c. 2000 Religion News Service

Presbyterians Adopt Guidelines For Missionary Evacuation

(RNS) The Presbyterian Church (USA) has approved guidelines for evacuating church missionaries who find themselves in hostage, war or unfriendly situations overseas.

The Worldwide Ministries Division of the 2.5 million-member church introduced the new guidelines Sept. 23 in order to formalize procedures for getting missionaries out of dangerous situations.

“Every situation is different, but we have needed basic guidelines to coordinate communication, to determine when there is an emergency and to balance the interests of the families and churches involved,” said the Rev. Marian McClure, director of the agency, according to Presbyterian News Service.

There are between 700 and 900 Presbyterian missionaries overseas at any given time, and about half are full-time, paid employees.

McClure said unstable situations in Colombia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other global hotspots have put church missionaries in danger because of a “growing practice of hostage-taking.” In the Congo, formerly Zaire, the church has stopped placing families with children because the situation has become so dangerous.

McClure said she will eventually propose the guidelines for all church staff who travel or work abroad.

McClure’s proposals include:

_ Never paying a ransom in a hostage situation, and never yielding to terrorist demands.

_ Families of church workers who are kidnapped will be evacuated to a safe country, which will most often be the missionary’s home country. The church will assign a staff member to work with the family during the crisis.

_ A Crisis Management Team is in training for handling hostile situations, and the team will coordinate the release of information to families and the news media.

_ Families will be evacuated within 24 hours after a situation becomes dangerous, and personnel who are involved will be eligible for church-sponsored counseling.

Cardinal Mahony Blesses New Guadalupe Rose

(RNS) Sealing a unique partnership between the United Farm Workers (UFW) and Oregon-based grower Jackson and Perkins, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, blessed a new rose the company named after the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico.

The blessing ceremony took place Sept. 21 at the Church of Our Lady Queen of Angels in downtown Los Angeles, with UFW president Arturo S. Rodriguez among participants. About 1,400 UFW workers grow the new rose in Jackson and Perkins fields near Bakersfield, Calif.

The rose sprang from a cooperative effort between Jackson and Perkins and its UFW workers, according to the company.

UFW spokesperson Jocelyn Sherman also stressed the cooperative effort behind the new rose, explaining, “it’s something that the workers got into.”

Sherman noted the historic Roman Catholic support for the UFW that served as backdrop of Mahony’s blessing.

“The church is behind this relationship,” she said, speaking of the amicable alliance between labor and management in which the idea for the rose blossomed.

The Hispanic College Fund, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit providing scholarships to promising Hispanic students, will receive a percentage of the flower’s sales. The rose, a silvery-pink floribunda, retails for $15.95.

The historic links between roses and the Virgin of Guadalupe go beyond the ties between growers and union founded by Cesar Chavez to defend the rights of farm workers. According to Roman Catholic tradition, roses were instrumental in confirming the apparition of the Virgin Mary to the Nahua Indian peasant Juan Diego in 1531 near Mexico City.

Tradition says that the Virgin instructed Diego to gather roses in his cloak from the hill of Tepeyac and take them to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga. When Diego opened his cloak in the bishop’s presence, the image of the Virgin remained miraculously adorning the peasant’s garment.

Largest Mosque in Latin America Opens

(RNS) Latin American and Middle Eastern politicians and religious leaders gathered on Monday (Sept. 25) in Buenos Aires with more than 1,000 spectators to mark the opening of Latin America’s largest mosque and Muslim community center.

“In Argentina, we feel proud that ethnic and religious differences do not divide us but rather bear the fruit of a richer society,” said Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, according to Reuters news agency. He said he hoped the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center would help bring together the people of Argentina, where some 500,000 practicing Muslims live.

Rua’s Roman Catholic predecessor Carlos Menem, the son of Syrian Muslim immigrants, donated the 7 1/2 acres of land upon which the 390,000-square-foot cultural center stands.

The 1,500-person capacity building which was nearly two years in the making cost $22 million, a price tag was covered by the king of Saudi Arabia under a $20 billion mosque construction and restoration program that has produced more than 200 Islamic centers and 1,500 mosques worldwide.

In addition to a sports complex and dormitories, the Buenos Aires building contains an exhibit auditorium, a primary and secondary school, and a cafe.

Five years ago then-senator de la Rua was one of many outspoken critics of the center. Some feared the center could lead to an attack similar to one in in the early 1990s, when a bomb detonated at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Chicago Catholics Get First Full-Time Exorcist

(RNS) Just a week before the re-release of the 1973 film “The Exorcist,” the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced it has hired the first full-time exorcist in its 160-year history.

The priest, who remains unidentified, has been on staff for a year, but his appointment was only recently made public by Cardinal Francis George, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

George told the Sun-Times he made the appointment on the advice of a French cardinal because “he felt it was needed.” The priest, who will be responsible for purging demons from possessed people, said through the archdiocese that confidentiality is crucial.

“I collaborate with a number of health-care professionals, as well as officials of the archdiocese,” the priest said. “Confidentiality is of utmost importance in my work, so I prefer to be low key and quiet about it.”

Chicago is not the first archdiocese to hire an exorcist. The Boston Archdiocese has one, as well as New York, where the Rev. James LeBar was appointed by the late Cardinal John O’Connor.

LeBar told The Sun-Times there has been a “large explosion” in the amount of exorcisms, from no cases in 1990 to 300 cases by the end of the decade. Pope John Paul II recently confronted a woman in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican and prayed over her but the exorcism was unsuccesful, reports said.

The 1973 blockbuster movie is being re-released with scenes that were cut from the original movie but that director William Friedkin thought should be included.

Cardinal Upholds Vatican’s Commitment to Dialogue with Other Faiths

(RNS) A high Vatican official has strongly reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s commitment to ecumenical and interfaith dialogue despite a controversial declaration asserting Catholic primacy.

Cardinal Edward Cassidy, who leads Catholic dialogue with other religions, appeared at pains to distance himself from the position taken by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its “Declaration Dominus Ieusus on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.”

In the first major repercussion of the document, two Italian rabbis withdrew last week from a Day of Jewish-Christian Dialogue, which was scheduled to be held in Rome Oct. 3. The Vatican quietly shelved the meeting.

“I hope that we can overcome all the difficulties,” Cassidy told Italian reporters Monday (Sept. 26) at an interfaith meeting in Lisbon sponsored by the Italian Community of Sant’Egidio.

The document was issued Sept. 5 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to counter the relativist view that puts all religions on a par. It says that with the exception of the Orthodox churches, other Christian denominations are not churches in the true sense of the word but ecclesial communities, and non-Christian faiths are gravely defective.

“This is a document addressed to the academic world, to some Asian Catholic theologians, and written by professors for other professors in scholastic language that says, `This is true, and this is not true,”’ Cassidy said.

“It is not directed to the ecumenical world,” he said. “We who have an ear better tuned to the tones of dialogue take warning immediately when there are elements of language that could create reactions, and then we try to say the same thing in another way.”

Cassidy, who is one of 13 cardinals serving with Ratzinger on the governing council of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said he was not present when the council reviewed the document. “I wasn’t there because I was ill,” he said.

But he said the document, which was signed by Ratzinger, does not in any case carry the force of the 1995 encyclical “Ut Unum Sint,” which outlines the church’s commitment to ecumenism which Pope John Paul II himself signed.

$10,000 Taken From Orange County’s Largest Mosque

(RNS) In two thefts in less than one week, the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove, Calif., lost more than $10,000 in worshippers’ contributions.

Garden Grove Police Detective Aaron Nelson said police received a report on Sept. 16 of an approximately $8,000 loss at the mosque. During the investigation, police learned of a theft earlier in the week that mosque officials had not reported, Nelson said.

Islamic Society religious director Muzammil Siddiqi said a bank deposit in the amount of $2,700 had been taken Sept. 11 or 12. The next loss was the uncounted collection from Friday’s prayer service. Siddiqi estimated the second theft as between $8,000 and $10,000.

“This is the money that the people gave for the mosque expenses,” Siddiqi said. While most of the stolen funds were for the mosque’s ongoing needs, “some of it was a special charity for poor people,” he said. The religious director said the collection had come from individual contributions in small amounts. “Mostly these are working class people.”

With 1,500 to 2,000 worshippers typically gathering for Friday prayer, the mosque is Orange County’s largest.

While the investigation is ongoing, Nelson said, Garden Grove Police have no suspects. Nelson said police have found nothing to identify the thefts as hate crimes.

Noting that in Islam theft “is a major sin,” Siddiqi called the losses “a sad thing.” He said the mosque is putting bars outside its windows and installing an alarm. The thefts were the first in the mosque’s approximately 30 year history, Siddiqi said.

Quote of the Day: Wichita Falls, Texas, Pastor Robert Jeffress

(RNS) “In my personal opinion, the ACLU has never met a piece of pornography they wouldn’t like to defend.”

_ Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, Texas, responding to a Sept. 19 ruling by a federal judge rejecting his church’s challenge concerning children’s books with homosexual themes in a public library. He considers the ACLU’s position to be part of an agenda to remove restrictions on access to pornography in libraries. Jeffress was quoted in the Sept. 25 report of Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

DEA END RNS