c. 2000 Religion News Service
American Church Leaders Express Solidarity With Palestinian Christians
JERUSALEM (RNS) A high-level American church delegation joined a Sunday (Dec. 10) evening candlelight vigil staged by several thousand West Bank Palestinians in the Bethlehem area calling on Israel to end its military closure of the West Bank and stop firing on Palestinian homes and civilians.
The delegation, under the sponsorship of the National Council of Churches, is here on a weeklong visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority territory to discuss the current cycle of Middle East violence with religious and political leaders.
It includes some two dozen participants, including leaders of the National Council of Churches, Eastern Orthodox Church, United Church of Christ, Armenian Apostolic Church and the Roman Catholic Church as well as Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Quakers and United Methodists.
In Sunday’s silent march, the U.S. church delegation joined with Palestinian marchers from the Bethlehem-area Christian villages of Beit Jallah and Beit Sahour. Dozens of homes in the two villages have been damaged and a number of residents killed or injured as a result of Israeli reprisal attacks sparked by Palestinian snipers over the past two months of violence.
Meanwhile, the Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews denounced the fact that Palestinian snipers have continued to use the Bethlehem area as a base for attacks on the Jewish residents of Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood. The organization said it was mounting an aid drive to families in the stricken Jewish neighborhood.
_ Elaine Ruth Fletcher
World Reformed Fellowship Launched in Orlando
(RNS) Conservative and evangelical members of the Reformed Christian tradition have joined to launch a new global fellowship to promote cooperation and shared ministries around the world.
The World Reformed Fellowship was formed during an October meeting in Orlando, Fla., between the World Fellowship of Reformed Churches and the International Reformed Fellowship. The two groups merged to share resources and ideas.
The new body will bring together the two groups, which had been formed along largely ethnic and regional lines. The World Fellowship of Reformed Churches was formed in 1992 and included the Presbyterian Church in America and churches in Mexico and Brazil. The International Reformed Fellowship was organized in 1994 and included churches in Asia.
The new fellowship will not issue governing decisions that affect member churches. It will adhere to a conservative doctrine, including the inerrancy of Scripture and historic Christian creeds and confessions.
U.S. churches that will be part of the new body include the Presbyterian Church in America, an Atlanta-based church of 224,000 members, and the 6,400-member Reformed Episcopal Church, based in Philadelphia.
Reformed churches are historically linked to the teachings of John Calvin, a 16th century Swiss theologian. The churches that make up the World Reformed Fellowship tend to be more socially and theologically conservative than other larger Reformed churches, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Reformed Church in America.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
New Yugoslav President Meets With Pope
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica met this week with Pope John Paul II and pledged to work for peace in the Balkans, the Vatican said Tuesday (Dec. 12).
Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pope received the Yugoslav leader late Monday (Dec. 11) during Kostunica’s one-day visit to Italy.
“Mr. Kostunica gave assurances of the will to cooperate for peace in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in the Balkans,” the spokesman said. He said the talks also dwelled on “the commitment of the Holy See to peace in these years of difficult and tragic events.”
John Paul expressed the wish that Yugoslavia will soon achieve “harmony of spirits and social peace,” Navarro-Valls said.
The Roman Catholic pontiff tried repeatedly to intervene to halt the conflicts that erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo under Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Kostunica defeated Milosevic in presidential elections Sept. 24.
Kostunica also met with Prime Minister Giuliano Amato and other Italian leaders to thank them for the political and financial support they have offered since he took power.
_ Peggy Polk
Virginia Pastor Tapped to Lead World Methodist Council
(RNS) A Virginia Methodist minister has been tapped to lead the World Methodist Council, a global network of 74 denominations in 130 countries.
The Rev. George H. Freeman, who is currently a district superintendent in the church’s Virginia Conference, will become the general secretary of the council when it meets in England next July.
Freeman was nominated by an 11-member search committee that met in Cape Town, South Africa. Freeman will succeed the Rev. Joe Hale, the council’s leader since 1976, and will be based in Lake Junaluska, N.C.
Bishop Joe Pennel of Virginia said Freeman has the skills and know-how to run the council’s day-to-day operations.
“I have seen the ability he has to marshal the resources of the church to reach those who have not yet named the name of Christ,” Pennel said.
Freeman was ordained in 1972 after attending college at Emory University and Henry College. He attended divinity school at Emory’s Candler School of Theology.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Winning Calls for Repeal of Law Barring Catholics From Throne
LONDON (RNS) Cardinal Thomas Winning, Archbishop of Glasgow, has joined the chorus of those calling for the repeal of the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bars from the British throne any Roman Catholic or anyone married to a Roman Catholic.
The debate over the 1701 Act was reignited by the Guardian newspaper to coincide with the opening of Parliament by the queen.
The London newspaper is hoping to mount a legal challenge in the courts and has advertised in a major German newspaper in the hope of finding a distant relative of the British royal family who could object to being cut out of the succession through being a Roman Catholic.
Writing in the Sunday Herald (Dec. 10), a Scottish newspaper, the cardinal acknowledged that repealing the act had never been the most pressing issue for Catholics, but said there is widespread consensus in the church that it should be done.
“I am on record many times for having called the Act of Settlement an embarrassing anachronism and have pointed out that no person of goodwill could justify the terms of an act which discriminates against Catholics as such,” he wrote.
“It is quite ludicrous to suggest that, if a dashing young princess from Spain or Belgium or Luxembourg were to sweep Prince William (eldest son of Prince Charles and thus next in line to the throne after his father) off his feet and the young couple wished to marry, somehow the British state would be brought to its knees,” Winning added.
But he said it is unclear whether politicians preparing their general election manifestoes have enough political will to include a commitment to repeal “the `grubby little secret’ which still shames our nation.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair is widely expected to call a general election next spring.
_ Robert Nowell
`Japan’s Schindler’ Honored for Saving Jews in Holocaust
(RNS) A Japanese diplomat forced to resign his post after helping thousands of Jews in Lithuania evade Nazi persecution during World War II was honored Monday (Dec. 11) with a humanitarian award named in his honor.
“Chiune Sugihara decided at his own risk to save thousands of Jews by writing transit visas for stranded Jewish refugees,” read a statement from the Chiune Sugihara Centennial Celebration Committee, according to Agence France Presse.
The ceremony in Osaka, Japan, helped “reinstate the honor” of Sugihara, the committee said.
In 1940, Sugihara defied orders from his superiors and gave entry visas to Japan to some 6,000 Jewish refugees living in Lithuania, where he served as deputy Japanese consul. Those visas enabled many to pass through Japan on their way to safety in other countries.
“I finally concluded that humanity must come first above all else,” Sugihara wrote of his decision in a book, “Visas for Life,” published in 1983.
In 1947 Sugihara was forced to resign from his diplomatic post for his act of defiance, his family has said.
Sugihara eventually became known as “Japan’s Schindler,” a comparison to German businessman Oskar Schindler, who helped save thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
In 1992, six years after Sugihara’s death, the Japanese parliament released a statement declaring that the government had erred in relieving him of his post. Two months ago Japan’s Diplomatic Record Office unveiled a plaque in his honor, and the Japanese foreign ministry apologized to his widow, Yukiko. She attended the ceremony in Osaka along with two Jews her husband helped save.
Cardinal Reports Cordial Relations With Russian Orthodox Leader
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a veteran troubleshooter for the Vatican who met last week with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexii II, said Tuesday (Dec. 12) their personal relations are cordial despite severe strains between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.
The French prelate, who is overseeing the Vatican’s Holy Year celebrations, commented briefly on his visit to Moscow during a news conference to announce plans for the Jubilee of the Entertainment World Dec. 15-17.
Etchegaray, 78, said he made the trip to speak at the seventh in a series of conferences on Pope John XXIII and ecumenism held at the Institute for Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The cardinal said he met Friday (Dec. 8) with the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. Describing their personal relations as “very cordial,” he said, “We spoke of many things.”
Pope John Paul II is eager to visit Russian, but Alexii has refused to meet with the Polish-born pontiff until the churches resolve their differences over property in Ukraine and come to terms on the charge of the Russian Orthodox Church that Catholics are proselytizing in Russia.
The patriarch was quoted as saying Nov. 28 that he “did not exclude the possibility” of a papal visit but that “the meeting must be well prepared for and the obstacles that today do not permit it to happen must be eliminated.”
Etchegaray gave no indication of whether he discussed the pope’s trip to the Ukraine, scheduled for June 21-24, during his meeting with Alexii. The visit will be the pontiff’s third to a predominantly Orthodox country, following one to Romania in 1999 and to Georgia earlier this year.
Alexii has made no public comment on the pope’s plan to travel to the former Soviet republic.
Members of the Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox churches in Ukraine are involved in a bitter dispute over Catholic property that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin confiscated and turned over to the Orthodox Church in 1946.
The Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches, which are closely linked, charge that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian Catholics have not only reclaimed their own property but seized Orthodox property as well.
_ Peggy Polk
Long Island Bishop James T. McHugh Dies at 68
(RNS) The Most Rev. James T. McHugh, the spiritual leader of Long Island’s Roman Catholics since January, died Sunday (Dec. 10) at his home after a long battle with liver and gallbladder cancer. He was 68.
McHugh was appointed the designated successor to former bishop John McGann in the Rockville Centre diocese in December 1998 and was installed on Feb. 22, 1999. He was promoted to bishop on Jan. 4 of this year, and doctors said his cancer was in remission.
Prior to serving as head of the diocese covering Long Island, McHugh served 10 years as bishop of Camden, N.J. Pope John Paul II, who named McHugh a prelate of honor in 1986, will appoint a successor, but no date for an announcement has been set.
McHugh was born in Camden and was ordained as a priest in 1957. He studied at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome and the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington, N.J. He was named auxiliary bishop of Newark, N.J., in 1987 befored being appointed to Camden a year later.
Newark Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, who consecrated McHugh as a bishop, said he had never known “a braver, more dedicated man of God” or a stronger advocate of the church’s pro-life teachings.
“May his crusade for the protection of human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death continue to be championed by all of us who were touched by his presence in our lives,” McCarrick said in a statement.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Quote of the Day: the Rev. Pietro Sambi, apostolic delegate for the Vatican in the Holy Land
(RNS) “This is a war of children and boys and it doesn’t stop. It will be a war of and for the future.”
_ The Rev. Pietro Sambi, apostolic delegate for the Vatican in the Holy Land, speaking Sunday (Dec. 10) about the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians to a U.S. ecumenical peace delegation visiting Jerusalem. DEA END RNS
