c. 1998 Religion News Service

Bishop Ruiz resigns as mediator in Zapatista conflict

(RNS) Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the Roman Catholic prelate who has sought to broker peace talks between Mexico’s rebel Zapatista movement and the government, has quit as a negotiator, saying the government has abandoned”the path of dialogue.””I confirm clearly that a phase of the peace process has ended in which we responsibly complied with what we were asked to do,”Ruiz said in his Sunday (May 7) homily at the cathedral in San Cristobal de las Casas.”A new phase will have to be constructed to create the conditions for the peace process.” The bishop has been a key member of the National Mediation Commission.

Ruiz, a controversial cleric known for his impoverished diocese and sympathies with the poor, has attempted to broker peace between the government and the Zapatista movement, a clash that broke on the scene on Jan. 1, 1994, calling for greater Indian rights and aid for the poor in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas.

Government officials have accused Ruiz of being sympathetic to the Zapatistas and President Ernest Zedillo has criticized, in what was widely interpreted as a reference to Ruiz, those he called”theologians of violence”who he said were aggravating the conflict.

Ruiz has sharply rejected the idea he favors violence.”We have systematically opposed violence and no one among us preaches it or promotes it,”Ruiz said in response to the accusations.

Government officials, according to The New York Times, have been seeking to force Ruiz out of the peace talks for some time and were reportedly delighted at his resignation from the mediation panel.

Report: Another Pakistani Christian accused of blasphemy

(RNS) The Washington-based Center for Religious Freedom said Tuesday (June 9) that a local official in Pakistan has charged a Christian believer with blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.

If convicted, the Christian, identified as Shafique Masih, faces the death penalty. The center said the case was reported in Din, the Lahore, Pakistan, daily newspaper.

The accusation comes less than a month after Roman Catholic Bishop John Joseph committed suicide after campaigning for the repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Joseph’s death lead to interfaith violence and riots.

According to the Center for Religious Freedom, Masih’s case is the latest in more than a dozen blasphemy cases brought against Pakistani Christians in the last seven years. The human rights group said five Christians have died while in custody and three others were forced to flee into exile. Ayub Masih _ no relation Shafique Masih _ is currently in prison, having been convicted of blasphemy on April 27. It was his conviction that prompted Joseph’s protests.”The most immediate threat to Pakistan’s peace is not the nuclear bomb but the increasingly virulent persecution and mob violence against the country’s 2 million Christians,”said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom.

Masih’s case arose during a dispute with a Muslim neighbor apparently over electricity use. Allegedly, according to the center, during the dispute Masih challenged his neighbor by saying,”You call yourself a good Muslim?”which was cited as the basis for the blasphemy charge.

The center said Masih is reportedly in custody but his whereabouts and well-being are unknown.

Reformed Church in America to stop talking about sex

(RNS) The Reformed Church in America has adopted a proposal offered by its top elected official to put in place a three-year moratorium on debating issues surrounding the question of homosexuality at its General Synod, the 311,000-member denomination’s top policymaking body said.

At the same time, however, the delegates to the synod meeting in Holland, Mich., rejected a proposal that it request judicatories in the denomination”to refrain from discipline based solely on a person’s sexual orientation or theological judgments concerning sexual orientation.” In a Friday (June 5) speech opening the RCA’s General Synod, the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the denomination, said”no issue has as much potential to spawn divisiveness, mistrust, gossip, suspicion and conflict in the church”as homosexuality.

On Monday, delegates adopted Granberg-Michaelson’s proposal, which also called for the church to”enter into a process of intentional discernment”over the next two years”concerning pastoral challenges to the church represented by homosexuality.

Current church teaching says that practicing the”homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Scripture”but it also encourages”love and sensitivity toward such persons as fellow human beings.” But the Rev. Allan Janssen, of Selkirk, N.Y., said the resolution was”vacuous”because it doesn’t protect those who acknowledge being gay or lesbian during the two-years of study and discernment.”I think the recommendation, without protection for persons of homosexual orientation, is vacuous,”Janssen said.”If we’re going to have this discussion, we need to have a safe place where we can carry out that decision.”

South African Baptists move toward merger, racial integration

(RNS) Leaders of the Baptist church in South Africa have endorsed an integrated Baptist convention, marking a clear cut with the nation’s segregated history.

According to June reports by Baptist news agencies in the United States, representatives from the Baptist Union of South Africa and the Baptist Convention of South Africa signed a statement May 15 recommending the churches’ hierarchy help unite the two bodies.”We urge the respective executives to implement our obedience to God in the speediest possible way,”the statement said.

In 1987, the Baptist Convention split with the Baptist Union. Both organizations are interracial but leadership of the convention is mostly black while leadership of the union is mostly white. “If the Baptist union and Baptist convention can reconcile _ I mean true reconciliation _ what does that say for any Baptist group in the world,”said John Gordy, an SBC missionary who has lived in South Africa since 1990.”There’s no deeper bitterness or hatred or hurt in the world. You can imagine through the apartheid years what those people experienced.”

Cardinal Casaroli, former top Vatican diplomat, dead at 83

(RNS) Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the former Vatican secretary of state and No. 2 official who helped the church survive in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, died in Rome on Monday. He was 83.

Casaroli, the son of a tailor from Piacenza in northern Italy, served as Vatican secretary of state from 1979 until 1990 and was noted for his cautious approach to diplomacy. In the Vatican hierarchy, the secretary of state is the most important position under the pope.

In a statement, Pope John Paul II praised Casaroli for”carrying out with refined diplomatic sensitivity courageous and significant steps, in particular for improving the situation of the church in Eastern Europe.” Although some Vatican officials, including John Paul, reportedly had problems with Casaroli’s deliberate and careful approach to foreign affairs, he was named secretary of state by the Polish-born pope less than a year after he became pontiff.

Casaroli is widely credited with the Vatican’s Ostpolitik, a foreign policy stance that aimed at winning greater freedom for the church in Eastern Europe through softening the church’s harsh anticommunist position that marked the hardline taken by Pope Pius XII.

He is also given credit for creating the tough language on human rights and religious liberty included in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the pact between 35 nations, including the Soviet Union and other European nations, pledging the signatories to certain security, economic and human rights principles.

Apart from his diplomatic achievements, Casaroli is also given credit for keeping the Vatican running smoothly after the 1981 assassination attempt on the pope.

Born Nov. 24, 1914, Casaroli followed a family tradition of studying for the priesthood. He went to Rome in 1936 and enrolled in the Vatican’s elite diplomatic school, the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and was ordained in 1937.

After a stint as a professor at the diplomatic school, he was named undersecretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the Vatican’s State Department. Pope Paul VI in 1967 made him an archbishop and secretary of the congregation, later renamed the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, often described as the Vatican’s foreign ministry. He spoke fluent French, English, Spanish and German.

Report raises new questions on Vatican role during World War II

(RNS) A State Department report has raised new questions about the Vatican’s relationship with fascists in Croatia during World War II, according to The New York Times.

The State Department says Catholic priests in Rome helped Croatian leaders, responsible for sending some 700,000 Serbs, Jews and other to death camps, hide in Italy after the war and then escape to South America.

The State Department report, focusing on the shipment of Nazi gold through neutral nations to fund the German armed forces, said much of its information came from U.S. and British intelligence files and could not be confirmed.

It said the aid to the Croatian fascists, known as the Ustasha, was provided by priests at San Giralamo Croatian College in Rome.”There is no evidence in U.S. archives that the Vatican leadership knew of or gave support to the Ustasha activities outside its walls,”the report says.”But given the location of the college troubling questions remain.” The report said the college”appeared to operate with at least tacit acquiescence of some Vatican officials”as”it helped fugitive Croatian war criminals escape to the Western Hemisphere in the early postwar years.” Joaquin Navarro-Valls, a Vatican spokesman, denied any Vatican knowledge of efforts to aid Ustasha leaders. He said the Vatican had no control over the college. “The only control from the Holy See is intellectual control, making sure the college is teaching according to Catholic dogma,”he said.”We don’t think they were involved in such activities, but we do not have any records or control over these institutions.”

Quote of the day: Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

(RNS)”If Charlton Heston wants to lead the National Rifle Association out of the wilderness into the promised land, then they have to abandon their extremist position.” _ Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in an interview with The New York Times, on the election of actor Charlton Heston _ whose is widely known for his film depiction of Moses _ as NRA president.

DEA END RNS