c. 1999 Religion News Service

An ill Farrakhan takes four-month leave from Nation of Islam

(RNS) Controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has taken a four-month sabbatical to recover from prostate cancer treatment compounded by the flu and anemia, his personal physician said Friday (March 19).

Speaking at a Chicago news conference, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad said Farrakhan’s cancer _ first made public in 1991 _ remained confined to his prostate and a nearby seminal vesicle. “The minister’s life is not in imminent danger from any medical cause,”Muhammad said.”This should serve notice to all the vultures who are hovering over what they expect to be a dead carcass that you can go home. There is no death vigil. This is no death watch.” In addition to the cancer, Farrakhan has suffered two recent bouts of flu and anemia, Muhammad said.

Stories that Farrakhan was near death surfaced in various media earlier this week after The Final Call, the Nation’s weekly newspaper, reported that he was seriously ill.

Speaking Feb. 28 at the Nation’s annual Savior’s Day convention, Farrakhan was reported by The Final Call to have said:”… Though I’m nearing 66, I have never been as sick like this in my life … I lost 20 pounds in less than two weeks and all the muscle mass that I had built in eight years of my working out had turned to flab and I had no appetite, night sweats, dealing with the aftereffects of radiation therapy (for prostate cancer) and other things.” Jabril Muhammad, a long-time Farrakhan associate, wrote in the same Final Call that Farrakhan had been”gravely ill since near the beginning of January …. During the 44 years that I have known him I’ve never seen him this sick before; nor have I ever heard that he was in any way near this kind of condition. To me, at one point, he was at death’s door. Others thought so too.” Farrakhan _ controversial because of his comments that have been deemed anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-America and anti-Catholic _ has led the Nation, reputed to have no more than 20,000 actual members, for more than 20 years.

The nation’s theology is also controversial among orthodox Muslims, who reject the sect’s racial teachings, among others. However, in recent years, Farrakhan has sought to move his group closer to orthodox Islam.

Farrakhan was not at Friday’s news conference. Citing security reasons, aides declined to say where he was other than to maintain he was not hospitalized.

Vatican notes progress on Vietnam ties as Hanoi rejects critical report

(RNS) As Vietnam and the Vatican inch closer to a papal visit, Vietnamese authorities say a U.N. report that criticized the southeast Asian nation’s tight control over religious expression was”not objective.” On Friday (March 19) Monsignor Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s deputy foreign minister, said in Hanoi he was”kind of optimistic”following five days of talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the Vatican. Adding to the positive atmosphere, Vietnamese Bishop Bartholomew Nguyen Song Lan told the Vatican’s missionary news agency Fides that he was”astonished that this time on the Vietnamese side there is a more favorable attitude.” Pope John Paul II has indicated a desire to visit predominantly Buddhist Vietnam, which has about 8 million Catholics, the largest number in southeast Asia outside of the Philippines. However, relations between the Vatican and Hanoi have been strained. Wary of Vatican influence over Vietnamese citizens, Hanoi does not recognize papal religious authority over Vietnamese Catholics.

Diplomatic relations would ease some of the problems, but is not necessarily a barrier to a papal visit as the pope has visited nations with no official ties to the Holy See. Vietnam has, however, indicated it would prefer establishing diplomatic ties prior to a papal visit.

Earlier in the week, a U.N. report on religious freedom in Vietnam said Hanoi maintains tight control over religious groups and expression to prevent the development of a rival to the ruling Communist Party. The report said Hanoi interferes in the training and recruitment of clergy, the construction of houses of worship and the printing of religious books and other publications.

Thursday, the Vietnamese government rejected the report as”not objective”and said it will no longer let foreign organizations enter the nation to investigate human rights or religious freedom, the Associated Press reported.

Religious rights activists have long criticized Vietnam for arresting Catholic, Buddhist and other religious leaders. Vietnamese officials deny the charges.

Christian homes burned in new interreligious strike in India

(RNS) New interreligious violence in India has led to the burning of more than 150 Christian homes in the eastern state of Orissa.

Orissa officials said they presumed the homes were burned by extremist Hindus, although they lacked solid evidence, the New York Times reported Friday (March 19).

Thirteen people were injured in the violence _ three by gunfire _ and police arrested 29 people.

The violence reportedly occurred earlier this week in the village of Ranaloi in southern Orissa after Hindu symbols were painted over a Christian cross on a boulder outside the village. Some 157 of the village’s 250 Christian homes were destroyed by fire.

The incident is the latest in a growing cycle of violence between Hindus and Christians in India. Less than two months ago, a Christian missionary from Australia and his two young sons were killed by a Hindu mob.

While Christian-Hindu strife is not new to India, Christians say the violence has escalated since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party became head of a national coalition government last year. Hindus say the problem has been made worse by increased numbers of foreign-financed Protestant Christian missionaries working in India.

Christians account for just over 2 percent of India’s nearly 1 billion people, the vast majority being Hindus.

In Washington, Nina Shea, director of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, said the latest violence could be timed with the approach of Easter.”There seems to be a pattern emerging of anti-Christian violence orchestrated by Hindu extremists around the major Christian feast days,”she said.

Court: prayer before school board meeting unconstitutional

(RNS) The Cleveland Board of Education is violating the Constitution by opening its meeting with a prayer, a federal appeals court said Thursday (March 18).

The 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, reversed a 1996 decision that said the prayer was permissible because it was similar to opening a state legislative session with prayer. Federal courts have ruled such prayers are permissible.

But in its Thursday ruling, the appeals courts said prayer at the school board meeting is more like prayers at school graduation ceremonies or in classrooms, which federal courts deem unconstitutional.

The suit was brought by a Cleveland school teacher and a former high school student.

A lawyer for the board said he would consult with school officials before deciding whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Pope Paul VI clears first hurdle on the road to sainthood

(RNS) The cause of sainthood for Pope Paul VI has cleared its first hurdle, less than 21 years after the pontiff’s death.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar of Rome and president of the Italian Conference of Bishops, presided Thursday (March 18) at a ceremony formally closing a six-year diocesan-level investigation into the late pope’s life, writings and teachings.

The process now goes to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

At a”te deum”Mass of thanksgiving in the Lateran Palace, Ruini described the pope as a”living example of humility”and said reports of his vacillation and pessimism were”an invention of the media.” Ruini recalled that Paul VI had prostrated himself to kiss the feet of Orthodox Metropolitan Melitone in the Sistine Chapel to ask pardon for past wrongs of the church and knelt in an unsuccessful appeal to Red Brigades terrorists to spare the life of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

Paul VI also dispensed with the trappings of royalty. He refused to be crowned with the papal tiara or carried to audiences in a sedan chair, and he abolished the papal court.

Born Giovanni Battista Montini, in the northern Italian town of Concesio in the diocese of Brescia, Paul VI was elected pope on June 21, 1963, succeeding the hugely popular Pope John XXIII. He died on Aug. 6, 1978 after a sometimes stormy reign of 15 years.

Both John XXIII and his predecessor, Pope Pius XII, are ahead of Paul VI on the long and difficult road to sainthood. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints is in the process of deciding whether to recommend that the pope declare them”venerable,”the step before beatification and eventual canonization.

Paul VI’s cause began on May 11, 1993. A diocesan tribunal heard a total of 165 witnesses speak to the pope’s virtues, including 71 in Milan where he was archbishop from 1954 to 1963 and 21 in Brescia, and took sworn declarations from 10 cardinals and bishops. The findings were sent to the Vatican in two sealed chests.

A reserved and intellectual prelate who collected modern art, Paul VI lacked the charisma of his predecessor but carried on John XXIII’s modernization of the church by reconvening the Second Vatican Council, which ran from 1962 to 1965.

He was also the first”pilgrim pope,”traveling to the Holy Land, Asia, Africa, America and European countries.

But his fifth and final encyclical,”Humanae Vitae”(On Human Life), which outlawed every form of artificial birth control, caused widespread controversy and alienated many Catholics in North America and Europe.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints will now decide whether the testimony collected by the Archdiocese of Rome proves that Paul VI possessed the”heroic virtues”to be venerated by the faithful.

The”postulate”of his cause, the Jesuit Rev. Paolo Molinari, must then present proof of one miracle caused by his intercession to qualify him for beatification, and two miracles for sainthood.

Scottish church criticizes genetic labeling rules

(RNS) The Church of Scotland’s Society, Religion and Technology Project has accused the British government of missing the point with new regulations on labeling food containing genetically modified flour or soya.

Under the rules, which go into effect in six months, restaurants and pizza chains will be liable to fines of up to $8,150 if they fail to say their products contain the genetically modified ingredients.

Dr. Donald Bruce, who heads the church panel, said Friday (March 19) the labeling is only mandatory if genes or genetically modified products can be detected in the food itself.”For a large number of people who are concerned about genetically modified foods, this is not the issue at stake,”he said.”If your concern is not about eating strange DNA but that genetic modification was used at all _ for ethical, religious, ecological, or safety grounds _ then you have no effective way of choosing between food that has been modified and food that has not.”Such a basic ethical issue cannot be reduced to questions of scientific tests and limits of detection,”he said.”The new regulations change nothing in this respect, and remain fundamentally unjust.”

Quote of the day: the Rev. Dwain Epps of the World Council of Churches

(RNS)”This is one of the great tragedies of contemporary history _ a people shoved from pillar to post, who’ve never been able to live comfortably with the regimes under which they’ve lived. Strangely enough, they’ve come closer in Iraq than anywhere else.” _ The Rev. Dwain Epps, a World Council of Churches spokesman and Middle East expert on the plight of the Kurdish people in Iraq and Turkey.

DEA END RNS