AUSTRIA


Bishop fears for Gulf Christians


Christa Pongratz-Lippitt In Vienna


IF THE ARAB Spring were to spread to the Gulf Emirates, this could have “very negative consequences” for the Christian minorities, Bishop Paul Hinder, vicar apostolic of Southern Arabia, said last week after attending the fourteenth annual meeting of the “Christian Orient Initiative” at Salzburg. The initiative aims to improve dialogue and under- standing between Christians and Muslims in the region. The Arab governments in the Gulf were following the political developments in


Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria with great nervousness and were “ready to spring into action the moment there was any sign of polit- ical unrest,” Bishop Hinder warned. Pro-democracy protests in Bahrain were suppressed by riot police earlier this year. Should public meetings be banned in the Gulf states, this would also affect Christians even if the ban was not directly aimed at them, he told Kathpress. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, Christians were free to practise their “cult”, he said, but did not therefore enjoy reli- gious freedom. It was well-nigh impossible for Muslims to convert to Christianity, and if they did, they had to emigrate. The legal consequences of conversion dif- fered from country to country. Outside Saudi Arabia, the converts and priests who baptised them were not executed, but priests imme- diately lost their residence permits and the converts were ostracised and even in danger of being murdered, Bishop Hinder said. There are an estimated three million Catholics on the Arabian Peninsula and one million Christians of other denominations.


BOLIVIA Morales acts after police break up march


PRESIDENT EVO MORALES of Bolivia has halted work on a highway being built in the Amazon just one day after police were accused of using brutal tactics to end a month-long protest march against its construction, writes Jon Stibbs. Bolivia’s bishops condemned the break-up by police on Sunday of a march of 1,000 indigenous Bolivians protesting over the building of the major road through a nature reserve in the north of the country. The Episcopal Conference of Bolivia (CEB) criticised “the violent takeover of the march, and the arrests, injuries and disappearances” that they alleged took place on Sunday after police surrounded the “totally undefended” protesters. In the statement, signed by Oscar Aparicio,


Secretary General of the CEB, the Church claimed that a child had been killed in the violence 220 miles north of the capital, La Paz. Calling for dialogue and respect for rights, the bishops urged the national authorities to


Fr Ives


Anderson, a British priest, distributes Communion during Mass before a police operation against the protesters on Sunday. Photo: CNS/Reuters


“renounce the route of persecution and vio- lence”. Bolivia’s ruling Movement Towards Socialism party denied there had been deaths or disappearances linked to the march, but the Defence Minister, Cecilia Chacon, resigned in protest at the police action, and Mr Morales acted to try to ease tensions. He said work on the 185-mile highway would not be resumed unless it was approved in a referendum.


‘Mother Teresa’ soup kitchen bulldozed RUSSIA


THE HEAD OF Russia’s Catholic Church has criticised the bulldozing of a Moscow soup kitchen belonging to Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity, after officials ruled it had been occupied illegally, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “This was a house where over 100 people obtained hot nourishment daily – where they could warm up against the cold outside, and most importantly spent time in safety feeling


the warmth of human hearts”, Archbishop Luigi Pezzi told the city council in a letter. “There’s no doubt everything has happened in line with the law, and the sisters themselves have admitted their ‘guilt’. Would it not have been better, however, to legalise this building after payment of the necessary fine?” An order to destroy the building was issued in February 2010 by the capital’s Arbitration Court.


PERU


Apostolic Visitation to Catholic university


THE HOLY SEEis sending an Apostolic Visitor to try to reach an agreement with the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, PUCP), as relations between the university and the Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, have reached breaking point, writes Jon Stibbs. The Peruvian Church is demanding the right to nominate the successor to the current rector, Marcial Rubio, and claiming ownership rights to the land on which the university is built. Speaking on Radio Programas del Peru on Sunday, Mr Rubio said there were points where consensus may be possible with the as yet unnamed Vatican representative, but these two issues were non-negotiable. The rector said the need to send an Apostolic Visitor showed “there can be no dialogue with the Cardinal [Cipriani]” and that the university’s relationship with Cardinal Cipriani was now “irreconcilable”. Cardinal Cipriani stated that the PUCP


“revolt” was a step in the wrong direction and claimed he had been exposed to a “culture of abuse”. “I wonder whether it is worth a Visitor coming to receive shouts and insults from 5,000 students,” he told journalists on the same day.


HUNGARY


Return of properties welcomed


HUNGARIAN CHURCHleaders have welcomed the fulfilment of state pledges to restore properties to religious communities, six decades after they were confiscated by the country’s Communist regime, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “This is the only area of Church-State


relations which has gone well – the process was transparent and well managed,” said Zoltan Tarr, general secretary of the Hungarian Reformed Church. “However, while it’s been important spiritually and emotionally for local communities to get back buildings they constructed with their own money, the vast majority are now in poor shape.” Hungarian churches submitted claims to


around 7,000 confiscated properties after the 1989 collapse of Communist rule. Under a 1997 treaty with the Vatican, the


Catholic Church was to receive back properties up to a value of 100 billion forints (£3.5m) by the end of 2011, with compensation for the remainder.


1 October 2011 | THE TABLET | 33


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