c. 2000 Religion News Service
Canadian Pastor Sent to Jail for Environmental Sabotage
(RNS) A former Christian Reformed pastor and crusading environmentalist has been sentenced to 28 months in prison for sabotaging oil wells in the Canadian north.
Wiebo Ludwig, who heads a religious commune on the Alberta-British Columbia border, was sentenced Wednesday after being found guilty of five counts related to blowing up and vandalizing oil wells.
Ludwig, a graduate of Calvin Theological College in Grand Rapids, Mich., blames pollution from the oil wells for three miscarriages in his family, a stillborn baby, the death of his cows and poisoning of his soil.
The Edmonton, Alberta, judge who sentenced Ludwig told him personal hurt is no reason to break the law. In delivering the sentence, Justice Sterling Sanderman criticized what he called Ludwig’s black and white view of the world.
Before the sentence was read, Ludwig, a charismatic 59-year-old with a striking silver beard, pleaded with the judge to remember the effect it would have on his extended family.
“I hope you will not afflict those who have already been sorely afflicted,” Ludwig said, adding he was disappointed the trial did not address his environmental concerns.
“The protocol is not open to considering a third context, the context of the terrible aggravation we have suffered,” he said.
Despite his conviction, Ludwig’s battle against pollution has brought high-level national attention to the problems associated with so-called sour-gas flares, which are used to burn off excess fumes from oil wells.
Scientists increasingly link sour-gas flares to poisons and cancer, and they are being far more tightly regulated in Texas than in Canada. There are more than 5,000 sour-gas flares in Alberta and British Columbia.
Many people have also expressed support for Ludwig’s firm defense of family values, which emphasize discipline and prayer and eschew television and materalism. A controversial figure within the Christian Reformed Church, Ludwig served churches in Thunder Bay and Goderich, Ontario, before being pressured out of the denomination for his combative, uncompromising style. He moved his extended family, and a small group of followers, to the remote Peace River region of Western Canada in 1985, setting up a farm and a back-to-the-land spiritual commune.
The seven-week Ludwig trial played out against a background of 160 incidents of vandalism _ ranging from wellsite bombings to flattened tires _ that has left residents of the northwestern Alberta communities surrounding Hythe and Beaverlodge frightened and angry.
The tensions increased last summer, when a 16-year-old girl was shot and killed while in a truck driving through the Ludwig farm in the early morning hours. No one has been charged in Karman Willis’ death.
Poll: Vast Majority of Americans Believe in Miracles
(RNS) The vast majority of Americans believe that God performs miracles, a Newsweek poll shows.
Nearly half said they have personally experienced or seen a miracle, according to the poll released in the May 1 edition of the newsweekly.
Eighty-four percent of Americans said that God performs miracles and 79 percent said they believe the miracles detailed in the Bible actually occurred, the poll said.
About two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) said they have prayed for a miracle.
Sixty-three percent said they know someone who claims to have received a miracle and 48 percent said they have witnessed or experienced one themselves.
An overwhelming number of Christians _ 90 percent _ said they believe in miracles, compared to 46 percent of non-Christians.
Ninety-eight percent of evangelical Protestants surveyed said they believe in miracles.
Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they think believers of other faiths can receive miracles.
A majority of Americans _ 77 percent _ said they believe God or the saints heal or cure sick people who medical doctors have said had no chance to survive.
Seventy-two percent of those polled said people who face death in natural disasters or accidents can be saved by a miracle.
The poll, by Princeton Survey Research Associates, is based on a sample of 752 adults interviewed by telephone April 13-14 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The poll data was included in a story on miracles by religion editor Kenneth L. Woodward. The article was adapted from his new book “The Book of Miracles”(Simon & Schuster).
Religious Leaders Ask Philip Morris to Stop Marketing to Kids
(RNS) A group of 58 religious leaders has written to the president of Kraft Foods, a subsidiary of Philip Morris Cos., to urge his parent company to halt its promotion of cigarettes to young people.
“As a top executive of Philip Morris, you must know that 4 million people worldwide will die this year from tobacco-related illnesses, and that economically poor countries are increasingly bearing the brunt of tobacco’s staggering toll on human life,” the leaders wrote to Robert Eckert, Kraft’s president and CEO.
“We believe Philip Morris’ marketing around the world, especially to addict young people, is one of the driving forces behind the rise in deaths that result from tobacco.”
The letter was signed by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders, including the Rev. Kathryn Johnson, executive director, Methodist Federation for Social Action in Washington; Sister Regina Murphy, international health program director at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Accountability in New York; and Cheryl Hammond Hopewell, director of business services of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.
Clergy from a Reconstructionist congregation, an African Methodist Episcopal church and the Maryknoll Catholic order also were among the signatories.
The writers joined INFACT, a Boston-based corporate watchdog group that has organized a boycott of Kraft, in seeking changes in Philip Morris’ marketing and public policy work.
Kelle Louaillier, associate director of INFACT, told Religion News Service that the religious leaders had previously communicated with Philip Morris without “satisfactory” results, so chose to write to Kraft.
They urged Eckert to lead Philip Morris in efforts to reduce the promotion of tobacco products to children across the globe and to halt interference in public policy on tobacco and health issues.
They also requested that if Philip Morris does not correct “abuses” and change course that Kraft separate from the corporation.
A Kraft spokesperson could not be reached immediately for comment.
Archbishop Carey Opens Lambeth Palace to Public
(RNS) Lambeth Palace, the archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence located on the other side of the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, has become one of the British capital’s major tourist attractions.
At the beginning of April, Archbishop George Carey opened the palace to the public for the first time ever, and already two-thirds of the tickets for the hourlong guided tours have been sold.
Lambeth has been the residence of the archbishops of Canterbury since 1197. The oldest surviving part of the palace is the crypt, the lower walls of which date back to 1199. The crypt is used every day for prayer by the archbishop, his family and household.
Above it is the chapel built originally in the 1220s and restored in the 1950s following bombing damage during the second world war. It was in that chapel, on June 17, 1963, that Archbishop Michael Ramsey made ecumenical history by conducting a Requiem Celebration of the Holy Communion for Pope John XXIII, who had died two weeks earlier.
The tour, which lasts just over an hour, begins with an 11-minute video explaining the origins of the Church of England in St. Augustine of Canterbury’s mission to the English in 597 A.D. Tours conclude with an exhibition exploring the role of the archbishop of Canterbury today.
A hundred volunteers have been recruited to act as guides for the tour,which costs six pounds ($9.50) for adults and four pounds ($6.30) for those under 16 or over 60.
Tours are conducted every day except Sunday and Monday through November, and tickets have to be booked in advance. More than 50,000 of the 75,000 available tickets have been sold, and every Saturday is already sold out.
Asian-American Disciples Establish Own Organization
(RNS) Asian leaders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have announced their intention to establish an autonomous office for North American Asian Ministries.
“We feel that we are mature enough to be a free-standing, self-determining body,” said the Rev. Geunhee Yu, executive pastor for North American Asian Ministries.
The decision, which came during a March conference of the executive council of the North American Pacific Asian Disciples, separates the office of North American Asian Ministries from the Homeland Ministries division of the Disciples of Christ.
Ugandan Investigators Discover 55 Additional Bodies
(RNS) One month after officials unearthed hundreds of bodies on property linked to a religious group in southwestern Uganda, workers on Thursday (April 27) exhumed 55 more bodies _ mostly women and children _ from three graves on the property of a leader of the group.
The bodies were found in the town of Ggaba _ just south of Kampala, Uganda’s capital _ buried in a garage rented by former Roman Catholic priest Dominic Kataribabao, according to the Associated Press, a leader of the doomsday group Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
The discovery comes a month after about 80 bodies were unearthed on property in southwestern Uganda owned by the Ten Commandments group, who supported strict adherence to the Ten Commandments and predicted the world would end Dec. 31, 1999.
The bodies uncovered Thursday (April 27) boost to 780 the number of bodies discovered on four group properties since March 17, when a fire inside the group’s church killed about 330 people. Officials first believed the fire was a mass suicide, but now believe that group leaders are responsible for the deaths.
Police spokesman Assumen Mugenyi said police had suspicions that bodies were buried on the Ggaba property, but delayed search efforts until prisoners were furnished with proper equipment to carry out the search. Authorities had faced a barrage of criticism for improperly protecting the prisoners used to exhume bodies.
Mugenyi said police do not anticipate uncovering any more bodies in Ggaba, but said he suspected more bodies could be found elsewhere.
Arrest warrants have been issued for six of the religious group’s leaders, including Kataribabo, but police say they are uncertain whether all six leaders actually died in the March 17 fire or remain alive.
200,000 Pilgrims Expected for First Jubilee Canonization
(RNS) – Some 200,000 pilgrims are expected to gather in St. Peter’s Square Sunday (April 30) to hear Pope John Paul II confer sainthood on a 20th century Polish nun, known as the “apostle of the divine mercy” and credited with predicting the outbreak of World War II and the election of a Polish pope.
Vatican officials said Roman Catholics from the United States, Poland and other Eastern European countries, Argentina, the Philippines and throughout Italy will come to Rome for the canonization of the Blessed Sister Faustina Kowalska, the first of the Jubilee Holy Year.
John Paul will celebrate Mass for an even larger crowd on Monday (May 1), May Day, when the church will mark the Jubilee of the Workers. An estimated 600,000 people are expected to attend the Mass and a concert by international pop and rock stars on the campus of Rome’s Third University at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of the city.
Kowalska has a following of millions of Catholics, who follow her exhortation to offer special prayers for God’s mercy for themselves and their neighbors. Born in 1905 in the Polish village of Glogowiec near Krakow, Kowalska entered the Convent of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary Misericordia in Warsaw at the age of 20, reporting that she had had a vision of Jesus suffering.
While working a gardener and doorkeeper in the convent, she wrote in her diaries of receiving visions and revelations, bearing the hidden “stigmata” of Jesus’ wounds on the cross and having the gift of appearing in more than one place at the same time. The diaries have been translated into a number of languages.
In 1937, a year before she fell ill and died at the age of 33, she predicted the outbreak of World War II, the election of a Polish pope and the day of her death, Oct. 15, 1938.
Kowalska’s process toward sainthood began in Poland in 1965 but was slowed by doubts of the Vatican Congregations for the Causes of Saints and for the Doctrine of the Faith over the authenticity of her mystic experiences.
John Paul, who was archbishop of Krakow, intervened successfully in her behalf in 1978, several months before he was elected pope. He proclaimed her blessed, the last step before sainthood, in a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square April 8, 1993.
Quote of the Day: Professor Franco de Rosa of Rome
(RNS) “If you do not believe in miracles, your life is not as full as it could be.”
_ Franco de Rosa, University of Rome professor and doctor on the “Consulta Medica” for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. He was quoted in the May 1 edition of Newsweek.
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