaired by Lord Nolan, a retired senior judge, made 50 recommendations in its "essentially practical" first report, including a child-protection representative in every Catholic parish, a national database of applicants for the priesthood, and laicisation - effective dismissal from the priesthood - in severe cases of child abuse. [1171 words, ENI-01-0148]

Russian church objects to new ecumenical charter for Europe's churches

Strasbourg (ENI). The Russian Orthodox Church has distanced itself from an ecumenical charter for Europe to be signed here on Sunday, warning that the charter could prove "harmful and counter-productive" to dialogue between churches and might lead to "new divisions" between Christians. The Charta Oecumenica, which has been almost two years in the making, sets down guidelines for ecumenical work in Europe. The Charta will be signed on 22 April in Strasbourg. [820 words, ENI-01-0149]

19 April 2001

Rumbek (ENI). Outraged by the deaths and suffering they witnessed during a seven-day, fact-finding mission to southern Sudan, five leading Canadian church officials are demanding a moratorium on all aspects of oil development, including major involvement by a Canadian company, in this oil-rich, but war-ravaged region, until peace is restored. Eighteen years of civil war in this region have claimed more than 2 million lives and displaced 4 million people in a conflict often ignored by the rest of the world. [1118 words, ENI-01-0145]

18 April 2001

Sydney (ENI). The basic human rights of leading Catholics, including Hans Küng, Tissa Balasuriya, and Lavinia Byrne have been violated by the scrutiny of the Vatican, according to a book by a Catholic theologian in Australia. The book is intended to pressure the Vatican to reform the ways in which it deals with clergy and theologians who have been reported to Rome for alleged doctrinal "errors". From Inquisition to Freedom was written by Australian author Paul Collins, who created international headlines last month when he resigned from the priesthood, partly because of a Vatican investigation of one of his earlier books. [1016 words, ENI-01-0144]

12 April 2001

Warsaw (ENI). An international official has praised religious leaders for building closer ties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and insisted, despite claims to the contrary, that extremism is on the wane. "Extremist voices" among both Christians and Muslims were receding, said the official, who vigorously rejected claims, including some from a church agency, that the country faced "Islamisation". [1228 words, ENI-01-0143]

11 April 2001

Sydney (ENI). A court decision has opened the way for one of Australia's leading churches, the Uniting Church, to set up the world's biggest legal heroin injecting room in Sydney's red light district. The room is to be operated by the church under licence from the state government of New South Wales as part of an 18-month trial aimed at preventing the 358 fatal overdoses that occur on average each year in the state. Addicts will not be provided with the drug, but will be allowed to inject under medical supervision. Up to 200 injections of drugs are expected to take place daily in the room, which will be open for eight hours a day and staffed by nurses and drug-and-alcohol counsellors. [868 words, ENI-01-0142]

10 April 2001

Harare (ENI). A prominent Catholic priest, Oskar Wermter, has called for an "uprising of the conscience" to end the lawlessness troubling Zimbabwe. Warning that Zimbabwe could drift towards a bloody civil war, Father Wermter called for a fundamental change of heart as violence erupts in many parts of the country. [839 words, ENI-01-0141]

9 April 2001

London (ENI). Violence between Palestinians and Israelis has caused a "drastic reduction" in pilgrimages, an ecumenical delegation from Britain has reported after a visit to the Holy Land. The high-level group, representing the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), called on churches in Western countries to try to help reverse the decline, which is having "catastrophic consequences" for workers in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. [864 words, ENI-01-0140]

6 April 2001

Amsterdam (ENI). Churches in The Netherlands have joined the Dutch public in welcoming the engagement of the country's crown prince, Willem Alexander, to the daughter of Jorge Zorreguieta, a leading official in Argentina's military junta in the 1970s. The engagement between Crown Prince Willem Alexander and Maxima Zorreguieta was announced by Queen Beatrix in a rare national television address on 30 March. Well before the announcement there was widespread speculation and concern that the former Argentinian government official might attend the royal wedding. [649 words, ENI-01-0138]

Despite tensions, Indian churches agree to dialogue with Hindu groups

New Delhi (ENI). As mainline churches in India prepare for dialogue with Hindu groups, some Christian organisations have warned of the risks of holding talks with "fanatical outfits". The All India Christian Council (AICC), a forum of lay Christian leaders, warned of the grave risks of dialogue with fundamentalists, pointing out on 31 March that these groups had created "a climate of hate and violence against Indian Christians by spreading the lie of the 'Videshi [foreign] church'." The AICC was referring to Hindu fundamentalist claims that the Catholic Church here is merely an arm of the Vatican, and to Hindu proposals that Indian churches cut all ties with churches and agencies abroad. [1010 words, ENI-01-0139]

5 April 2001

Geneva (ENI). An official at the World Council of Churches has called on churches world-wide to point out to churchgoers on 15 April that by a "happy" coincidence of church calendars, all of the world's Christians are celebrating Easter on the same day this year. Referring to the fact that in most years there are two dates for Easter, Dr Tom Best, executive secretary of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC), told ENI that this was "a terrible counter-witness to the unity we share in Christ. This is the core festival of the Christian faith. An important way to show our unity would be for all Christians to celebrate it together every year." [920 words, ENI-01-0136]

Churches divided over Amsterdam's same-sex weddings

Amsterdam (ENI). Churches in The Netherlands have given a mixed response to the country's first civil weddings for same-sex couples, which took place on 1 April in Amsterdam's town hall. Three male couples and one female couple were married immediately after midnight when a new law on marriage and adoption rights came into force. The event was described by supporters as the world's most comprehensive recognition of gay rights and as the world's first official gay marriage ceremony, although a few other countries also give various degrees of legal recognition to gay relationships. [1068 words, ENI-01-0137]

4 April 2001

Geneva (ENI). Religious leaders in Europe and the United States have expressed deep concern about the US government's decision last week not to implement the Kyoto Protocol, which is intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol was negotiated at an international meeting in Japan, in 1997. [995 words, ENI-01-0134]

Leading Catholic priest urges Pope to delay controversial visit to Greece

Warsaw (ENI). A senior Catholic priest in Greece has warned of growing hostility to his church in the run-up to a visit by Pope John Paul next month. Father Dominikos Psaltis, administrator of the Catholic cathedral in Athens, added that most Catholic clergy in Greece believed the papal pilgrimage should be postponed because of disputes between the Athens government and the nation's biggest church, the (Orthodox) Church of Greece. [824 words, ENI-01-0135]

2 April 2001

New Delhi (ENI). An Orthodox priest who is a candidate in forthcoming elections to the legislative assembly of the southern Indian state of Kerala is to receive support from the state's ruling coalition, led by the Communist Party. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) has decided to support 73-year-old Father Mathai Nooranal who is standing as an "independent" candidate for the Sultan Bathery constituency in the district of Wayanad in the north of Kerala. [922 words, ENI-01-0132]

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