c. 1999 Religion News Service
Breaking with tradition, pope to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass at Vatican
(RNS) In an apparent attempt to limit his fatigue, an ailing Pope John Paul II will break with a Holy Week tradition this year and celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass at the Vatican instead of driving across Rome to the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The Vatican, which issued the pope’s holy week schedule Monday (March 22), gave no explanation for the change. However, it appeared intended to conserve the pontiff’s strength for the taxing Good Friday”Way of the Cross”procession and Easter celebrations to follow.
The 78-year-old John Paul suffers from a neurological condition believed to be Parkinson’s disease and has walked with the help of a cane since he broke his femur in a fall in his apartment five years ago.
At Christmas he curtailed his schedule by celebrating Mass at midnight but not the next morning.
The pope will open Holy Week observances with an outdoor Palm Sunday Mass (March 28) in St. Peter’s Square. It will also be the Vatican’s 16th World Youth Day on the theme of”The Father loves you.” On Holy Thursday (April 1) morning, John Paul will concelebrate a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, at which he will lead cardinals, bishops and priests in renewing the commitment they made at their ordination.
By tradition, the pope later drives across the Tiber River to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, for an early evening Mass recalling the Last Supper. This year, John Paul will concelebrate the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, next door to his residence in the Apostolic Palace.
During the Mass, the pope will wash the feet of 12 priests as a sign of charity. The Vatican said those invited to the rite will be asked to contribute to a special papal fund for victims of the recent earthquake in Colombia.
On Good Friday, the pope will preside at a Liturgy of the Word in St. Peter’s Basilica and later lead a dramatic candle-lit Way of the Cross procession around Rome’s ancient Colosseum to re-enact the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.
On Saturday evening, John Paul will conduct an Easter vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica, concelebrate the first Mass of Easter with all the cardinals present in Rome and baptize a group of adults into the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican said the pope will celebrate Easter morning Mass on the broad, flower-banked steps of St. Peter’s, weather permitting, and then deliver his Easter”urbi et orbi”message, which will be televised live worldwide.
Easter Monday also is a holiday in Italy, which the pope normally spends resting at his country residence at Castelgandolfo in the hills south of Rome.
Baptist World Alliance seeks documentation of persecution
(RNS) The Baptist World Alliance is asking Baptists across the globe to document cases of religious persecution that can be sent to the United Nations.”Religious freedom is under threat around the world,”said Denton Lotz, BWA general secretary, during a recent executive committee meeting of the McLean, Va.-based group.
He distributed forms to Baptist leaders that can be used to send information to BWA headquarters.
George Younger, the BWA representative to the United Nations, also encouraged Baptist leaders to send documented reports of religious persecution so he can present them to the United Nations.”Religious persecution is now a big issue with the U.N., and the climate at the U.N. is very good for support of those who are persecuted for their faith,”Younger said.
During the March 8-11 meeting, Baptist leaders reported that persecution was not preventing their evangelistic work from continuing, the BWA stated in a news release.”With all of the persecution in Asia, there is a tremendous movement of God’s spirit with different people from different backgrounds,”said Bonny Resu, general secretary of the Asian Baptist Federation.
Resu said there had been much growth in Baptist churches in Nepal and in Orissa, India, where Australian Baptist missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were recently burned to death by Hindu extremists.
In other action, the BWA endorsed”The Oxford Statement on Children at Risk”that asks Christian churches to support at-risk children _ including those who are malnourished and sexually exploited _ across the globe. The statement was produced two years ago at a meeting in Oxford, England, of evangelical ministry representatives from Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America.
The Baptist leaders also addressed concerns about relief for debtor nations, the need for development in Africa and the commitment of Baptists to work for racial justice.
FBI lab tests show no anthrax at SBC building
(RNS) FBI laboratory tests show there was no anthrax in a letter claiming to carry the deadly bacteria that was opened recently at a building of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn.
The city’s Metro Health Department reported the results to SBC Executive Committee officials on Friday (March 19), according to Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.”Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief,”Brian Todd, health department spokesman, told The Tennessean daily newspaper.”It is something that is deadly serious, and we will respond (to any anthrax threat) quickly and effectively to make sure that everyone is safe.” The letter, which was postmarked on the West Coast, was opened March 5 in one of the SBC’s executive committee offices. Authorities from health, police, fire and emergency departments responded and were on the scene for more than four hours.
Jack Wilkerson, SBC vice president for business and finance, along with three other executive committee staffers and a fire department captain, were given a decontamination wash and antibiotics.
The building was closed the following Monday for cleaning.”Detailed training has been given to all personnel in the SBC Building who handle mail, applying the lessons we learned from this incident,”Wilkerson said.
Morris H. Chapman, president of the SBC executive committee, expressed thanks for the prayers and shows of concern during the recent situation.”I am grateful to the Lord for the unshakable faith of our staff,”he said.
Pope urges Kosovo settlement that respects both history and law
(RNS) Pope John Paul II has made a new appeal for a peaceful settlement in Kosovo that respects both the history of the Kosovars and the law.
The Roman Catholic pontiff spoke Sunday (March 21) at the start of a week that could decide whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begins bombing Serbian targets to halt a offensive against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority. John Paul has consistently opposed a military solution to the crisis.”The deterioration of the situation in Kosovo presses me to ask your prayers that the Lord might enlighten all those responsible for the future of this region,”the pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.”Those communities have already traveled a long `Via Crucis’ and are awaiting solutions respectful of history and of law,”he said.
John Paul said he prayed that”those who hold the fate of the peoples in their hands”will have the courage to undertake”initiatives truly inspired by the common good.” Richard Holbrooke, special U.S. envoy to the Balkans, Monday began a last-ditch attempt to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to call off the Serb offensive and accept a peace deal restoring autonomy to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.
Although 90 percent of Kosovo’s inhabitants are ethnic Albanians, Serbs have strong historical ties with the southern province, which they consider to be the birthplace of their nation.
A NATO attack would be the first in the history of the alliance against a sovereign nation.
England’s top Catholic warns against”privatized form of eugenics” (RNS) Roman Catholic Cardinal Basil Hume of England has warned against”a privatized form of eugenics”in which parents can choose which children to have and which to abort as a result of advances in genetic engineering.
Hume, the archbishop of Westminster, spoke Saturday (March 20) at the annual conference of Life, the national anti-abortion organization founded in 1970.
He said society is generally ill-prepared for the implications of the genetic revolution but the impact of genetic technology could have a profound and devastating impact on the understanding of the nature of human life itself.
He said the selective abortion of fetuses is already a reality and there are many stories of women under pressure to have antenatal tests for Down’s Syndrome, for example, and to abort if the test is positive.”Given the astonishing rate at which the human genome is being mapped, I understand that it is not long before it will be possible to detect many more genetic disorders as well as many genetic predispositions,”Hume said.”If such tests become widely available, and widely used, what will be the consequences? Will not individual parents start to demand the right to choose, perhaps with the wider use of IVF technology, and to discard embryos which do not meet their requirements? …. We seem to be on the verge of the possibility of parents choosing what they regard as the best children to have.” This could unleash the specter of eugenics _ not the state-sponsored kind that has haunted the century, but a privatized form”in which individual parents choose which children to have, and which to abort.”
Byron Klaus chosen as Assemblies of God seminary president
(RNS) The Rev. Byron Klaus, a professor at Southern California College in Costa Mesa, has been elected president of the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Mo.
Klaus succeeds the Rev. Del Tarr, who has been president since 1990 and is retiring. Klaus’ appointment, which was unanimous, is effective July 1.
Klaus also is the vice president of Latin America ChildCare, an organization of the Assemblies of God’s Division of Foreign Missions that uses American sponsors to help provide food and educational support for children in Latin America.
Klaus has contributed articles to Assemblies of God publications as well as Pneuma, the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies.
About 300 students are currently enrolled at AGTS, the only seminary of the Assemblies of God.
Quote of the Day: The Rev. Billy Graham
(RNS)”God has a plan for each life, and I believe that there is a moment right now that God has set aside when I am to die … And I’m looking forward to it because I want to go to heaven.” _ The Rev. Billy Graham, 80, writing in Newsweek magazine’s issue dated March 29.
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