Moscow (ENI). If all goes according to plan, the world's southernmost Orthodox church will open next year at a Russian polar research station on the driest, coldest and windiest continent. The future Church of St Nicholas is to offer pastoral care to the handful of Russian researchers at the Bellingshausen station on King George Island in Antarctica. It will also stand as a memorial to the 47 Russian explorers buried on the continent who have died over the decades. The plans to build the church come 180 years after Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen led the first Russian naval expedition to the Antarctic area, and 45 years after the Soviet Union established its first station on the continent. [819 words, ENI-02-0057]

Controversial film on church and Holocaust finally opens in France

Paris (ENI). Amen, a much awaited film by Constantin Costa-Gavras which raises controversial questions about the church's role during the Holocaust, opened in cinemas in France yesterday, having already created a public stir. The controversy has so far centred on the film's poster, which appeared two weeks ago and depicts a Christian cross superimposed on a swastika. A specialist of political cinema and author of such films as Z, L'aveu, and Missing, Costa-Gavras in Amen portrays what he has called the "moral bankruptcy" of the church's attitude towards the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. [623 words, ENI-02-0058]

German Protestants hope that mentors will promote equal opportunities

Bielefeld, Germany (ENI). The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Germany's main Protestant body, has launched a new programme to promote equal opportunities for women within the church. The initiative will twin a number of younger female pastors and other women who work for the church with experienced mentors, who will share information and promote contacts useful for professional advancement. The initiative, inspired by a programme from the United States, is based on the idea that personal contacts and links to certain networks are often more important to a career than performance and competence. [370 words, ENI-02-0056]

28 February 2002

Bielefeld, Germany (ENI). The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Germany's main Protestant body, has launched a new programme to promote equal opportunities for women within the church. The initiative will twin a number of younger female pastors and other women who work for the church with experienced mentors, who will share information and promote contacts useful for professional advancement. The initiative, inspired by a programme from the United States, is based on the idea that personal contacts and links to certain networks are often more important to a career than performance and competence. [370 words, ENI-0056]

26 February 2002

London (ENI). Westminster Abbey in London - which charges six pounds (US$8.50) per adult for admission - has been praised by a leading tourism official as a "shining example" of how to handle large numbers of tourists effectively. Adrian Clark, administrative director of the Tourism Society, said that by imposing admission charges, the medieval abbey had acted to avoid the "downside of tourism", which was erosion of the building through wear and tear. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which met in London on 21 February, has expressed concern at the wear and tear affecting many of Britain's historic religious buildings. [572 words, ENI-02-0054]

Churches condemn restrictions on public gatherings in Zimbabwe

Harare (ENI). A meeting of representatives of 15 churches in Bulawayo - Zimbabwe's second city - has condemned a new law which, among other things, restricts freedom of assembly for churches and civic organisations. The meeting also called on Zimbabwe's two main political parties to desist from violence in the run up to presidential elections next month, in which President Robert Mugabe is facing the stiffest challenge in his 22-year rule. [514 words, ENI-02-0055]

25 February 2002

Oxford, Ohio (ENI). Opponents of the ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy in the Presbyterian Church (USA) are celebrating the defeat of an amendment to church law that would have allowed homosexuals to hold positions of authority in the denomination. However, supporters of the move to change church law have promised a continued presence and fight within the church. [472 words, ENI-02-0053]

22 February 2002

Lagos (ENI). A Nigerian Catholic archbishop has voluntarily offered to die in place of a woman who has been condemned to death by stoning by an Islamic court for the crime of adultery. Dr Anthony Olubunmi Okogie, the Catholic archbishop of the Lagos Archdiocese in south-western Nigeria, has offered to pay the sentence recently imposed on the Muslim woman in the northern state of Sokoto in a case which has created an international outcry. The woman, Safiya Hussaini Tungar-tudu, is appealing the conviction; the next hearing has been set for 18 March. [554 words, ENI-02-0051]

Mexican 'bishop of the poor' wins Niwano Peace Prize

Geneva (ENI). Samuel Ruiz Garcia, a prominent Roman Catholic bishop and defender of the rights of indigenous people in his native Mexico, has won the 2002 Niwano Peace Prize. The Niwano Peace Foundation of Japan announced on 22 February that Ruiz had won the 19th Niwano Peace Prize, including 20 million yen, a gold medal and an award certificate. The prize will be presented to the 77-year-old Ruiz at a ceremony in Tokyo on 9 May. In a statement released today explaining the selection of Ruiz for the prize, the Niwano Foundation said that Ruiz had "devoted himself untiringly especially to raising the social standing of the indigenous communities and to the reclamation and preservation of their native cultures". [483 words, ENI-02-0052]

21 February 2002

Bielefeld, Germany (ENI). Leaders of Germany's biggest churches say a new immigration law expected to go before the parliament prior to elections in September, does not go far enough in protecting vulnerable people, such as refugees and asylum seekers. The bill, which has gone through various drafts, takes into account security concerns raised by the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States, but has pushed aside questions of white-collar immigration that had previously dominated policy discussions. At the same time, the draft law reflects some key demands made by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Germany's main Protestant body, and the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference (DBK), who had jointly lobbied government ministers last month, shortly before the draft was issued. [568 words, ENI-02-0050]

20 February 2002

Sydney (ENI). Australia's Anglican Church has announced an enquiry into child abuse in church institutions amid continuing criticism of the country's constitutional head of state - a former Anglican archbishop - over handling of child abuse cases when he was archbishop of Brisbane. The announcement was made on 19 February as speculation increased that Dr Peter Hollingworth, who as governor-general acts as Australia's head of state on behalf of the British sovereign, may be forced to resign over the affair. Hollingworth appeared on national television on Monday evening to defend himself against multiple accusations that he covered up and failed to confront allegations of sexual assault by clergy during his time as head of the Brisbane diocese. [384 words, ENI-02-0049]

19 February 2002

Lima (ENI). A government commission in Peru is seeking to establish responsibility for up to 30 000 deaths and more than 6000 disappearances over the past 20 years, many the result of a long-running conflict involving rebel guerrillas and the country's military. The 12-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which includes two Catholic priests and an Evangelical pastor, started its investigations last month with a goal to "re-establish dignity and ensure the administration of justice", its president, Salomon Lerner, rector of the Catholic University of Peru, told ENI. [658 words, ENI-02-0048]

18 February 2002

Sydney (ENI). The secretary general of the Vatican-based aid agency Caritas Internationalis has accused the Australian Government of playing to the lowest common denominator by making refugees appear less than human. Secretary General Duncan MacLaren's comments, made in an interview with ENI, followed revelations last week that the Australian government had made false accusations during the recent election campaign about an incident in which boat people allegedly threw their children into the water as a ploy to gain entry to Australia. [481 words, ENI-02-0046]

Refugees are bearing brunt of US security measures, church agencies warn

New York (ENI). Tougher security measures since the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States have all but halted the legal entry of refugees into the US, and church-related agencies are pressuring the government to restore previous levels of admissions. The head of one refugee agency, Richard Parkins of the Episcopal (Anglican) Migration Ministries (EMM), called the situation the most serious refugee resettlement crisis in nearly 25 years, saying it could dramatically alter "the nation's ability to respond to future refugee crises". [769 words, ENI-02-0047]

15 February 2002

Moscow (ENI). Satisfying the repeated requests of its small Russian flock but plunging to new depths in its relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican has set up Roman Catholic dioceses in Russia. The Vatican claims that the move is simply an administrative measure. For the Orthodox, however, the Vatican's decision amounts to the establishment of a rival church. The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church described the establishment of a "Catholic Church of Russia" as a "challenge to Orthodoxy". The patriarchate said the decision revealed the Vatican's true "missionary aims" and called into question its overall ecumenical commitment. The decision also deals a blow to the possibility of the Pope's long-desired visit to Russia in the foreseeable future, it said. [1008 words, ENI-02-0045]

Marga Bührig was a pioneer for women's rights in the church

Geneva (ENI). Marga Bührig, a former president of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and one of Switzerland's pioneering feminist theologians, died this week, aged 86. Born in Berlin in 1915, Bührig moved as a child with her family to Switzerland, where she became active in the struggle for women's rights in church and society, often impatient at the slowness of male-dominated churches and ecumenical bodies in giving women their rightful place. In 1983 she was elected one of the WCC's seven presidents, a post she held until 1991. At the time, she said that she had hesitated before accepting the nomination, given her negative experience of church bodies. What was important about the ecumenical movement, she said, was not that traditional churches were taking tiny steps towards rapprochement, but rather that the WCC remained "a movement towards the poor and oppressed". [455 words, ENI-02-0044]

14 February 2002

London (ENI). A new book from Britain's Methodists includes prayers to mark the end of relationships as well as to celebrate their continued good health. The book - Vows and Partings - has prayers for people at every stage of marriage and other relationships, and for difficult moments such as a son or daughter coming out as gay, the loss of a loved one to Alzheimer's disease and retirement from work. The Methodist vice-president, Ann Leck, a contributor to Vows and Partings, said: "Here is a response to the need in all churches for liturgy and prayers at various critical times in people's lives ... Harder and often ignored are the times of loss and despair - times that can feel like failure." [594 words, ENI-02-0043]

13 February 2002

Geneva, 13 February (ENI)--Churches in Switzerland have urged citizens to vote "yes" in a crucial referendum next month on whether the traditionally neutral country should join the United Nations. Government leaders in Switzerland are vigorously campaigning for UN membership, which is opposed by two parties at the far right who say membership would compromise Swiss "national honour and independence". In a joint statement calling for support for UN membership, leaders of Switzerland's main Protestant and Roman Catholic churches said the UN's objectives of "promoting peace, justice and social security" corresponded to those of the churches.

To be passed, the initiative must gain majority support from Swiss voters in the 3 March referendum, as well as support in a majority of Switzerland's 23 cantons.

The result of the referendum is "highly uncertain", according to Hans-Balz Peter, director of the Social Ethics Institute of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation (SEK).

The federation had received "agitated letters" from Swiss citizens, he said, warning that UN membership would endanger the country's capacity to provide "good offices" and suggesting that the UN was a tool of the great powers. Peter said that it was "debatable how far the UN lives up in practice to the aims and values it shares with Christianity. "But if we belonged, we could at least contribute to this discussion and have a forum for promoting changes. As long as we don't, we have no voice - nor any right to criticise."

Many citizens were concerned that joining the UN would mean that Switzerland would have to change its tradition of "armed neutrality", which they believed was the country's "main contribution to global peace", Peter told ENI.

In an opinion poll published in Switzerland this week, 56 per cent of people questioned supported joining the UN, while 30 per cent were opposed.

In a statement supporting membership, the SEK's nine-member council said all countries had a "moral obligation" to support the UN's values of "peace, justice and safeguarding creation".

"If the UN did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it."

The SEK represents 23 Protestant churches, accounting for 37 per cent of Switzerland's 7.2 million inhabitants.

"The UN general assembly draws together nations from throughout the world," SEK said. "No comparable forum exists which devotes itself to international politics with the declared aim of creating a world where freedom of belief and speech reign without fear and deprivation."

In the last referendum on Swiss membership in the UN, in 1986, voters rejected the move three-to-one, fearing that it would endanger Switzerland's traditional neutrality.

If this referendum passes, the Vatican will be the world's only remaining state that is an observer at the UN but not a full member, according to a statement by Switzerland's Roman Catholic bishops in January. The bishops said Pope John Paul II had explained in an address to the UN general assembly in 1979 that the Vatican's "purely spiritual mission" debarred it from joining.

But they pointed out that the situation was "quite different" for Switzerland.

"This is a state entirely qualified to take part in the community of nations - it would be betraying its humanitarian tradition if it declined to share in UN decisions," continued the bishops, whose church claims the loyalty of 44 per cent of Swiss citizens.

They said that even if the UN appeared at its beginnings to be an organisation of victors, "it now groups all the world's sovereign states - invoking neutrality to refuse membership would amount to isolating our country again." [594 words]

12 February 2002

Warsaw (ENI). Leaders of Romania's churches are preparing their faithful to participate in a new national census, hoping to benefit from a show of strength from their respective church memberships. The churches see the census, to be taken over a two-week period in March, as a tool for gaining influence with the government and buoying their claims to church property. Church property has been at the centre of a dispute between the dominant Orthodox church and the minority Greek Catholic church, a denomination which is loyal to Rome while retaining the Eastern Orthodox rite. [710 words, ENI-02-0041]

11 February 2002

Berlin (ENI). "Chico", a film about a fictional revolutionary who ends up fighting in the Balkans in the early 1990s, has been honoured with the 2001 John Templeton European Film Award. The prize, given annually to a film that broaches spiritual and social questions and is judged to have high artistic merit, was presented last night in Berlin to the film's Hungarian director, Ibolya Fekete. The film was selected by an ecumenical jury that commended the work "for showing the spiritual dimension of human existence that lasts, while ideologies come and go". [539 words, ENI-02-0040]

Canadian Anglicans put technology to work to elect metropolitan

Vancouver (ENI). The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) is planning this May, for the first time, to use electronic technology to elect a new metropolitan for one of its four ecclesiastical provinces. The election is to name a successor to Archbishop Arthur Peters, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical Province of Canada, who retires this month. By using fax and e-mail technology, the province hopes to save on travel and other expenses that would have been incurred in a special meeting of the 42-member province council. The province is made up of seven dioceses in eastern Canada. [376 words, ENI-02-0039]

8 February 2002

Mexico City (ENI). The Vatican's decision to canonise Juan Diego, a 16th-century Indian peasant from Mexico, has re-ignited a controversy about whether the saint-to-be ever really existed. Pope John Paul II is expected to arrive in Mexico City on 29 July for a brief visit to canonise the indigenous peasant farmer who is said to have witnessed apparitions in 1531 of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 1737, the Catholic Church declared the Virgin the patron of Mexico, and she continues today to have a massive following in Mexico. While no one is questioning the continued devotion to "Guadalupe", the question of whether Diego ever existed is hotly disputed. [851 words, ENI-02-0037]

Jan Kok, a key founder of ENI, 'thoroughly understood journalism'

Geneva (ENI). Jan H. Kok, who as communication director of the World Council of Churches (WCC) played a key role in founding Ecumenical News International (ENI), died of cancer in Geneva on 7 February, aged 59. The WCC's general secretary, Dr Konrad Raiser, said: "The WCC is deeply indebted to Jan Kok. For more than a quarter of a century he has decisively influenced the public image and perception of the council." Robin Gurney, ENI's president, paid tribute to Kok's "persistence, in the face of many difficulties, both financial and conceptual" in helping to launch ENI in 1994. [564 words, ENI-02-0038]

7 February 2002

Hong Kong (ENI). Church activists and religious leaders in Hong Kong have welcomed a government order protecting the wages of foreign domestic workers. Hundreds of Filipino maids and other workers thronged the streets here on their day off, Sunday, to celebrate the 1 February decision of the government to freeze their wages at current levels for another year. Migrant workers and human rights groups had lobbied for the freeze since last November, when an employers' association proposed a reduction in pay of as much as 35 per cent, which would have been the second cut in three years. [753 words, ENI-02-0036]

In full expansion, Chinese churches play part in country's 'social vision'

London (ENI). The "extraordinary expansion" of Christianity in China is little appreciated in the West, says the woman the British and Irish churches have chosen as their specialist for the country. Caroline Fielder, an Anglican, has been named as China co-ordinator for the Churches' Commission on Mission (CCOM), part of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI). When the Communists took over mainland China in 1949, an estimated three million people were Roman Catholics and 700 000 Protestants. There are now 17 million Protestants, according to the CTBI, while Catholics number about 6 million, according to some estimates. Finding reliable statistics is complicated, however, because of the unknown number of Christians who attend churches not registered with the authorities. [672 words, ENI-02-0035]

5 February 2002

New Delhi (ENI). Church campaigners in India have welcomed a recent federal Supreme Court directive that they say will help combat the widespread practice of female foeticide. In a ruling at the end of January, the Supreme Court ordered state governments to confiscate unlicensed ultrasound scanning machines from health clinics following claims that the clinics were using the machines for illegal sex determination tests. [399 words, ENI-02-0034]

4 February 2002

Amsterdam (ENI). During the Cold War, the Stasi secret service agency of the former East Germany took a keen interest in the movements of the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV), a Dutch non-governmental organisation based in The Hague. But the activities of nearly 400 partnerships between Protestant congregations in the Netherlands and in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) escaped the attention of the Stasi, because the contacts were dispersed and the partnerships not hierarchically organised. These were the conclusions of Dutch historian Beatrice Jansen-De Graaf, presented in late January in Münster, Germany, at a two-day conference that included 80 academics as well as eye-witnesses from the Cold War era. [825 words, ENI-02-0032]

Zimbabwe authorities seize Baptist church's grain stocks

Harare (ENI). The Zimbabwe government's grain procurement company and the police have confiscated 20 tonnes of maize belonging to the Baptist Church in Bulawayo, 439 kilometres south of Harare. The maize consignment, which was being kept in the warehouse of a city engineering company, Hubert and Davies, was intended to feed starving villagers in drought-ravaged Matabeleland South, according to the church. The warehouse was raided on 28 January by a team of police officers and officials from the Grain Marketing Board. The raid is part of a national campaign by the government to shore up depleted grain reserves. [362 words, ENI-02-0031]

Global events put faith on agenda at World Economic Forum

New York (ENI). Amid tight security and a sense of slight displacement and even unease for some of the participants, a number of prominent world religious leaders joined their political and business counterparts at the World Economic Forum in New York City. This year's annual gathering of business leaders and political figures includes a strong presence by religious figures invited partly because of the religious dimension to issues such as the Middle East conflict, the war in Afghanistan and the 11 September attacks in the United States. Klaus Schwab, the president of the World Economic Forum, said religious leaders could offer a major contribution to the global agenda, given the increased prominence of religion in the world. "It is clear that the world's religions play a central role in societies around the world," he said. [679 words, ENI-02-0033]

1 February 2002

Sydney (ENI). The Australian government is under increasing pressure from churches to radically review its policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers in the wake of a hunger strike by more than 240 inmates at a detention centre in the remote desert of South Australia. The two-week hunger strike at the Woomera detention centre, during which some detainees stitched their lips closed and some threatened suicide, ended on 30 January after intense negotiations by the government's Immigration Detention Advisory Group, accompanied by the prominent and respected Jesuit priest, Frank Brennan. [860 words, ENI-02-0030]

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