c. 1997 Religion News Service
Boggs wins committee approval as Vatican envoy
(RNS) Lindy Boggs, President Clinton’s choice to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says that although she personally opposes abortion, she will faithfully represent administration policy on family planning matters when she becomes U.S. envoy to the Holy See.
On Wednesday (Sept. 24), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve Boggs’ nomination and send it to the full Senate, where final action is expected sometime next week.
Boggs, a former Democratic member of Congress from Louisiana, won the unanimous backing of the full panel one day after a subcommittee hearing filled with praise for the nominee.”In presenting Lindy Boggs to be ambassador to the Vatican, it makes me feel like I’ve been asked to come here and present Mother Teresa to the committee for confirmation,”Sen. John Breaux, D-La., told the subcommittee.
During the brief hearing, Boggs said the Vatican embassy was an important diplomatic listening post, especially for contacts with regimes with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations.
She also said the Vatican and the United States had”collaborated … on objections to the Russian parliament’s impending legislation”regulating religions.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., asked Boggs, a Roman Catholic, about the difference between U.S. and Vatican policies on family planning and abortion.
Boggs said the”commitment of the Vatican is to an issue that, of course, denies abortion as one of the efforts in controlling the population.” She said as envoy she will represent the position of the United States on the abortion question, which differs from the Vatican’s by supporting access to family planning and supports legal, safe abortions as a choice within the range of women’s reproductive health options.”My personal commitment is, of course, in a different direction, and I would conscientiously have to stand by my own personal commitment,”she said.”But as ambassador of the United States, I would have to state the position of the United States.” Boggs replaces Ambassador Raymond Flynn, former mayor of Boston, who has returned to the United States to enter the Massachusetts gubernatorial race.
Draft Australian code: Priests can’t be alone with children
(RNS) A draft code of conduct for Roman Catholic priests in Australia recommends forbidding priests from being alone with children and installing glass confessionals as a means of preventing sexual-abuse scandals.”It’s about reducing risk _ preventing environments being created where abuse can occur and reducing risk of false allegations being made against clergy,”said the Rev. David Cappo, head of the Australian church’s professional standards committee.”We are looking at guidelines for clergy that will make us all more accountable. If you are counseling a child then you do not do it alone or behind a closed door.” If the code is approved, virtually every Catholic Church in the country would have to be renovated to include glass viewing panels in confessionals. The plan will be voted on by the church in Australia next year, reported Reuters.
Major churches in Australia have admitted their clergy have abused hundreds of children in churches, schools and orphanages for decades.
An official report released in New South Wales in August said there was a significant occurrence of sexual abuse in Australian churches, which protected pedophile clergy.”Sexual abuse has often been regarded by churches as a problem of `moral failure,’ rather than a criminal offense, calling for help rather than punishment,”said the report.”Spiritualizing the problem is dangerous because it involves the assumption that once confessed … the problem has been resolved. This response is inappropriate because many such offenders have simply continued to abuse over the years.” Many clergy thought their celibacy vow concerned only heterosexual relations and did not address indecent acts with boys or adolescent males, the report said.
International church aid workers abducted in Chechnya
(RNS) Two employees of two international church aid agencies have been abducted by masked men in Chechnya and their whereabouts and condition remain unknown, the aid agencies announced in Geneva.
Dimitri Petrov and Dimitri Piankowsky, both Russian Federation citizens, were taken prisoner by armed men late last week (week of Sept. 14) near the border between Chechnya and the Ingush Republic. They had just completed a delivery of aid to Chechnya.
The two men are jointly employed by the International Orthodox Christian Charities and Geneva-based Action by Churches Together. Neither agency had information about their condition, reported Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based religious news agency.
Alexis Troubetzkoy, IOCC’s representative in Russia, is working to assist the agencies in achieving the release of their employees. An ACT spokesman in Geneva said Thursday (Sept. 25) that it was not yet able to determine the motive for their capture.
Unification Church members leave Honduras
(RNS) Tensions between the Honduran government and members of the Unification Church flared earlier this week when the government threatened to expel Japanese followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in the country on tourist visas.
Honduran Interior Minister Efrain Moncada said on Wednesday (Sept. 24) he will stringently enforce immigration laws on Japanese and Korean members of the church if they don’t leave the country when their visas expire in early October.
But the church said the followers _ accused of proselytizing _ had left the country last month.
Ramon Posadas, a lawyer for the denomination, charged earlier this month that the Honduran government was acting at the behest of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and Protestant church leaders who wanted to drive the Moonies, as church members are known, out of the country, Reuters reported.
Unification members used the pages of Honduran newspapers to publish an open letter to Moncada addressing the expulsion of the missionaries and what they called an attack on the constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion.
The Unification Church has also complained of religious persecution in other parts of Central America. Governments in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala are investigating Moon followers for alleged violations of immigration laws.
The governments contend the missionaries enter countries under the guise of tourists and then engage in aggressive conversion efforts, a violation of laws forbidding such religious activity by tourists.
Mother Teresa’s nuns warn of fund-raising scams
(RNS) The Missionaries of Charity are warning against possible scam artists claiming to raise funds in the name of the late Mother Teresa and the order she founded in India nearly 50 years ago.
Fund-raising drives purported to benefit the order are not authorized, said Sister Nirmala, successor to Mother Teresa. Nirmala told the Associated Press that,”Mother had repeatedly made it known we do not authorize anyone to solicit funds or goods for us or by using our pictures or photographs.” Contributions to the Missionaries of Charity, which serves hundreds of sick, orphans and homeless people around the world, can be sent directly to the local order or to Mother House, the headquarters in Calcutta, Nirmala said.
Quote of the day: Russian human rights activist Larissa Bogoraz
(RNS)”We can fight only with the word _ the Word of God and the word of the world.” _ Larissa Bogoraz, Russian human rights activist, speaking at a Sept. 24 news conference denouncing the Russian parliament’s overwhelmingly approval of a proposed law regulating religion but saying dissidents would not take to the streets to protest the law.
MJP END RNS
