Advocacy for Mount of Olives hospital A
t presstime some Luther- ans were concerned about whether funding from the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would arrive for Augusta Victoria, a Lutheran-run hospital on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The funding would cover
costs of patient referrals from the Palestinian National Authority to Augusta Victoria, particularly among patients seeking cancer treatment and kidney dialysis. “Unfortunately, the funding
from USAID is held up, and we don’t know when it will arrive or, perhaps, if it will arrive,” said Robert Smith, ELCA program director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Advocacy is
important.” Mark Brown, the Lutheran World
Federation’s regional representative in Jerusalem, asked for ELCA con- gregations and members to “encour- age members of U.S. Congress [and] the U.S. Department of State and USAID to ensure that Augusta Victo- ria Hospital and other East Jerusalem hospitals quickly receive the funding they need. “Advocating for the most vulner-
able in society, insisting on uninter- rupted financial support for life- saving medical treatment—despite the starts and stops of the peace pro- cess—is a compassionate, generous and faithful response to this crisis.” In a Feb. 4 letter to Secretary of
State John Kerry, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton requested
ACT ALLIANCE/PAUL JEFFREY
that the U.S. government allocate a portion of its bilateral support to the Palestinian National Authority for paying its debt to Augusta Victoria. The debt arose from unpaid treat- ments in 2013 for patients referred by the authority to the hospital. While the hospital is “operating
in the black,” she wrote, its critical medical services are “threatened by an acute financial crisis caused by the accumulated debt from the Pal- estinian National Authority.” Eaton’s letter to Kerry was in
response to a request from LWF General Secretary Martin Junge, who asked communion leaders to take up the situation regarding the hospital “with your respective governments.”
ELCA News Service 9
tence a Sudan court gave to a preg- nant 27-year-old Christian, who was charged with apostasy because her father is Muslim. Meriam Yahya Ibra- him Ishag was raised Christian by her Ethiopian Orthodox mother. Because she married a Christian in 2012, Ishag was also sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery. NCC President and General Secretary Jim Winkler called Ishag’s sentencing “inhuman” and “a funda- mental violation of the most basic reli- gious precepts that declare God’s love and openness to all people.”
Caring for South Sudan’s children Monica Osman, 13, plays with a homemade hula hoop in Ajuong Thok Refugee Camp in South Sudan’s northern Unity State. The Lutheran World Federation provides a variety of ser- vices at Ajuong Thok, including a primary and a secondary school, child-friendly spaces and child protection services. Nearly 70 percent of the camp’s residents are under age 17 and were forced to fl ee their homes under threat of violence. Due to the breakdown in Sudan’s education system, the early grades contain many overage learners.
10
www.thelutheran.org
PLU Holocaust minor This fall, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Wash., will become the first Northwest college to offer a course of study on the Holocaust and other times in history when governments tried to kill entire segments of a pop- 12
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