Iran-born writer “kills” ayatollah in novel
GIJON, Spain – Nairi Nahapetian gets her own back on the Iranian regime which forced her into exile by writing a novel about the murder of a powerful religious leader.
Nahapetian returned to Iran as a journalist in 2005 but says that she had to turn to fiction to fully describe the complexities of the homeland she fled when she was nine.
“Thanks to fiction I can, for example, kill an ayatollah, which is something you cannot do in real life,” Nahapetian said at the “Semana Negra” crime-writing festival, attended by a million people every year in Gijon, northern Spain.
In “Qui a tue l’Ayatollah Kanuni” (Who killed Ayatollah Kanuni), Narek, an exiled journalist who returns to Iran, is in the wrong place at the wrong time when a religious leader is found dead.
Reuters photo credit Raheb Homavandi
Police send “holy” Roman robber to Queen of Heaven jail
Italian police have found a fitting temporary home for an accused jewellery robber whose priestly disguise failed to help him slip past their dragnet.
Police said they tracked down and arrested the 37-year-old male suspect by reviewing closed circuit television footage around Via del Corso and Via Condotti, the swanky shopping district near the Spanish Steps, after a July 4th hold-up at one of Rome’s most prestigious jewellery shops.
Video footage released by Italian police showed a man dressed in the floor-length black cassock and round, wide brimmed black hat commonly worn by priests of the Roman Catholic Church until the 1960s and still favoured by traditionalists.
The footage showed the man was carrying a shopping bag and moving confidently through a crowd of shoppers after the heist, in which two employees were locked in a bathroom.
Police have detained the suspect in the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) jail on the Tiber River not far from the pope’s Vatican headquarters.
via Police send holy Roman robber to Queen of Heaven | Oddly Enough | Reuters.
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Russian extremism law targets religious minorities, dissenters
When armed Russian security officers forced their way into Alexander Kalistratov’s home, he hardly imagined they were after his books. The local leader of a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Siberia now faces up to two years in prison if found guilty this week of inciting religious hatred for distributing literature about his beliefs.
“They swept everything from my shelves without even bothering to sort it, even my Bible,” Kalistratov, a street sweeper, said by telephone from the Siberian town of Gorno-Altaysk, 3,600 km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow. His trial is the first of a dozen pending against Jehovah’s Witnesses and scores of others caught up in the widening net of criminal prosecutions brought under Russia’s anti-extremism law.
Rights activists say the vaguely worded legislation, first passed in 2002, is increasingly being exploited by the authorities to persecute religious minorities, intimidate the media and clamp down on opposition activists.
“It can be used to target anybody … political, religious or even completely apolitical groups such as labor union activists,” said Alexander Verkhovsky, whose SOVA rights group monitors hate crimes, extremism and religious freedoms. “In practice, it’s a universal tool.
In the case against Kalistratov, activists say local authorities are really aiming at cracking down on groups frowned upon by the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church has undergone a revival since the fall of the Soviet Union ended decades of repression under Communism and it has strong ties to the state. It has repeatedly complained that other churches are poaching converts in its territory.
The ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ basic texts has spurred over 150 police detentions and searches in a three-month period alone, according to SOVA.
Canadian police charge senior Orthodox prelate with sex crimes
Canadian police have charged a senior Orthodox prelate with sexually assaulting two boys during the 1980s, the latest in a tide of such charges worldwide involving church officials. Winnipeg police said on Thursday that Archbishop Kenneth William Storheim, 64, flew from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg to turn himself in and was charged with two counts of sexual assault.
Storheim is the archibishop of the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America but has been on a leave of absence since October 1, according to a statement on the church’s website. Storheim, who was raised a Lutheran and was an Anglican rector before being received in the Orthodox Church in 1978, worked at a church in a poor Winnipeg neighborhood from 1984 to 1987 and later moved to Edmonton and Ottawa.
According to his biography on the church’s website, Archbishop Seraphim (as he is known in the Orthodox Church) “serves in a number of administrative capacities in the Orthodox Church in America. He is secretary of the Holy Synod of Bishops, chairman of the Department of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations and chairman of the Board of Theological Education. As chair of the Department of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations, he has represented the OCA at numerous events in Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, and throughout Europe. He also is co-chairman of the Bishops’ Dialogue (North America) between the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas [SCOBA] and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Most recently, he was appointed Administrator of the Metropolitan See of the Orthodox Church in America upon the retirement of Metropolitan Herman on September 4, 2008.”
The archbishop’s temporary replacement, Bishop Irénée of Quebec, announced his leave of absence in a letter to the faithful here.
Police released Storheim on a promise to appear in court.
Charges of child sexual abuse against officials of Christian churches have made headlines around the world over the past two decades. Since 1992, the Roman Catholic Church has paid $2 billion in settlements to victims in the United States alone.
In Canada, widespread physical and sexual abuse has been documented at boarding schools run by various denominations from the 1800s into the 1990s as they attempted to assimilate aboriginal children by separating them from their families.
Catholic bishops must take more action on sexual abuse – Vatican
The Vatican has told Roman Catholic bishops around the world that they will have to take more responsibility to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests. It also said in a statement issued after a day-long meeting of cardinals on Friday that it was preparing new guidelines for bishops on how to deal with the sexual abuse, including cooperation with local authorities.
Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world held a rare gathering to discuss religious freedom, sexual abuse of children by priests and accepting converts from the Anglican church.
Cardinal William Levada, the American head of the doctrinal office headed by Pope Benedict before his election, spoke of “greater responsibility of bishops for the protection of faithful entrusted to them,” the statement said.
The closed-door meeting took place on the eve of a ceremony known as a consistory at which the pope will create 24 new cardinals, including 20 who are under the age of 80 and thus eligible to enter a secret conclave to elect his successor.
The church has been struggling to deal with the scandal in several countries of sexual abuse of children and young people by priests. Levada spoke to the participants about “cooperation with civilian authorities, the need for an effective protection of children and young people and a careful selection of future priests”. His office is preparing a new set of guidelines for bishops on sexual abuse in order to offer “a coordinated and effective program” of response and prevention.
Victims of sexual abuse protested in Rome to coincide with the meeting. They say the Vatican has not done enough to protect children from future abuse. “We want the bishops to turn over to police and prosecutors the personnel files of proven, admitted and credibly accused child-molesting clerics,” said Barbara Blaine, a leader of the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
“The only way that we can make sure that the children that we all know and the children who attend mass every day are safe is if the church stops fighting and starts cooperating like every other organisation would and should,” SNAP member and abuse victim Lucy Duckworth told a news conference.
An Austrian group that helps people exit the Catholic Church (www.betroffen.at) has documented the systemic abuse of children by Austrian priests, nuns and others, as reported by 325 victims.
The following link goes to an English summary of an extensive report in German, just released today: http://www.betroffen.at/wp-content/uploa ds/2010/11/PKpressetext-englisch.pdf
French “Satanic defenestration” story thrown out the window
Apart from the strikes against pension reform, one of the big stories in France that made headlines around the world these past few days has been about 12 people of African origin who reportedly jumped out of an apartment window in a Paris suburb to flee from a man they thought was the devil. A four-month old baby died in the incident. The initial stories spoke of satanic rituals, maybe something to do with voodoo, and a crazed collective leap into the dark.
The drama was said to have begun when a woman awoke late at night to find her husband walking in the bedroom naked. As one report put it:
She began screaming ‘it’s the devil! it’s the devil!’, and the man ran into the other room where 11 others adults and children were watching television. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man before other family members pushed him out through the front door.
When the man forced his way back in, they all began screaming in terror and leapt from the balcony screaming ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ The naked man also leapt from the balcony after them, detectives said.
A four-month old baby died in his mother’s arms, while a two-year-old was critically injured.
Google News found 396 stories in English on this and 375 in French. But you can’t believe everything you read about belief. If the story sounded incredible, maybe that’s because it was.
A magistrate investigating the case has now thrown the “Satanic defenestration” story out the window. “There was no question of satanism or Satan,” magistrate Michel Desplan told journalists in Versailles on Monday. Police found religious books in the apartment, but “that’s nothing exceptional for a family of evangelicals.”
Pope dismays anti-Mafia activists on Sicily visit with scant mention of crime mob
Pope Benedict said on Sunday the Mafia represented “a path of death” that Sicily’s young should shun but he dismayed activists who said he was too timid and should have given the crime group a moral hammering.
Benedict, making his first visit to Sicily as pope, celebrated an open-air mass for more than 200,000 people near the Sicilian capital’s port and then later addressed a rally of tens of thousands of young people.
The pope mentioned the Mafia only in that sentence of his two-page speech to the young people, which was centered on family values, and in a speech to bishops in which he mentioned that a priest, Pino Puglisi, had been killed by the mob in 1993.
“While it is good that he used the word, I don’t understand this timid way of approaching the issue,” Rita Borsellino, whose brother Paolo, a leading anti-Mafia magistrate, was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo in 1992, told Reuters. “I was expecting him to develop the theme much more, especially in his address to the young people,” she said.
On a visit to the Sicilian city of Agrigento in 1993, John Paul improvised a scathing, specific attack on the Mafia which has gone down in anti-Mafia history and is etched in the memory of many Sicilians.
Speaking in a raised voice and with a clenched fist, John Paul thundered against Mafiosi, warning them directly that unless they “converted” to good, they would one day be subjected to God’s judgment for their blood letting and misdeeds.
Pope apologizes for “unspeakable crimes” of sexual abuse
Pope Benedict apologized to victims of sexual abuse on Saturday, saying pedophile priests had brought “shame and humiliation” on him and the entire Roman Catholic Church. It was the 83-year-old pontiff’s latest attempt to come to grips with the scandal that has rocked the 1.1 billion-member Church, particularly in Europe and the United States.
“I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes …,” he said in his sermon in Westminster Cathedral, the mother church for Roman Catholics in England and Wales and a symbol of the struggle of Catholics here in the late 19th century to assert their rights after the Reformation.
“I also acknowledge with you the shame and humiliation that all of us have suffered because of these sins,” he said, adding that he hoped “this chastisement” would contribute to the healing of the victims and the purification of the Church.
He has apologized before for sexual abuse by priests — such as in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland last March — and has acknowledged that the Church was slow to deal with the problem. But his comments on Saturday were among his most succinct to date.
The full quote from his sermon was: “Here too I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my hope that the power of Christ’s grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives. I also acknowledge, with you, the shame and humiliation which all of us have suffered because of these sins; and I invite you to offer it to the Lord with trust that this chastisement will contribute to the healing of the victims, the purification of the Church and the renewal of her age-old commitment to the education and care of young people. I express my gratitude for the efforts being made to address this problem responsibly, and I ask all of you to show your concern for the victims and solidarity with your priests.”
As a victim of sexual abuse by clergy myself, I can say that the hollow apologies by the Pope do absolutely nothing toward correcting the problem, protecting children, or for healing wounds. I wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger when I was involved in a lawsuit against the church in San Francisco in 2005,and asked him to remove the predator who molested me from a Catholic grammar school. Ratzinger left the priest who molested me in ministry with access to children clear up to the day of the jury guilty verdict I won against the priest in court.
Actions speak louder than words, and cleverly written apologies are nothing but validation that the Pope can read and write. If the Pope truly wanted to correct the atrocities and violations committed by the abusers in his
syndicate, he would remove all of the clerical abusers, and all of the bishops and cardinals who protected, promoted, shuffled, and harbored them.
But this has not happened, and never will. The clever hierarchy of the church will continue the hollow apology strategy for as long as there are those who still tolerate it.
Iran tells world: don’t make woman’s stoning a human rights issue
Foreign countries should not interfere in Iran’s legal system and stop trying to turn the case of a woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery into a human rights issue, Tehran said on Tuesday.
The case of the 43-year-old mother of two, condemned to death for illicit sex and charged with involvement in her husband’s murder, provoked an international outcry, with Brazil offering her asylum and the Vatican speaking out against the “brutal” punishment.
A government spokesman said the furor was based on false information about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s case. “Unfortunately, (they are) defending a person who is being tried for murder and adultery, which are two major crimes of this lady and should not become a human rights issue,” Foreign Ministry Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran’s interpretation of sharia law enforced since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Vatican toughens child sex abuse rules, says ordaining women is serious crime
The Vatican made sweeping revisions on Thursday it its laws on sexual abuse, doubling a statute of limitations for disciplinary action against priests and extending the use of fast-track procedures to defrock them.
In an unexpected move, the Vatican also codified the “attempted ordination of a woman” to the priesthood as one of the most serious crimes against Church law.
The changes, the first in nine years, affect Church procedures for defrocking abusive priests. They make some legal procedures which were so far allowed under an ad hoc basis, the global norms to confront the crisis.
“This gives a signal that we are very, very serious in our commitment to promote safe environments and to offer an adequate response to abuse,” Monsignor Charles Scicluna, a Vatican doctrinal official who helped revise the norms, told a news conference. “If more changes are needed, they will be made.”
Victims groups said the new rules did not go far enough, particularly because they did not hold bishops directly responsible for the mishandling of abuse cases on their watch. BishopAccountability.org, a data center for sexual abuse in the Church, called the changes mere “administrative tinkering of a secretive internal process” and said the statute of limitations should have been eliminated instead of extended.
Feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt criticised the way the sexual abuse of children and attempted ordination of women were both listed as apparently equally serious crimes: “Mixing the two issues, even under the same legal umbrella, is a profoundly perverse proposition. Either these gentlemen are more ethically tone deaf than one can imagine, or they are sly beyond the dreams of foxes in an effort to redirect attention from the criminal behavior of clergy against children to their wrath over the ordination of women. Neither option is terribly appealing.”
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