Retired Pakistani archbishop: Fear has silenced Christians

Fear has silenced the voice of Pakistani Christians since the political murder of Shahbaz Bhatti last spring, said the retired archbishop of Lahore, Pakistan.

"People are very sad, very bitter. They said, 'If that happens to him what happens to us?'" Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha said in mid-November.

Bhatti's killers remain at large. The convicted murderer of Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab, was greeted in court with rose petals and garlands. In an atmosphere of impunity for anyone who kills a Christian, educated Pakistani Christians are getting out of the country. Those who remain are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut, said Archbishop Saldanha.

"In such a situation, minorities don't have much place. There's no tolerance for other religions," he said. "Either you convert or you leave. This is the choice."

Archbishop Saldanha moved to Toronto in early November, joining his extended family in the city's east end, where he hopes to involve himself locally in parish ministry. He spoke to The Catholic Register, Canadian Catholic weekly, in mid-November.

He said that in the more than 50 years since his priestly ordination, he has seen his country slide from corrupt oligarchy to military rule to mob rule.

"Everything is a big mess there -- economically, socially, religiously," he said.

Bhatti was Pakistan's minister responsible for minorities. He was killed March 2. Taseer was murdered by his own bodyguard Jan. 4. Both men spoke publicly against Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

Waves of suicide bombings, targeted killings and death threats against Christians have human rights campaigners and staff for the Pakistani bishops' justice and peace commission keeping their statements low-key and their names out of the papers. Even educated Muslims in Pakistan's big cities have turned against the country's religious minorities, the archbishop said.

"The mentality is changing, especially among the middle class and lower-middle class," said Archbishop Saldanha, who headed the justice and peace commission the past 10 years. "They are being Talibanized."

For the last year, Lahore's Sacred Heart Cathedral has been guarded by three sharpshooters in concrete guard posts erected on either side of the compound entrance and next to the parish hall. Concrete barriers have been placed at the entrance and around the bishop's house to slow down drivers and minimize the possibility of a suicide bomber getting close to the church.

But despite the risks Christians face, "the churches are packed," said Archbishop Saldanha.

"People are very adaptable, very resilient," he said. "They accept and go with the flow. They remain happy and active. They come to the church and fill up the church. They feel they get some consolation from that."

But if they can get out, Pakistani Christians are heading for Canada, Australia and England, he added. The exodus has left his former archdiocese with a shortage of qualified laypeople to run schools, hospitals and other institutions. In some cases, nuns have been able to step in, but in many cases schools lack principals and qualified teachers.

"We are left with the mass of very poor, uneducated people," the archbishop said.

There are 1.4 million Catholics and another million Protestants among Pakistan's population of 177 million. Officially an Islamic republic, Pakistan broke from India in 1947 to provide a homeland for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. More than 60 years later the country faces enormous challenges, said Archbishop Saldanha.

While in theory democracy should create a better environment for minorities, majority rule in Pakistan right now would be a disaster for the Christians, he said.

"The majority are pro-Islamic and they will vote for strict Islam," he said. "If you have democracy, Islam will surely win, especially in the North."

Christians under a strict form of Shariah, Islamic law, would be practically erased from the public life of the nation, said Archbishop Saldanha.

Pakistan is "not really democracy. They have hardly any legislation at all. The president and the prime minister call all the shots, without any reference to parliament," he said.

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Archbishop says cuts are hitting the vulnerable the hardest

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said in a speech to MPs, peers and charity workers that Government cuts are “already being felt disproportionally by the most vulnerable”.

It is the closest a Catholic bishop in England and Wales has come to criticising the Coalition’s austerity measures.

In his speech the archbishop urged the Government to listen to people on the “front line” of the social security, health and criminal justice systems.

Speaking at the Houses of Parliament, he painted a grim picture of the state of Britain.

He said: “None of us can be in any doubt about the severity of the challenges facing us in the coming months and years. The increase in youth unemployment, the pressure on housing provision and support, and the impact of personal debt are bringing hardship and distress to those least able to sustain them. At the same time some aspects of the distribution of wealth cause scandal and dismay. The summer’s disturbances in some parts of the country demonstrated a callous disregard for the common good of our communities, increasing the burden for those whose homes and businesses were affected. And, ever present throughout these developments, are enormous pressures on families and particularly on our young people, most of whom struggle hard to maintain their dignity and self-respect. They need our support.”

Archbishop Nichols was speaking at a parliamentary reception organised by Caritas Social Action Network, an agency of the bishops’ conference.

He urged peers and MPs to “utilise the wealth of knowledge and creativity available in this room”.

He said: “It is only by strengthening relationships between those organisations which work across the social action spectrum, and those parliamentarians who are shaping the legislative response to society’s challenges, that we can together achieve a better future.”

The reception is the first organised by Caritas and comes after the bishops’ conference announced earlier this year that it wanted to give the agency a stronger national voice and 

more powers to co-ordinate Catholic social action.

Their resolution followed on from a promise in November last year to try to deepen the Church’s social engagement in the wake of the papal visit.

The reception’s timing coincides with the progress of the Welfare Reform Bill in the House of Lords. Caritas has worked with Baroness Hollins in her tabling of an amendment to protect benefit claimants from being penalised as a result of administration errors.

Kevin Flanagan, director of the St Anthony’s Centre for Church and Industry, said: “If the present [Welfare Reform Bill] proposals go through, I am gravely concerned that a number of people who are receiving benefits could, through no fault of their own, be placed in debt and face other far reaching consequences for matters which are beyond their control.”

Caritas Social Action Network is an umbrella organisation for domestic Catholic charities.

It is separate from Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of Catholic relief agencies.

Philadelphia seminary creates Cardinal Foley chair in homiletics

Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania has established the John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics and Social Communication to honor Cardinal Foley for his lifetime of distinguished service as a professional communicator and for his “outstanding priestly service.”

“In establishing this chair, the seminary expresses esteem for Cardinal Foley, one of its most distinguished alumni, and seeks to perpetuate his high standards of communicating the gospel message in the life and ministry of future generations of priests,” the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Nov. 21.

The seminary chair will train seminarians in homiletics, the art of rhetoric in public preaching. 

The chair will also teach them to cultivate a practical knowledge and mastery of modern communications media.

Cardinal Foley, a Pennsylvania native, was ordained for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1962 and edited the archdiocesan paper, the Catholic Standard & Times.

He served as editor of Rome’s archdiocesan newspaper from 1970 to 1984 and was president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from 1984 to 2007.

For 21 years, he provided the English-language commentary for the global TV broadcasts of Christmas and Easter Masses.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher and elevated him to the level of cardinal.

On his 76th birthday Nov. 11, Cardinal Foley said he was grateful to God for a wonderful life.

“As Andy Rooney said, ‘I certainly have nothing to complain about.’ It’s been marvelous and I pray that I may have the strength needed for the rest of my time here on Earth to try to continue to do some good for others,” the cardinal said, according to the Delaware County Daily Times.

The cardinal returned to Philadelphia for retirement after being diagnosed with leukemia and other health ailments. 

He presently lives in Darby, Pennsylvania.

 

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1,000 churches help people beat debt

Christians Against Poverty have reached a new milestone with the 1,000th church set to take part in their debt-busting money course.

CAP Money was launched three years ago to teach people the basics of budgeting.

The course is run through local churches which are trained up so that they can run it on their premises and pass the wisdom on to their local communities.

Crucially, this includes weening people off the plastic and onto cash, helping them to see just how much they are spending each week and keeping them out of the devastating debt spiral.

Now the 1,000th church is set to learn these life-saving skills at a packed-out training session in London this weekend.

“In CAP Money's short history, something like 20,000 people – and that's a low estimate - have been on this free course and overhauled their personal finances,” said CAP's Chief Executive Matt Barlow.

“That's 20,000 people who now know how to prioritise their spending; how to budget; save and how to avoid getting into debt. It sounds simple but if no one's ever taught you, it's something you need to learn.”

Churches of all denominations have run the course over the last three years as they seek to support people left vulnerable by the economic downturn.

The 1,000th church to get involved is St John's Church in Greenside, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Margaret Butler is one of the members of the congregation travelling to London for the training day.

She said she was increasingly aware of the local need for people to gain better advice about managing their money and the congregation wanted to learn how to help their community weather the economic downturn.

“We are in the process of restoring the church hall as a community hall and I saw something about CAP Money and thought, 'this is wonderful! We need to get this underway'," she said.

“Another lady in our church also heard about it through a meeting she went to in Newcastle and so when we spoke to each other we felt God was in this. We aim to have our first course in the new year.”