FaithWorld

(Joseph Mathunjwa addresses members of the mining community during a strike at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in Rustenburg, 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, May 15, 2013. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko)

The 48-year-old son of a Salvation Army preacher has won tens of thousands of followers portraying himself as a Christian soldier fighting for South Africa’s downtrodden miners.

“I was chosen by the plight and the suffering of the working class in South Africa,” Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), told workers last month from Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, site of a demonstration last August where police shot dead 34 wildcat strikers.

AMCU’s emergence as the main labour force in South Africa’s platinum belt – home to 80 percent of the world’s known reserves of the metal – is an unprecedented grassroots challenge for President Jacob Zuma’s ruling African National Congress (ANC).

The labour unrest in South Africa’s mines last year cost platinum and gold producers billions of rand in lost output, resulting in sovereign credit downgrades. Fears of more turmoil in the mines as workers, unions and companies square off for a new wage bargaining round have helped drive the rand to four-year lows in the last month.

(A Shi’ite delivers a sermon to worshippers during Friday prayers at the Kadhamiya shrine in Baghdad November 16, 2007. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen )

Sunni Muslim preachers condemned Iran and its “Satanic” Shi’ite allies in Friday sermons, after a battle in Syria that has inflamed sectarian rhetoric which risks spreading violence around the Middle East.

In Tehran, the non-Arab power behind the Shi’ite strand of Islam followed by a minority of Muslims, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for restraint and unity, blaming Western powers and Israel for fomenting the sectarian strife.

(Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, visits the Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem’s Old City November 12, 2012. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun )

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has urged monks not to use cellphones to access the Internet in order to avoid temptation.

“Now the Internet appears to be a great temptation,” Patriarch Kirill said during a trip to the Zograf monastery in Greece, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the church’s website.

(The University Hospital Galway is seen near a statue of St Patrick in Galway, Ireland November 15, 2012. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton)

Thousands of people rallied in central Dublin on Saturday against the government’s plan to allow limited access to abortion where a woman’s life is in danger.

Organisers said more than 40,000 massed outside government offices in the capital for the “National Vigil for Life”, making it the largest anti-abortion demonstration in Ireland’s history.

(Pastor Silas Malafaia, leader of the evangelical church in Brazil, speaks at the “March For Family” demonstration against gay marriage and abortion, in front of the National Congress in Brasilia June 5, 2013. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino)

When televangelist Silas Malafaia gathered 40,000 followers outside Brazil’s Congress this week, it wasn’t just to raise their arms to the sky and praise the Lord.

The rally was a show of support for lawmakers who oppose abortion and same-sex marriage and a message to other politicians that they should not ignore Brazil’s fast-growing evangelical churches if they want to stay in office.

(Revellers wearing flowers on their heads talk at the fringes of the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin, June 23, 2012. REUTERS/Thomas Peter)

Germany’s top court said on Thursday that gay couples are entitled to the same tax benefits as married heterosexuals in a ruling which threatens to deepen rifts within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives just three months before an election.

The verdict requires a change in the law and is a red rag to some in Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and its traditionally Catholic Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who worry that conservative values are being diluted.

(A Tibetan woman walks around a stone carving inscribed with Tibetan words as she prays in Barma township, where Kalkyi had lived set herself on fire in protest against Chinese rule, May 16, 2013.
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)

In March, a young Tibetan woman named Kalkyi began making frequent visits to a monastery in Barma, a township in China’s Sichuan Province.

The slim, rosy-cheeked mother of four was a devout Tibetan Buddhist, a close relative says. But her visits to the Dzamthang Jonang monastery this spring were out of character. So too were the spiritual mantras Kalkyi had begun to chant several times a day, and the way she had taken to prostrating herself in the monastery at least twice a day.

(An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks past a street poster in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighbourhood, inviting the public to a protest against government plans to draw more ultra-Orthodox men into the conscript army, June 3, 2013. REUTERS/Baz Ratner )

A small rock lies on the desk of Dov Lipman. It was hurled at the member of parliament by a fellow ultra-Orthodox Jew and is a constant reminder of the deep divisions within Israel that Lipman says must be overcome.

Lipman, who is a rabbi, was hit by the stone shortly after immigrating to Israel from the United States, eight years ago, when he stumbled into a riot over plans to dig up some ancient bones – something the protesters said was a desecration.

(Same-sex couple plastic figurines are displayed during a gay wedding fair (salon du mariage gay) in Paris April 27, 2013. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes)

A survey on Tuesday shows a world divided over the acceptance of gays, with countries in Africa and the Middle East strongly opposed even as tolerance grows in Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of Latin America.

People in predominately Muslim countries such as Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan along with Nigeria, Senegal and other African nations overwhelming said gay men and lesbians should be rejected from society at large, the Pew Research Center survey of nearly 40 countries found.

(Pope Francis looks on at the end of a mass marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII, who called the Second Vatican Council, at the Vatican June 3, 2013. REUTERS/Tony Gentile )

A retired Australian bishop urged Roman Catholics around the world on Tuesday to sign an online petition to Pope Francis to call a new global council to take effective measures to end the sexual abuse of children in the Church.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, a former auxiliary bishop of Sydney who coordinated the Australian church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis, said only a council of the world’s bishops would have the power to make the changes he said were needed.