c. 2004 Religion News Service

Pope Appeals for End to Conflicts in Uganda, Darfur Region of Sudan

(UNDATED) Pope John Paul II has appealed for an end to the long and “tragic conflict” in northern Uganda and urged the world to not “remain indifferent” to intensifying warfare in the Darfur region of Sudan, which has forced more than a million people to flee their homes.

Addressing pilgrims who gathered in the courtyard of his hilltop residence in the town of Castelgandolfo south of Rome on Sunday (July 25) for the midday Angelus prayer, the pope said that he wanted to “draw attention to the tragic events” in Uganda and Sudan.

The Roman Catholic pontiff sent Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, to Darfur last week because of his “great concern” over the humanitarian situation there. Cordes coordinates Catholic aid worldwide.

Winding up his five-day mission Monday, Cordes reported that conditions were “indescribable” in the Kalma refugee camp, which he visited. Aid officials have said that some 100 refugees, eight of them children, die each day of malnutrition, and the United Nations has declared the Darfur conflict the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The pope also noted that the Lord’s Resistance Army has been waging war in northern Uganda for more than 18 years, depriving children of “any future” by kidnapping them and enlisting them as soldiers. The conflict has left an estimated 1.6 million Ugandans homeless.

“I appeal to the international community and to national political leaders to put an end to this tragic conflict and to offer a real prospective of peace to the entire Ugandan nation,” John Paul said.

The pope said that “equally worrying” is the situation in the western region of Darfur near Sudan’s border with Chad where the Arab Janjaweed militia allied to the Khartoum government has forced some 1.5 million African Sudanese to flee their villages. “The war, intensifying in recent months, always brings with it more poverty, desperation and death,” he said.

“How can we remain indifferent?” John Paul asked. “I make a sorrowful appeal to political leaders and to international organizations not to forget these our brothers sorely tried.”

Cordes said in a statement distributed by the Vatican that the Catholic Church was taking part in an ecumenical effort to provide $17 million of emergency aid.

“Indescribable are the conditions of thousands and thousands of persons _ at Kalma alone there are 10,000 displaced persons _ camped in the desert under straw tents with plastic curtains,” the prelate said.

“Unfortunately, the war in Sudan has been passed over and ignored by the public for too long. Finally, the world is paying attention to this country today,” he said. “Leaders who shape international policy have discovered their duty to look beyond their own interests.”

The militia attacks in Darfur, which the United Nations has labeled ethnic cleansing, have threatened an accord reached in May to end a 21-year civil war in Sudan.

Cordes called on Sudanese authorities to work with the international community to guarantee assistance to the displaced people and to create secure conditions in which they may return to their villages.

During his visit to Sudan, the prelate said, he met with Vice President Moses Machar and other church and government officials and called on them to give aid agencies “free access … to refugee camps.”

_ Peggy Polk

Court: South Carolina Town Council’s Prayers Unconstitutional

(RNS) Two groups concerned about church-state separation have welcomed an appeals court ruling that a South Carolina town council violated the Constitution by opening meetings with Christian prayers.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday (July 22) that the practice of the Great Falls, S.C., town council of saying prayers specifically related to the Christian faith violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

“Public officials’ brief invocations of the Almighty before engaging in public business have always … been part of our nation’s history,” wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz. “This opportunity does not, however, provide the town council, or any other legislative body, license to advance its own religious views in preference to all others, as the town council did here.”

Darla Wynne, a follower of the Wiccan faith, filed suit against the council in 2001, saying the council’s “Christian prayer ritual” was unconstitutional. A lower court agreed with her in a 2003 ruling and told the council to stop mentioning the name of Jesus Christ in its prayers.

Two organizations that filed amicus briefs on Wynne’s behalf hailed the ruling.

“It is well-established that no government body can manifest a preference of one faith over another,” said Paul S. Miller, president of the American Jewish Congress, in a statement. “This ruling affirms the most fundamental principles of the relationship of American governments to religion.”

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agreed, saying: “This ruling is a great victory for religious liberty and diversity. … In America all faiths are equal in the eyes of the law.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Canadian Southern Baptists to Consider Name Change

(RNS) The Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists has decided to study whether it should change its name.

During their annual meeting in Toronto, messengers, or delegates, voted to have their national leaders create a committee to study “the possibility of a name change … that will better reflect our mission in our nation and our world,” reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“When Canadians think `south,’ they think `America,”’ said Ian Buntain, a professor at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, Alberta, who introduced the idea. “And so we’re called `the American denomination.’ That’s not helping us reach Canadians.”

The organization’s national board considered a name change two years ago. At that time, a change was not made.

The messengers at the June annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis also weighed such a study. After a spirited debate that focused on regional and theological concerns, they voted, 55 percent to 45 percent, not to create a study committee to consider a name change.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Israelis Rally to Protest Sharon’s Gaza Withdrawal Plan

JERUSALEM (RNS) Some 100,000 Israelis, the vast majority of them Orthodox Jews, formed a 55-mile human chain Sunday (July 25) to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s intention to end the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip.

The participants, many of them with young children in tow, stood shoulder to shoulder from the Gaza settlement bloc of Gush Katif to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Their continuous chain lined major highways and snaked around and within the Old City of Jerusalem.

Following the peaceful demonstration, tens of thousands of the participants prayed at the Western Wall.

The demonstration took place just 24 hours before the start of Tisha B’Av, a day of Jewish mourning over the two destructions of the biblical Temple and other catastrophic events in Jewish history.

The three weeks preceding Tisha B’Av are traditionally a time of sadness and inner reflection.

In an interview with the Ha’aretz newspaper at the Western Wall, David Hatuel, a Gaza Jew whose pregnant wife and four daughters were recently murdered by Palestinian terrorists, drew a religious link between the Gaza settlements and the Jewish people.

“This is the connection of all of Israel together on the eve of Tisha B’av, when we mourn the destruction of the Temple. I am sure the Holy One will not see this in vain. We joined hands and radiated that the people of Israel are unwilling to break the chain from Gush Katif and Jerusalem,” Hatuel said.

Standing with his father and grandparents in the chain that formed outside the Old City walls, 9-year-old Reuven Herzog from Fair Lawn, N.J., told RNS that he had come to show solidarity with Israelis.

“Prime Minister Sharon wants to cut off Gaza from the rest of Israel so that the Palestinians will stop hurting us. Gaza belongs to the Jewish People,” Reuven said.

According to opinion polls, most Israelis support Sharon’s decision to unilaterally remove Israeli troops and settlements from the contentious and violent Gaza Strip, which is home to some 7,500 Jews and more than 1 million Arabs.

However, a sizable minority, including many religious Jews, oppose Sharon’s plan because it involves no commitment of peace from the Palestinians.

In a separate development, Reuters reported Monday that a Jewish radical leader has called for the removal of a Jerusalem mosque on the Temple Mount that is one of Islam’s holiest sites.

“Israel has to return to the Temple Mount and it will,” Yehuda Etzion told Reuters in an interview. “It doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but it has to happen. Islam must remove its hands from the Temple Mount and descend from it.”

Etzion has been banned from the complex, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, since 1984 when he was imprisoned for plotting to blow up the mosque.

Israeli security officials have said there is a growing threat of a Jewish ultra-nationalist attack on the mosque complex.

_ Michele Chabin

Quote of the Day: Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center

(RNS) “For anybody who thought the culture wars were over, this will reignite them and ensure that they will be here for years and years to come. In that sense, it’s very much like the abortion issue. New careers on both sides will grow out of this, the polarization will continue and grow, and the room for compromise will diminish.”

_ Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, quoted by The Washington Post about the debate over gay marriage.

DEA/PH END RNS