Latest news from ChristianAggression.org http://www.christianaggression.org 2010-07-22T13:57:41+01:00 text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1279821460 Salem, July 22 (PTI) A Criminal case was filed here today against Church of South India Bishop Manickam Dorai, who is already facing charges of misappropriation of CSI funds, and 12 others, a top police official said. The case was filed under seven sections of IPC including cheating in Hasthampatty police station. Inspector Kennedy said the case relates to misappropriation of funds totalling Rs three crore. Besides the Bishop, a case was filed against his wife and 11 others including a CSI Salem polytechnic College Principal. The CB-CID is already investigating the alleged misappropriation of funds in Coimbatore, Udhagamandalam, Erode. The Bishop and his wife had already obtained anticipatory bail from the Madras High Court in the Coimbatore case. Following the alleged irregularities, Paul Vasanthakumar, Bishop of Tiruchi and Thanjavur Diocese had taken over additional charge of Coimbatore Diocese of the Church of South India. text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1277145466 Talk about school spirit! A news story brings a new twist to the latest moves by cash-strapped schools selling advertising and promotional access to everything in sight to raise school supply and activity moola. Now a Florida school is selling access to kids' souls. Combee Elementary School in Lakeland, Fla., where separation of church and state is clearly not on the social studies curriculum, has been "adopted" by First Baptist Church at the Mall. * Follow F&R on Twitter, Facebook According to the story in the Wall Street Journal, the church, in turn, has: ... stocked a resource room with $5,000 worth of supplies. It now caters spaghetti dinners at evening school events, buys sneakers for poor students, and sends in math and English tutors. The principal is delighted. So are church pastors. "We have inroads into public schools that we had not had before," says Pastor Dave McClamma. "By befriending the students, we have the opportunity to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus Christ." So far the evangelists visited 30 homes at Christmastime and 13 "came to the Lord," the pastor said. One woman, grateful for the attention to her child, told the WSJ they were still very nice even when she declined to visit the church. The pastor was up front on the church's end of the souls for soles deal: "The purpose is to show them the church cares, and that there is hope, and hope is found in Jesus Christ." Steve Comparato, the principal who faced a 33% drop in funding for school supplies, told told the newspaper, If they want to come in and help, who am I to say no? He says he would welcome congregations of any faith as sponsors, but adds of his students, "My personal conviction is that I hope through this they'll know Jesus and they'll get saved." The standard is a bit different in the Polk County office where superintendent of schools Gail McKinzie said, He personally can hope anything he wants, as long as he offers programs at the school for parents who don't believe in the Baptist faith or anything at all. But Comparato does more than hope. He stands in the school halls surrounded by the pastoral team from the church praying in front of his office. Is this coloring outside Constitutional lines or an example of Christian caring? text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1277145268 VR Jayaraj | Kochi Even as Home Minister P Chidambaram keeps on asking the intellectuals and rights activists in the country to declare their position on the war against Maoists, a Christian Bishop in Jharkhand, one of the States hit worst by the menace, is openly justifying their cause. Claiming that the Church and the Maoists are waging war against the same social evils, Bishop Charles Soreng, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, says in an interview, “In this (the tribals’) fight for equal opportunities and rights, the Maoists are coming to the aid of the tribals, especially in glaring cases of denial of justice and rights. That is the reason for the wider appeal that the Maoists enjoy.” In the interview in the May 6 edition of Sathyadeepam, a Catholic weekly published from Kochi, the Bishop admits that the Maoists are sympathetic to the Church and are supporting the priests in carrying out their missionary activities. “…There are some honest people who are really working for justice. They are working against greed for money and power…,” he says. He also says that Maoists do not attack the priests because “Christians are serving the poor and are working for getting justice to the poor.” Bishop Soreng indirectly says all the violence reported from the Red Corridor need not be perpetrated by Maoists. “The real Maoists will not attack people. There are others who loot the people in the name of Maoists,” he says but stops short of revealing the identity of these “other people”. He warns the Government that it cannot check the Maoists unless and until it paid attention to the rights and justice for the rural poor and “also take care of the problem of corruption.” “We do not advocate violence, but the Maoists are making a point by targeting our corrupt system, which marginalises and renders the tribals outcasts in society,” Bishop Soreng tells Sathyadeepam. He believes that the root cause of the Maoist menace is the rampant corruption in the society, especially in Jharkhand. “Corruption has put employment out of the reach of the poor, because only those who can give hefty sums (as bribe) get a government job. The consequent high rate of unemployment among poor youth makes Maoism an attractive option for them,” the Bishop says. “Corruption and government apathy are the two main factors that have helped the Maoists to become so formidable a force,” he adds. Agreeing with the interviewer’s suggestion that under globalisation, which is allegedly thriving on some sort of greed, it is difficult for the marginalised and the poor to get justice, Bishop Soreng says that proper checks and balances should be put in place for controlling the market economy. “Unless it is controlled and made human, keeping the welfare of the citizens as topmost priority, it will jeopardise social peace,” he suggests. Fr Stephen Alathara, spokesperson and deputy secretary general of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), said that Bishop Soreng’s opinion need not be those of the Church. “The KCBC does not hold such an opinion. These could be his personal thoughts,” he said, adding that he was yet to read the interview. text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1276094655 A woman believed to be about 30 years has been chained for nine years by her mother, who accuses her of being a witch and the cause of their family’s woes. The woman’s ordeal began when her mother took her to a pastor for ‘cleansing’ after allegedly having sex with her boyfriend in the bush, The victim, Afia Korkor, according to a witness, lived with her mother Yaa Nyameama at Denkyira Obuasi, a village in the Upper Denkyira West District of the Central Region. The witness explained that a pastor, Sofo Tima of Odeefour Nkansah Church, a local church had told the mother that her daughter was a witch who was terrorizing the family and until she was chained and prayed for, the family would continue to suffer. This made her mother put her in chains in 2001 and refused her food and water. But the chained woman had lived on food from neigbours who sneaked to her “burrow” when her mother went to farm, since she had been fighting with those who gave her daughter food. The victim, who now behaves like an animal, has one child and was sent to the said pastor by the mother when she was reported to have slept with her boyfriend in the bush. The witness disclosed that rituals were performed to purify the two of them but the mother still wanted to seek the intervention of the Almighty God. Odeefour Tima, the pastor, then told the mother that Yaa Korkor was a witch and was the source of all the problems bedeviling the family and this compelled the woman to chain her up. Yaa Korkor had since been in chains and was only rescued after the issue was brought to light by host of Adekye Mu Nsem”, a programme on Solar FM, a local radio station in Dunkwa on Offin. Mother of the victim told the host of the programme, Winfred Kojo Benning aka K.K Bonita that she acted upon the instructions of the pastor. The case has been reported to the Upper Denkyira Police Command while the victim is responding to treatment at the Dunkwa Municipal Government hospital. text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1274297202 MUMBAI: When Winnie D'Souza wanted to marry her daughter into a ‘decent' family, she scanned the matrimonial columns of Catholic periodicals in Panaji. After shortlisting a few young men, D'Souza made inquiries about their caste. She wanted her daughter to marry a Brahmin. Most Catholic publications do not list caste categories as they did 20 years ago, but casteism has not disappeared among Christians. It has merely become more subtle. Unlike Bihar, Orissa and the North-East, which have large tribal Christian populations, the Christians of Goa, Kerala and Tamil Nadu remain in thrall to the caste categories of their Hindu ancestors. Father Augustine Kanjamala, a theologian in Mumbai, has researched caste among Christians. Caste exists in different forms in various Christian communities, he says. In Kerala the Christians admitted to the faith almost 2,000 years ago are called Syrian Christians. They are better off than Latin Christians, who are mainly from poorer communities. Syrian Christians and Latin Christians do not inter-marry. They even have different institutions to train their priests. In Goa, Christians belonging to Brahmin or Charado (Kshatriya) castes are more privileged than the others. They dominate Church institutions and activities. Father Augustine says that in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Dalit Christians are not given much access to Church festivities. Sometimes they are reduced to having a separate church. Two decades ago, the graveyards had separate sections for upper and lower castes. This is changing because some progressive priests have challenged the iniquitous system. "In Mangalore, a few families of Dalit Christians have returned to Hinduism as they felt humiliated living among Christians who discriminated against them,” says Father Augustine. "Caste will not die out in the Church easily, but in cities like Mumbai, the urban situation has led to the breaking down of barriers of caste". text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1274296558 After returning from a trip to Mumbai, the financial capital of India, to participate in the International Hindutva Conference, Kamal Thapa, Chairperson of the single Royalist party Rastriya Prajatanta Party-Nepal, making a meaningful revelation has said that his party will launch an agitation for the sake of National Independence and Democracy. It was indeed an attractive slogan to draw the attention of a vast majority of Nepali population.More importantly, Thapa in the course of his speech made at a program to celebrate 20th Anniversary of his party expressed serious objections over reports which claimed that the outgoing French Ambassador to Nepal, Mr. Gilles Henry Garault, had sent a letter on behalf of the European Union to the government of Nepal to guarantee ‘right to religious conversion.’Currently, France is the chair of local EU presidency.“The European Union urges the government to allow ‘full freedom’ to proselytize while drafting the new constitution”, one of the prominent media had reported referring to the “official” letter sent by the French Embassy.The current constitutional provisions on religious rights were “limited”, also says the French Embassy letter sent to the government of Nepal."In the last four years experience of Nepal as a secular nation, one million Nepalese have been compelled to convert their religion", Kamal Thapa said in the course of his speech. Thapa said that his party will not allow Nepal to be endorsed as a Secular State. "We do not believe in religious Fundamentalism. However, our party is in favor of Nepal as a Hindu State along with Monarchy. Hinduism is the identity of Nepal", he also said. “Nepal cannot lose its unique Hindu Identity”, he said and added, “We want monarchy revived in Nepal but not an autocratic one.” text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1273608185 When Pat Bond told her lover Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, that she was pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion. Bond, who was 28, had a miscarriage and then became pregnant again. This time Willenborg’s superiors urged her to give up the child for adoption. Bond, from Missouri, kept the child but agreed to a vow of silence. In a signed contract with the Catholic Church, she undertook to keep the priest’s identity secret in exchange for financial support for her son, Nathan. In America, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Austria,women made pregnant by priests have signed such pledges in exchange for hush money from the church. Pope Benedict XVI refused to comment on the scandals on his flight to Malta for a weekend visit yesterday, saying only that the church had been “wounded by our sins”. But he faces a new battle over the children of priests. Many former lovers and their offspring are preparing to mount lawsuits. Bond was 25 when she started a five-year relationship with Willenborg in 1983, after going to him for marriage counselling. He kissed her passionately as she left his parlour, then she left her husband. After Bond became pregnant by him for the second time in 1986, Willenborg’s order, the Order of Friars Minor, offered her $50,000 and a confidentiality contract. “They said: ‘Here, take this money, sign this contract and you’ll have support for your child’. I was very naive and I signed,” said Bond. She broke her promise of silence last year after the Franciscans refused to meet part of the cost of treatment for her son Nathan, then 22, who died in November from a brain tumour. When Willenborg’s liaisons with Bond, now 53, and another woman became public, the priest was suspended from his parish in Ashland, Wisconsin. He was treated for sex addiction, then returned to his pastoral duties. Catherine Schroeder, a St Louis lawyer for the Order of Friars Minor, declined to comment. Willenborg and the order failed to return calls and emails. Other cases are reaching the US courts. In Maryland, two children of the late Father Francis Ryan are suing their local archdiocese and a religious order for $10m after discovering through DNA tests that he was their father. Carla Latty, 58, and Adrian Senna, 65, say Ryan never admitted he was their father or made any payments to their late mother. Senna was sent to an orphanage, while Latty was put up for adoption. Cait Finnegan, of the Good Tidings association, an American charity for priests and their lovers, has been contacted by nearly 2,000 women who had relationships with priests. She said one pregnant friend had been told by a bishop to “get rid of the child” — a comment she took to mean she should have an abortion. The woman kept the baby. Thousands of priests in German-speaking countries are believed to have fathered children. Paul Zuhlener, an Austrian theologian, has estimated that up to 22% of Austrian priests have sexual relationships. Sabine Bauer of the Austrian branch of We Are Church, a reform group, predicted a spate of lawsuits. “The children of priests, and their mothers, are the next ones who will take legal action against the church. Their numbers are large and they have been denied basic rights,” she said. In Britain, Adrianna Alsworth, who has two children by a priest and runs the Sonflowers helpline for those who have had relationships with priests, said she knew of several women who had been offered confidentiality contracts in return for child support. “The children aren’t given an opportunity to have a normal family life, and they suffer,” she said. In Ireland, the former Down bishop Pat Buckley, who runs Bethany, a support group for women in relationships with priests, said he had dealt with two whose abortions had been paid for by priest lovers. In one case, the priest had accompanied the woman to England for the abortion. In central Italy, Luisa, a psychologist who has an 18-month-old son by a priest, was told by her bishop: “If you give up the baby for adoption, you can stay with the priest and I’ll pretend there’s nothing wrong.” She refused but the couple have since broken up and the priest refuses to recognise the child. Lorenzo Maestri, a former priest and member of Vocatio, an association for married priests in Italy, accused the Pope of leading a cover-up. “Benedict is responsible for the secrecy, because in 2001, as head of the Vatican office which dealt with all sexual problems involving priests, he ordered the bishops to send these cases to him in Rome,” Maestri said. Benedict, whose fifth anniversary of his election is tomorrow, may acknowledge the child-abuse cases by agreeing to meet seven victims on his Malta visit. There is no such prospect for the children of priests. When asked what she would like the pontiff to do, Bond quoted her late son: “Nathan told me, ‘I want the Pope to tell me he’s sorry. The church abandons us, it calls us legal obligations. It doesn’t even call us by our names’.” - The Vatican has been hit by another embarrassing revelation after the leaking of a letter written in 2001 by a senior Vatican official praising a French bishop when he was convicted of failing to report a paedophile priest to the police. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos wrote to Bishop Pierre Pican: “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration.” The priest concerned, Father René Bissey, was jailed for 18 years. Additional reporting: Justine McCarthy in Dublin text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1271783947 (April 15) -- A priest who pleaded no contest in the assault of a teenage girl in Florida and was sent back to his native India turns out to be still on the job, this time at a diocese in Tuscany, Italy. The case involving the Rev. Vijay Vhaskr Godugunuru -- which the Vatican was aware of -- is one of many now coming under the microscope as revelations of clerical sexual abuse continue to rock the Catholic Church. News of Godugunuru's reassignment came as a shock to Jeffrey Anderson, one of the pre-eminent lawyers in the United States in representing people sexually abused by priests. He represented the girl and her family in a civil suit against the Pensacola-Tallahassee parish, which settled in 2009 for an undisclosed amount. Jeff Anderson Craig Lassig, AP Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represented a teenage girl abused by the Rev. Vijay Vhaskr Godugunuru in a civil case, was shocked to learn the priest is still on the job, working at a diocese in Italy. "Two weeks ago we decided to check that some of these priests were really where the church said they were, or if they had been defrocked the way we were led to believe they had been," Anderson told AOL News today. "And then we find out this guy has not been defrocked and is in fact working at a parish in Italy with full access to kids. "This just underscores how stone-cold indifferent the Vatican is to the children abused by priests." Godugunuru pleaded no contest to charges of assaulting the 15-year-old girl in 2006, while he was assisting at the Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Bonifay, Fla. The assault took place in her family's van, according to police and court documents provided by Anderson and available on his Web site. Godugunuru was arrested on charges of lewd or lascivious battery on a minor and could have faced up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Instead, Godugunuru -- who denied the accusation -- made a plea deal under which he pleaded no contest to aggravated assault, a third-degree felony, and agreed to return to his native India, undergo counseling, avoid working with minors and never return to the U.S. Not long after Godugunuru molested her daughter, the girl's mother wrote to Pope Benedict XVI about the incident, asking him for help. She never received an answer, Anderson said. But a few months later, the bishop of the Pensacola-Tallahassee diocese e-mailed the mother, saying he had "been in direct contact with the Vatican concerning Fr. Vijay and are gathering documents to be sent to them detailing the entire incident. "The documentation will include the report of the psychologist, the sheriff and court documents," the e-mail stated. "They will be sent to the Office in the Vatican which deals with priests who have been accused of misconduct, especially when they involve minors. The Vatican office will in turn do a complete examination of the data and make a final disposition concerning the fitness of the priest to continue in the ministry." Anderson said he had assumed Godugunuru was back in India and also believed the priest had been defrocked. However, Godugunuru was recently found to be ministering at a parish in a town of about 4,000 in Tuscany, where he hears confessions, celebrates Mass and works with children, according to The Associated Press. "This is the same thing that's been going on for 25 years," Anderson said. "The Vatican just doesn't get it." Monsignor Rodolfo Cetoloni, Godugunuru's supervising bishop in the Montepulciano diocese, told the AP he was aware of the case against Godugunuru in Florida, but said he believed him to be innocent. "The evidence that has been given does not support the accusation," Cetoloni told the AP. text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1271269853 Madikeri, Karnataka, Apr 13 : Various organizations, including Tribes took out a March at Thithimathi to protest against the conversion going on in the area. Jasnajagruthi Suraksha Vedike, which led the protest, appealed to the government to immediately stop special benefits to the converted Tribes. Chief of the organization, Muniyappa alleged that the Christians were systematically trying to convert tribes living in forests and colonies in large number. Opining that converted tribes naturally lose the right to claim various benefits being announced by governments, he said the benefits given to them can be diverted to the needy tribes. He said anti-conversion awareness would be held in every village in future. Tribes association leader J P Raju, speaking on the occasion, if these activities were not checked all the tribals in Kodagu would be converted into chritianity in the next three years. District BJP president M M Ravindra said the state government would be urged to bring an amendment to ban conversion on the lines of banning cow slaughtering. text/html http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1270569969 A Catholic priest who has been criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota six years ago is still working in his home diocese in India despite warnings to the Vatican from an American bishop that the priest continued to pose a risk to children, according to church documents made public on Monday. The documents show that the American bishop warned the Vatican that the priest was accused of molesting two teenage girls whose trust he gained by promising to discuss their interest in becoming nuns. A county attorney in Minnesota is seeking to extradite the priest from India in a criminal case that involves one of the girls, who said the priest had forced her to perform oral sex and had threatened her and her family. The case took place during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently come under fire for his role in cases of sexually abusive priests in Germany and Wisconsin. The case was handled after the Vatican clarified and streamlined its procedures in 2001 to respond to accusations of sexual abuse by priests. In the midst of a growing scandal, the Vatican has sought to defend the pope by pointing out that he was both an architect and a promoter of these procedures. But the Vatican also says it defers to local bishops to decide how to treat accused priests, leaving it exposed to criticism that the church is not doing enough to rein in sexually abusive priests. In 2006, the Vatican recommended that the priest simply be monitored, a document shows. A lawyer for the Holy See said in a statement that the Vatican had recommended that the priest be defrocked, but that canon law specifies that the decision rests with the local bishop. The bishop in India sentenced the priest to a year of prayer in a monastery rather than seeking his removal from the priesthood, according to documents and interviews. The priest, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, was working temporarily in the Diocese of Crookston, Minn., which like many United States dioceses is bringing in priests from India because there are not enough American priests to serve its parishes. Father Jeyapaul ministered to three parishes simultaneously in Crookston, where he was accused of misappropriating church funds as well as sexual abuse. A lawyer for the Holy See, Jeffrey Lena, said in a statement on Monday that the Vatican had cooperated with law enforcement authorities seeking the priest’s extradition and had provided the location of the priest in India. Lisa B. Hanson, the county attorney in Roseau, Minn., said, “Maybe all this attention has gotten them to change their tune, and if that’s the case we’ll take their cooperation.” Mr. Lena also said that the Vatican office in charge of handling abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had recommended laicization, which is removal from the priesthood. Mr. Lena said in the statement: “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested in this matter that Father Jeyapaul agree to laicization, demonstrating that the Congregation believed that the accusations were serious enough to merit dismissal from the clerical state. However, as a matter of longstanding canon law, such decisions are made by the local bishop, who is deemed to be generally in the best position to adjudicate the case relating to the priest in question.” He declined to provide any documents on the case. The bishop of Ootacamund, India, Arulappan Amalraj, told The Associated Press, which first reported the news on Monday, that Father Jeyapaul had no contact with children and would remain in the diocesan offices. “We cannot simply throw out the priest, so he is just staying in the bishop’s house, and he is helping me with the appointment of teachers,” the bishop said. “He says he is innocent, and these are only allegations. I don’t know what else to do.” Father Jeyapaul told The A.P., “It is a false accusation against me. I do not know the girl at all.” The criminal complaint from Minnesota said that the 14-year-old girl, whose name is redacted, was praying after school at Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minn., when Father Jeyapaul told her to come into the rectory. The girl claimed that when she refused to touch his genitals, he told her it was a sin and said he “could make her life miserable.” She said he then pushed her down onto a couch, touched her breasts and pulled down his pants. The woman, now 20, has brought a lawsuit against the Diocese of Crookston. The documents were released in a news conference on Monday by her lawyers, Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, the same lawyers who gave documents last month to The New York Times on another case involving a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys. The former bishop of Crookston, Victor H. Balke, wrote to Cardinal William J. Levada, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2005, requesting that the Congregation handle the case itself. “I cannot in good conscience allow this matter to be passed over because the cleric has left my territory,” Bishop Balke wrote. “In my mind that would be a shameful act of betrayal towards the women and girls in India to whom Fr. Jeyapaul could at present pose a serious risk.” He received a letter back in May 2006 from Archbishop Angelo Amato, in the Vatican, saying that the Congregation conveyed the facts to the bishop in India “with the request that Father Jayapaul’s priestly life be monitored so that he does not constitute a risk to minors and does not create scandal among the faithful.” Bishop Balke subsequently sent two more letters to Cardinal Levada informing him that a second alleged victim had come forward with more serious allegations, that criminal charges had been filed and that the county attorney wanted to extradite Father Jeyapaul. He pleaded for quick action. Bishop Balke also wrote to the Vatican’s top diplomat to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who provided the address of Father Jeyapaul in India, to give to the county attorney. Church offices were closed on Easter Monday, and officials in the Diocese of Crookston did not respond to messages left by phone and e-mail. Daniel J. Wakin contributed reporting from Rome, Lydia Polgreen from New Delhi and Christina Capecchi from St. Paul.