New York, 25 June (ENI)--The US National Council of Churches (NCC), a long-time critic of Washington's policy towards Cuba, has asked the administration of President George W. Bush to reconsider a set of new economic and political measures against Cuba. In a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, NCC General Secretary Robert Edgar said the measures would only serve to continue and even strengthen what Edgar called "the failed policies of the past 40 years".

"These measures delay once more any official dialogue between the US and Cuban governments, further restrict interaction between Americans and Cubans, and further limit contact among Cubans and Cuban exiles," Edgar said in the letter dated 22 June. "We must do all we can to increase dialogue, not stifle it," Edgar said. New measures, announced last month that are set to take effect on 30 June, include limiting remittances and cutting the number of family visits to Cuba from one a year to one every three years.

The measures also heavily curtail educational travel to Cuba and toughen enforcement of already-existing restrictions that make it difficult for US citizens to travel to Cuba. The administration argues the moves will empower opponents who maintain Cuba is a dictatorial regime and that it will deny revenue to the government of Fidel Castro. But Edgar, writing on behalf of the NCC, which has long opposed US sanctions against Cuba on humanitarian and moral grounds, said Cuban contact with Americans, including church members and representatives, has increased openness within Cuban society.

"We feel that they (the new measures) will actually deny much-needed assistance to the Cuban people, weaken Cuban civil society organizations, and lead to an increase of tension between the US and Cuba," Edgar said. [305 words]
COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE

New York, 24 June (ENI)--US Roman Catholic bishops have eased their stance on withholding Holy Communion from Catholic politicians who disagree with church teaching, prohibiting abortion for pregnant women. Instead, the bishops, at an 18 June private retreat in the state of Colorado, decided that the church should deny formal honours or awards to such politicians. It should also not provide them a platform from which to speak.

"Those who formulate law," the bishops said in a reference to US lawmakers, "have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good." But even with the statement on withholding honours to politicians, the declaration, in effect, keeps intact a long-standing tradition of US bishops having leeway in interpreting and applying church teachings within their dioceses. The statement was approved on a 183-6 vote.

The issue had become a source of controversy within the Catholic community after Raymond Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri, said earlier this year he would deny communion to John Kerry, the presumed Democratic Party opponent of President George W. Bush in the November 2004 US presidential election. Kerry, a senator from the state of Massachusetts, is a Roman Catholic who supports legalised abortion. Some bishops agreed with Burke, and at least one other – Michael Sheridan in Colorado – suggested that both Catholic politicians who disagree with church teaching and their Catholic supporters should voluntary opt not to take communion.

Reports said the US Catholic prelates were divided on the issue of withholding communion, and one of the most prominent of the group made it clear he disagreed with Burke and Sheridan. "That is not the role of the person distributing the body and blood of Christ," Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony was quoted by The Associated Press (AP) news agency as saying about decisions of who should receive communion. [332 words]
COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE

New York, June 22 (ENI)--The US National Council of Churches (NCC) is promoting an advertisement it hopes to run on Arab television networks in which US religious leaders apologise for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops. The advertisements are promoted by FaithfulAmerica.org, a "progressive faith movement" project that the NCC is supporting along with two social advocacy groups, True Majority and Res Publica.

In the spots, four US religious leaders - Donald Shriver (Protestant), Imam Feisal Abdur Rauf (Muslim), Sister Betty Obal (Roman Catholic) and Rabbi Arthur Waskow (Jewish) - appear in succession. After the greeting, "A Salaam A’alaykum" ["Peace be with you" in Arabic], there is a message condemning abuses that were committed against Iraqi prisoners being held by US forces. The narration reads: "As Americans of faith, we express our deep sorrow at abuses committed in Iraqi prisons … We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs. This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans."

The advertisement is now on the FaithfulAmerica.org Web site before appearing on Arab television. FaithfulAmerica says it "aspires to be an online wing of a powerful, new progressive faith movement, like the ones that fought for independence, abolition and civil rights." Its honorary chairman is William Sloane Coffin, an activist, former chaplain at Yale University and a former minister at New York City's Riverside Church.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a long-time critic of the NCC, has, however, said it believes the council is trying to influence the 2004 presidential elections by aligning itself with groups opposed to the Republican Party of President George W. Bush. FaithfulAmerica has said it accepts "the separation of church and state, but not the separation of moral principles from politics."

Narrator Shriver, a Presbyterian minister and former president of New York's Union Theological Seminary, told Ecumenical News International he expected some people would label the ads as unpatriotic. "Honest American patriotism requires us to affirm the highest ideals of the nation," he said, noting that "when those ideals are violated", it is necessary "to acknowledge that fact and apologise to those who were victims of the violation."

Columnist Tom Blackburn raised the same issue in a column in the 22 June edition of the Detroit Free Press newspaper headlined: "Why is sorry OK from Bush but not from religious left?" He wrote, "What the speakers are doing is little more than President George W. Bush did when he went before Arabic television cameras to say he's sorry." [442 words]
COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE

Thrissur, India, 21 June (ENI)--Christian and human rights groups have joined in condemning Gujarat authorities for harassing Roman Catholic Jesuit priest Cedric Prakash who has spearheaded a justice campaign for victims of inter-religious violence in the state. The All India Christian Council (AICC), the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) and the All India Catholic Union last week rebuked the Gujarat government, which is controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Their criticism came after police officials summoned the priest for questioning the previous week and threatened to impound his passport.

Denouncing harassment of Prakash, who heads a group known as Prashant, the Bangalore-based GCIC in south India said on 13 June that the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was engaged in "witch-hunting to demonise human rights organizations". Following a poor showing by the BJP in Gujarat during May's national elections, the GCIC noted that chief minister Modi had blamed the party's electoral reversals on a "vilification campaign" against him by human rights activists.

The actions of state authorities against Prakash follow his involvement in formulating a charter of demands presented by 20 non-governmental organizations to the federal government in early June. It demands prosecution of state officials, including chief minister Modi, for complicity in riots that took place in Gujarat in 2002. More than one thousand people, mostly Muslims, were slain following accusations that Muslims torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. In retaliation, Hindu groups targeted Muslims and their properties across the state. The violence was said to have been in connivance with state police and other officials under Modi.

"The government here is vindictive against anyone who speaks against it," Samson Christian, the AICC Gujarat convenor, belonging to the Church of North India, told Ecumenical News International. "We're not surprised by the treatment given to Father Cedric." Though the state government accused him of "destroying the reputation" of Gujarat, Prakash told ENI that widespread protests and media coverage had forced the Gujarat government to go into a "defensive mode".

Besides testifying before the US Senate Commission on Religious Freedom on Gujarat government complicity in the riots, Prakash was a coordinator of the Citizens Tribunal Report on the Gujarat killings, authored by independent jurists and human rights activists. [386 words]
COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE

Thrissur, India, 9 June (ENI)--The death of a Christian in custody, who had been facing charges under Pakistan's draconian blasphemy law, after he was hit fatally by a policeman guarding him in hospital, has left Pakistani church leaders feeling "helpless". "We are very sad about what has happened," the Rev. Arthur James, moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP) told Ecumenical News International. "I can only say we are feeling helpless. Churches can do nothing but raise slogans about this."

Speaking from his office in Gujranwala, James was commenting on the death of Samuel Masih, 32, a Roman Catholic, who died on 28 May, five days after he was hit with a blunt object by a police guard inside a hospital, who said he killed Masih to fulfill the duties of his faith. Masih had been hospitalized with TB in an isolation ward following his prison detention a year ago after being arrested for committing "blasphemy" when allegedly placing some rubbish near the wall of a mosque, while trying to make an area tidy.

"This shows the danger under the shadow of which we live," Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Pakistan, who presided over the funeral of Masih on 29 May in Lahore Cathedral, told ENI. Immediately after the funeral attended by hundreds, Saldanha sent a letter to Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf lamenting that "it is with sadness and sorrow that the Catholic Christians of Lahore laid to rest today another victim of fanatical hatred."

Pointing out that Christians are "very much disturbed and demoralized by this violent death," the head of the Pakistani Catholic church reminded the president that "this tragic incident brings out the urgent necessity of reviewing the Blasphemy Law."

Article 295 C of the Pakistan penal code renders the definition of blasphemy as a crime and it carries a punishment of the death sentence or life imprisonment besides a fine. Several Christians have been sentenced to death by trial courts and said to have been framed with flimsy blasphemy charges, even though these verdicts have been later turned down in high courts. [369 words]
COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE