CANADA
Teachers’ union targets Christian universities
A CATHOLIC theologian at Concordia University, Montreal, has started an online petition attacking the Canadian Association of University Teachers (Caut) for what one newspaper has called a “thinly disguised anti- Christian witch hunt”, writes Peter Kavanagh. Dr Paul Allen objects to what the Caut calls
its “investigations” into Christian universities. Where professors have to sign faith adherence documents, Caut has branded the institutions “lacking in academic freedom”. The faculties at the Christian universities are not members of Caut but Dr Allen and his colleagues at Concordia are members. Dr Allen started the petition because he thought staff of public universities should take a stand. It demands the Caut end its “obvious
harassment” while noting: “What we have here is an academic union ganging up on these smaller Christian universities ... This harassment is inconsistent with the ethos of religious freedom affirmed by the Supreme Court.”
Caut acknowledges that it is acting inde- pendently and that no complaints have been lodged about the four universities it has inves- tigated –Trinity Western, British Columbia; Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg; Crandall University, New Brunswick; and Redeemer University College, Ontario. There are about 40 Christian universities in Canada with a combined enrolment of about 20,000.
Bishops plead for life of Afghan convert
THE CANADIANbishops have urged their Government to demand that Afghanistan show clemency to Musa Sayed, who is under sentence of death in the country for converting from Islam to Christianity, writes Peter Kavanagh.
Archbishop Brendan O’Brien, on behalf of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, has written to Lawrence Cannon, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister asking that the Canadian Government “express its condem- nation of this religious persecution, and to intervene with the Government of Afghanistan for mercy and clemency for Mr Sayed”. Mr Sayed, a 15-year veteran of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, secretly converted to Christianity nine years ago and was arrested in May 2010 and charged with apostasy. He is in prison in Kabul and may be executed within days. The Afghan Government said in November: “The sentence for a convert is death. There is no exception.”
32 | THE TABLET | 19 February 2011
POLAND
£18m award leaves parish stunned
Jonathan Luxmoore In Warsaw
A POLISH priest whose parish was awarded 75 million zlotys (£18 million) for land seized under Communist rule said he was shocked by the amount. The award is the latest of many controversial compensation handouts to the country’s Catholic Church. “The sum is so large it’s amazed even me and my parishioners,” said Fr Pawel Deskur, rector of St John of Jerusalem’s in Poznan. “We’ll need an institution tasked with prop-
erly investing the money, so it will bring benefits to the parish community on one side and serve society on the other.” The priest was speaking after being allo-
cated the State Treasury money by Poznan’s District Court, which also ordered the city to return undeveloped parts of the 37-acre parish site. He told Poland’s Catholic information
agency (KAI) the award still faced an appeal by the city council, which turned the church land into a water sports centre in the 1950s, but added that his parish needed the funds for charitable projects and conservation of its 800-year-old church. Fr Deskur said his parish would also require Vatican consent to receive such a large sum. The award is the latest controversial hand- out to the Polish Church, which has sought compensation for lands and properties con- fiscated illegally by the country’s Communist rulers. Under a 1989 restitution law, Poland’s Catholic Church submitted over 3,000 resti- tution and compensation claims to a property commission consisting of Interior Ministry and Bishops’ Conference representatives, which is to be closed down on 1 March under a Church-State law amendment in the face of persistent media criticism. The Polish Government’s anti-corruption
office, CBA, investigated the Commission in 2008 after reports that parishes and religious orders had made tens of millions of zlotys speculating on state-owned assets that were awarded to them at deliberately undervalued prices. Last week a Church-State working group said 216 outstanding church property claims would be handed over to local courts after the property commission’s closure.
Furore over Holocaust allegations
POLAND’S LARGEST Catholic publishing house has defended its decision to issue a controversial book, which accuses Poles of profiting from the Holocaust by betraying Jews to the Nazis and stealing their posses- sions, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “This book demands justice for those who were the Holocaust’s first and greatest victims,” said Henryk Wozniakowski, president of the Krakow-based Znak publishers. “Its ambition is to bring these cruel, often difficult facts out of the studies of historical researchers and into public awareness. This is the main reason we’re publishing it.” The lay Catholic was reacting to angry
reviews of Golden Harvests by Jan Gross, a New York-based Polish historian, which claims Polish peasants trawled fields around the Treblinka death camp for Jewish valuables,
■CUBA: One of the latest political prisoners to be freed in a church-brokered agreement said that he had been freed against his will. “I am being forced by [the Government],” Hector Maseda, 68, said on his release last Saturday, writes Jon Stibbs. Mr Maseda, 68, and
Angel Moya, 46, had both refused parole and exile to
while the country’s Catholic clergy remained silent and indifferent to the wartime mass murder. The Polish Church has often faced accusations of tolerating anti-Semitism during the Second World War, when most of the country’s large Jewish minority were killed by German occupying forces, but Catholics are also conspicuous among 6,000 Poles since awarded medals for saving Jews by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Institute. Golden Harvests was condemned by the president of Poland’s Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Jozef Michalik, who accused Gross of being motivated by “hatred of a nation which paid the supreme price for its help”, and by a leading Catholic historian, Jan Zaryn, who accused Gross of “cynically directing his work at ignoramuses” and undermining the image of Poles.
Spain as conditions of their release. They have now been allowed to stay in Cuba but without their requested full pardons. Their additional demands for the freedom of three sick dissidents were also unanswered. Mr Maseda, a journalist and founder of the illegal Liberal Democratic Party, is married to Laura Pollan,
spokeswoman of the “Ladies in White”, who campaign for the release of all of Cuba’s political prisoners. Mr Maseda and Ms Moya were among 75 dissidents arrested in a 2003 government crackdown. Following talks with the Church last July, the regime agreed to release all of them, but seven still remain in custody.
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