c. 1997 Religion News Service

Successor chosen to head Mother Teresa’s religious order

(RNS) Sister Nirmala, 63, a convert to Roman Catholicism from Hinduism, has been elected to succeed Mother Teresa as head of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun.”Now I am happy,”Mother Teresa said Thursday (March 13) after the announcement of her successor was made. The ailing nun has been asking for years to be relieved of her duties as superior general of the order she founded nearly half a century ago.

News agencies reporting from Calcutta, where the election took place, said the transfer of power from Mother Teresa to Sister Nirmala would take place immediately.

The election by 132 leaders of Missionaries of Charity chapters and communities from around the world ended months of speculation as to who would succeed the 86-year-old nun.

The announcement was made in a statement issued by the office of Roman Catholic Archbishop Henry D’Souza of Calcutta.

The statement said the vote was nearly unanimous.”Mother Teresa was present for the election and blessed Sister Nirmala,”the statement said.

Reuters reported a news conference was set for Friday at which Mother Teresa would formally turn over her administrative duties _ but not her title as Mother _ to Sister Nirmala.

Sister Nirmala, whose name in Sanskrit means”pure,”was born into an ethnic Nepali family in the northern Indian state of Bihar. A member of the Hindu Brahmim, or priestly class, she trained as a lawyer before joining the Missionaries of Charity.

She has supervised the order’s centers in Europe and the United States, and since 1979 has led the contemplative wing of the order in which nuns devote their lives to meditation.

She had not been considered a top candidate in the election process because she was not one of the order’s councillors-general. But her age, legal training and international experience were believed to have been advantages.

Cloning scientist:”inhumane”to use the technology on humans

(RNS) The Scottish scientist who produced Dolly, the first clone of an adult sheep, said Wednesday (March 12) that cloning experiments on humans would be”totally unacceptable.” Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, told a Senate subcommittee hearing the possibility of cloning humans is impractical and unethical, the Associated Press reported.”I don’t see any reason why we would want to copy a person,”Wilmut said.”I personally have still not heard of a potential use of the technique to produce a new person that I would find ethical or acceptable.” Wilmut said it took him 277 attempts to clone Dolly, and he said some of the failures resulted in defective lambs that died soon after being born.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, one of the strongest supporters of medical research in Congress, said it was wrong for the government to try to stop scientific research.”Human cloning will take place and it will take place within my lifetime,”he said.”I think it is right and proper … it holds untold benefits for humankind in the future.” Several other senators, however, voiced their support for President Clinton’s 90-day ban on human cloning research while the National Bioethics Advisory Commission studies the issue.”There are aspects of life that should be off limits to science,”Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., said.”We must draw a clear line. Humans are not God and they should not be allowed to play God. It is morally repugnant.”

Judge: Alabama’s 1993 school prayer law is unconstitutional

(RNS) A federal judge Thursday (March 13) struck down Alabama’s 1993 school prayer law, saying it wrongly coerced students to participate in religious activities.

U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent’s ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions knocking down efforts in the state to put a school prayer law into effect.

Alabama has become a flashpoint in arguments over the proper relationship of church and state, and to what extent religious symbols and ceremonies can be a part of public life. Most recently, Gov. Fob James has threatened to call out the National Guard to protect the display of the Ten Commandments in a circuit judge’s courtroom.

The 1993 school prayer law said”non-sectarian, non-proselytizing student-initiated voluntary prayer”must be permitted during any school-related event.

DeMent, however, said the law is unconstitutional because it”creates excessive entanglement between religion and the state by forcing school officials to continually monitor both the content of prayer and the conduct of dissenting students,”the Associated Press reported.

He said it also leaves students”no choice”but to listen to the prayers of their peers and leaves dissenting pupils no right to verbally object to prayers.

Group says Americans want stricter controls on guns

(RNS) Most Americans support stricter gun safety requirements and ownership regulations, according to a survey by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) released Thursday (March 13).

Tom Smith, director of NORC’s general social survey, characterized the public’s position on guns as one that advocates”the automobile model.””People see guns as a dangerous product that needs to have sensible regulation,”he said. An”automobile model”applied to guns would mean the government would issue licenses for guns, regulate gun sales and set certain safety standards that manufacturers would have to follow.

He also said the 1996 survey shows that the public favors stricter controls on handguns.

Stephen Teret, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said the results show a strong public demand to treat handguns like other consumer products.”We make aspirin bottles with childproof caps, so why not make guns that can’t be fired by children? We make cameras that tell us how many pictures are left, so why can’t we make guns that tell us if they’re loaded?”he said.

According to the survey, 86 percent of Americans would support gun policies that require new guns to be childproof, and 68 percent would support a requirement that all new handguns be personalized. Personalizing handguns can be done in a variety of ways to insure that no one except the gun’s owner is able to use it.

The telephone survey sampled 1,200 Americans nationwide and was conducted with support from the Joyce Foundation of Chicago. The poll has a margin of error or plus or minus 3 points.

Teret said although the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun lobbies are still influential, public opinion on gun regulation issues has shifted. Twenty years ago, pro-gun groups outnumbered gun control groups three to one. Today gun control groups slightly outnumber their often more-vocal opponents.”With over 38,000 gun deaths per year, this country must focus on what can be done to prevent this epidemic of gun violence,”said Joyce Foundation President Deborah Leff.

The groups hope their findings will translate into legislation to regulate guns in the same way other consumer products are regulated.

CIA denies link to disappearance of Jesuit in Central America

(RNS) The CIA says an internal investigation found no indication that any of its agents were involved in the mysterious 1983 disappearance of the Rev. James Carney, a Jesuit priest.

But the spy agency said that despite a thorough review of its documents, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Carney remain a mystery, the Associated Press reported Thursday (March 13).”Based on what we have in our files, we found no evidence to suggest that we were involved in his disappearance,”said a senior CIA official who briefed reporters on Friday. Under agency groundrules, the official was not identified.

According to the official, CIA files show that Carney disappeared in August or September 1983 while participating in a leftist incursion into Honduras from Nicaragua. His body has never been found. The Honduran army at the time said it captured the priest but never produced his body.

Carney first went to Honduras in 1964 and spent many years ministering to the poor. He was very popular among Honduran peasants but was expeled from the country in 1979 by the Honduran government, which charged him with fomenting rebellion among the peasants.

According to the AP report on the CIA documents, the most commonly accepted scenario by government agents is that Carney was not captured by the Honduran army as it claimed but died of severe malnutrition during the incursion into Honduras.

Protests sparked by jailing of Mexican priests on murder charges

(RNS) Thousands of people protested Wednesday (March 12) the jailing of two Mexican priests who were charged with being accessories to murder in connection with the March 7 shooting of two policemen.

The arrests have increased tensions between the church and the government in Mexico, the Associated Press reported.

Roman Catholic leaders have insisted that the two priest _ the Rev. Jeronimo Hernandez Lopez and the Rev. Jose Luis Gonzalo Rosas Morales _ are innocent.”We affirm that our priestly brothers had nothing to do with the accusations against them,”the Mexican Episcopal Conference, the country’s bishops’ conference, said in a statement.

A third priest has testified that Hernandez and Rosas were with him on March 7, not in Chiapas where the state police were shot during a confrontation with peasants.

Local priests have accused the government of harassment and intimidation, but government officials insist the arrests are not politically motivated.”There’s no war against the church. This is penal action for a crime that was committed,”said Yariz Lopez, a spokeswoman for Chiapas’ attorney general.

Chiapas has a history of land conflict between peasants and the ruling elite. Most of the demonstrators demanding the release of the priests were Indians from the highlands, a group that has clashed with governing authorities over land rights issues.

At least 3,000 of the demonstrators remained for Mass after the march.

Southern Baptists pull missionaries from Albania

(RNS) Nine Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board workers in Albania left the country Wednesday (March 12), as violence in the southern region of the country continued to intensify and the nation appeared closer to sliding into anarchy.

The nine, relocated to Greece, Macedonia and Bosnia, were part of a contingent of 18 foreign mission workers in the former communist country. Earlier in March, as the violence began to escalate, the other 9 were evacuated from the country.

On Wednesday, the United States ordered 160 government employees to leave the country and said it had urged the 2,000 private American citizens to evacuate.

According to the foreign mission board, 12 of the 18 missionaries have been relocated to Bosnia, where they will help in church-planting efforts in that country.”We have been praying for extra workers to go into Bosnia for more than a year,”said Larry Cox, who directs the Foreign Mission Board efforts in that part of the world.”I believe God has answered that prayer by using an unfortunate situation in Albania to send workers into Bosnia.”

Quote of the day: Actor Richard Gere

(RNS) Actor Richard Gere, writing in the March 13 issue of USA Today called on the United States to exercise moral leadership on behalf of the people of Tibet and oppressed people everywhere:”As American Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or whatever, we all know deep in our hearts that a threat to religious freedom anywhere is a threat everywhere, a blight on the human condition. It is our defining challenge to respond and our leaders’ defining challenge to champion our cause.”

MJP END RNS