c. 1996 Religion News Service
Mother Teresa fractures collarbone in fall
(RNS)-Mother Teresa, known as”the Saint of the Gutters”for her work among the poor in the slums of Calcutta, India, fractured her left collarbone in a fall off a bed at her Missionaries of Charity headquarters and was hospitalized, wire services reported Monday (April 1).”The fracture has been dealt with, and her condition is stable,”a spokesman for the Woodland Nursing Home in Calcutta told Reuters.”She is under observation by a team of doctors.” The Associated Press reported that there is no concern about the 85-year-old Roman Catholic nun’s overall health.
A spokeswoman for Mother Teresa’s religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, said it is expected the nun will be released from the hospital”within one or two days, but after that she would need at least two week’s complete rest.” The fall forced Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work among the poor, to cancel plans to personally accept $12 million in medical supplies for AIDS patients in India. The supplies were donated by Heart-to-Heart International, a non-profit relief organization based in Olathe, Kan.
Denver mosque, radio station reach agreement on anthem stunt
(RNS)-Denver radio station KBPI will publish and broadcast apologies to Colorado’s Islamic community as part of an agreement the station reached with Muslim leaders stemming from an incident in which station employees invaded a local mosque, playing the national anthem on a bugle and trumpet.
More than 2,500 people, including Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, gathered at the Colorado Muslim Society Saturday (March 30) for the announcement of the agreement.
Under terms of the agreement, the station will publish and broadcast apologies to the Muslim community in local newspapers and on local television stations for a week. Two disc jockeys involved in the incident will apologize during their program.
The disc jockeys and a producer were reinstated Monday (April 1) after more than a week’s suspension without pay. A sound engineer, hired on a temporary contract basis, also was involved in the incident.
The agreement also calls on the station to provide sensitivity training for its employees, said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group that advised the Denver mosque. In addition, the station will offer an internship program for Muslim youth interested in broadcasting and allow the use of KBPI’s facilities for Muslim-related programs, Hooper said.
The March 19 incident occurred after Denver Nuggets basketball star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who occasionally prays at the mosque, refused to stand for the”Star-Spangled Banner”at a game earlier in March. He claimed that standing for the anthem contravened Islamic law because it constituted participation in a ritual that, for him, came uncomfortably close to religious worship.
Though Abdul-Rauf’s action may have provided the impetus for the actions of the station employees, Hooper said the Abdul-Rauf incident was not discussed in the talks between the Muslim leaders and the radio station.”That (Abdul-Rauf’s action) was merely the supposed justification for this intrusion,”Hooper said. The actions of KBPI employees promoted discussion of”whether or not you should burst into a house of worship.”
Shroud of Turin to be publicly exhibited again in 1998
(RNS)-Roman Catholic Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini of Turin, Italy, has announced that the controversial Shroud of Turin, thought by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus, will be publicly exhibited in 1998 and again in 2000.
It has been under the custody of the archdiocese of Turin since 1587 and on display only twice-in 1933 and 1978.
Saldarini’s announcement has prompted calls for new tests on the 14-by-3 1/2-foot cloth. The cloth holds a negative photographic image of what appears to be a bearded man with nail wounds in his wrists and feet and a gash in his side, matching the wounds described of Jesus when he was crucified.
But in 1988, the shroud’s linen was independently tested at three laboratories in Arizona, England and Switzerland. The three groups of scientists concluded that the shroud was from the 13th century.
On Monday (April 1), The Washington Times quoted Dr. Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes, a microbiologist at the University of Texas, as urging new tests on the linen before the 1998 exhibit.
Garza-Valdes said he believes the 1988 tests were skewed because the samples of the shroud that were used for testing were layered with microbes and fungi.
First woman is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church
(RNS)-Lesli van Milligen, a graduate of Calvin College and Fuller Theological Seminary, has been ordained as an evangelist in the Christian Reformed Church in North America-the first woman to be ordained to the ministry in the 292,000-member denomination.
As an evangelist, van Milligen will be able to perform nearly all functions of a pastor, including administering sacraments and presiding at marriages. The only limitation on her service is that she cannot be called as the senior pastor or as the sole pastor of an organized congregation.
Van Milligen was ordained by Classis Lake Erie, a regional body in the denomination. She and her husband, the Rev. Tom van Milligen, will serve as co-pastors at North Hills Christian Reformed Church in Troy, Mich., a Detroit suburb.
The issue of women’s ordination has threatened to create a schism in the conservative, ethnically Dutch denomination centered around the Grand Rapids, Mich., area. In 1995, the denomination’s Synod, or top decision-making body, voted to allow regional bodies to ordain women by declaring the church rule limiting ordination to men to be”inoperative.” According to the United Reformed News Service, an independent agency, 13 of the 46 regional bodies have made such declarations.
U.S. nun tortured in Guatemala seeks U.S. files on her case
(RNS)-Roman Catholic Sister Dianna Ortiz, a member of the Ursuline religious order who says she was kidnapped, raped and tortured in Guatemala, Sunday (March 31) began a silent vigil near the White House in an effort to prod the U.S. government to release files on her case.
Ortiz, 36, of Grants, N.M., is seeking declassification of all U.S. information about human rights abuses in Guatemala since 1954 as well as the full results of an investigation by the Intelligence Oversight Board into U.S. activities in Guatemala.
Human rights activists have claimed that the CIA has aided Guatemalan military and para-military forces in committing human rights abuses in their effort to stamp out a leftist guerrilla movement.
Ortiz, speaking at a rally in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, said she was tortured and raped after being abducted in November 1989 while teaching young Guatemalan children. She said that while she was being raped, a light-complexioned man called Alejandro, speaking perfect English and bad Spanish, appeared. He seemed to be in charge and”cursed in unmistakable American English and ordered them to stop the torture, since I was a North American nun and my disappearance had become public.”I want to know who Alejandro was,”Ortiz told the rally.”Was he a CIA agent? Why is the U.S. government protecting him? How many other Alejandros are there out there, supervising the torture of innocent people?” On Friday (March 29), President Clinton sent Ortiz a letter saying the investigation of her case”is nearing completion and I hope its report may gain you some measure of peace.”He promised”all appropriate information”would be made public.
Quote of the day: The Rev. Ronald C. Potter, theologian and professor at Belhaven College, in Jackson, Miss., on the attraction of Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam for black Christians:”Are we as black Christians affected by a new racialism, where it is more important to be identified with blackness than Christianity, where racial loyalty is more important than seeking and telling the truth? Is it cool to say `Allah’ or `Mohammad’ because they are supposedly identified with blackness, while God and Jesus-because of their allegedly white identification-are becoming politically incorrect in black society? As Christian leaders, we cannot afford to buy into this heresy. The end result is obvious: losing our people to Islam. If Christian ministers don’t stand in the gap, who will?.”
MJP END RNS
