c. 2000 Religion News Service

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Is Free of Cancer, Tests Show

(RNS) The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church has received a clean bill of health from his New York doctors after undergoing prostate cancer surgery.

The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, 62, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in July and underwent surgery Sept. 11.

Follow-up testing showed that the cancer was contained and has not spread, giving Griswold the go-ahead to return to work as he feels able.

“He’s recovering nicely and is in good spirits,” said his assistant, Barbara Braver. “This is very good news and he’s doing fine. He’s beginning to resume part of his normal schedule.”

Jim Solheim, a church spokesman, said the staff at the Episcopal Church Center in New York is relieved that the cancer did not spread.

“The mood in the building is one of great thankfulness that the prognosis is good because we draw a lot of energy from his vision,” Solheim said.

Griswold was ordained in 1963 and served as bishop of Chicago from 1987 to 1997, when he was elected to a nine-year term as the 25th presiding bishop of the 2.5 million-member church.

As presiding bishop, Griswold oversees the entire U.S. church, serves as president of the 200-member House of Bishops and represents the Episcopal Church in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Brubeck to Receive First Arts and Faith Award

(RNS) Jazz great Dave Brubeck will receive the first John Garcia Gensel award, named for a New York City Lutheran minister who served as pastor to the city’s jazz community and inspired a Duke Ellington composition.

Brubeck will receive the award from the Stony Point Center, a New York-based conference center that will sponsor an Oct. 8-10 symposium on jazz and the church. The award will honor artists who have integrated faith and the arts.

The award is named in honor of Gensel, a pastor at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in the 1960s, who ministered to the jazz community. Gensel inspired Duke Ellington to compose “The Shepherd Who Watches Over the Night Flock.” Gensel, who died in 1998, was “our spiritual guru, our psychiatrist and the greatest booster of American music,” said jazz drummer Max Roach.

“Dave Brubeck exemplifies a lifetime of artistic excellence and faithful service to God and humanity,” said the Rev. William G. Carter, dean of the conference center and pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Clark’s Summit, Pa.

Gensel’s jazz ministry at St. Peter’s continues at the Manhattan church, with jazz vespers on Sundays and an upcoming 30th anniversary celebration of the church’s outreach to the jazz community.

Vatican Official Denies Sanctioning Condoms to Prevent HIV/AIDS

(RNS) A Vatican theologian denied Wednesday (Sept. 27) that an article he published in the Vatican newspaper in any way sanctions the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The denial, which appeared in the weekly English-language edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, was unusual because it was directed at another Roman Catholic organ, the Jesuit magazine America, published in New York.

The priest apparently took the step because America refused to accept the earlier denials he made in interviews. The magazine said on Sept. 20 it stood by the analysis to appear in its Sept. 23 issue.

But Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau, an official of the Congregation for the Family, labeled “erroneous” America’s conclusion that his article indicated the church has relaxed its opposition to the distribution of condoms to fight HIV/AIDS. The church opposes all forms of artificial birth control.

Suaudeau’s article, titled “Prophylactics or Family Values? Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS,” appeared in L’Osservatore Romano’s Italian daily edition on April 5 and the English weekly on April 19.

“Here we find important signals of what many have suspected all along, that while individual bishops and archbishops have occasionally repudiated local HIV prevention programs that include the distribution of prophylactics (more commonly referred to as condoms), the Roman Curia is more tolerant of the matter,” Jesuits Jon D. Fuller and James F. Keenan wrote in America.

Fuller, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and assistant director of the Adult Clinical AIDS Program at Boston Medical Center, and Keenan, a professor of moral theology at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., based their conclusion on Suaudeau’s assertion that the use of condoms proved to be a “lesser evil” in fighting HIV/AIDS in Thailand.

“Any interpretation of my article as claiming to attempt to cast a doubt on the church’s official teaching on this point has absolutely no foundation,” Suaudeau responded. “The use of condoms, as I state in my article, `cannot be proposed as a model of humanization and development’ because it is always an intrinsic, objective moral disorder.”

Suaudeau said that he used the expression “lesser evil” in “the strictly medical sense of public health.” He said it “must consequently be understood not in the moral sense but exclusively in an epidemiological sense.”

New Sectarian Clashes Claim 14 Lives in Indonesia

(RNS) As the death toll from sectarian violence in eastern Indonesia continued to climb, six Indonesians from the area invaded Switzerland’s embassy in Jakarta on Wednesday (Sept. 27) to highlight their region’s plight.

“We want the world to pay attention to the Moluccas because fighting is still rampant in the Christian and Muslim quarters,” a friend of the invaders told Reuters news agency. “Both sides are facing a messy situation.”

Though the religious affiliation of those inside the building was not clear, dozens of both Christian and Muslim supporters protested outside the Swiss embassy.

The protesters said the six were ready to stay inside the Swiss embassy for days if necessary, but insisted the invasion was not a ploy to gain political asylum but rather to involve other nations in efforts to end the religion-based strife.

Sectarian violence in the Moluccas islands _ once known as the Spice Islands _ has claimed more than 2,000 lives since it began in January of last year.

Though Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid imposed a civil emergency in the area in June, violence has continued to flare. In the latest outbreak, at least 14 people were hacked to death or shot Tuesday (Sept. 26) near Ambon, the region’s capital.

Pope, Acting to Dispel Controversy, Urges Bolder Dialogue Between Faiths

(RNS) Pope John Paul II, acting to dispel controversy and confusion over a Vatican declaration of Roman Catholic primacy, has called for bold new efforts to advance ecumenical and interfaith dialogue.

“At the start of the new millennium we must not slow our steps,” John Paul said in a message Tuesday (Sept. 26) to an interfaith meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. “Rather, it is necessary to impress a major acceleration on this promising road.”

The pope’s message and a dramatic appeal by the Catholic patriarch of Lisbon for forgiveness for the 15th century persecution of the Jews in Portugal ended the three-day gathering of 250 representatives of 10 faiths from 52 countries.

The pope’s message appeared aimed at ensuring that the “Declaration Dominus Iesus” did not close the door to dialogue with members of other Christian denominations and other faiths.

The declaration, issued Sept. 5 by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to counter religious relativism, angered and confused many non-Catholics by stating that only the Roman Catholic Church offers the certainty of salvation. It said the Protestant and Anglican faiths were not churches in the true sense of the word and non-Christian religions were gravely defective.

“You well know that dialogue does not ignore real differences, but neither does it cancel the common condition of pilgrims toward new lands and new skies,” the pope said. “It is dialogue that also invites everyone to strengthen that friendship that does not separate and confuse.

“We must all be bolder on this road so that men and women of this our world, of whatever people and belief they belong to, may discover themselves to be children of the one God and brothers and sister among themselves,” John Paul said.

Cardinal Edward Cassidy, who leads the Vatican’s dialogue with other faiths, read the pontiff’s message at the closing ceremony of the 13th International Encounter on Men and Religions organized by the Italian Catholic Community of Sant’Egidio.

During the ceremony in the square outside Lisbon’s City Hall, Patriarch Jose Policarpo asked forgiveness for the church’s forced conversions and expulsions of Jews from Portugal in 1492. He embraced Portuguese Jewish leader Samuel Levi in a gesture of reconciliation.

Sant’Egidio has organized the international meetings as follow-ups to the gathering of representatives of the world’s religions the pope assembled in 1986 in the Italian town of Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis.

Vietnam Sentences Buddhists to Jail

(RNS) Five members of a Buddhist group in Vietnam were sentenced Tuesday (Sept. 26) to prison terms as long as three years for “defaming the government and abusing democracy.”

The five belong to the Hoa Hao Buddhist Church, whose practices are drawn from Buddhism, Confucianism, animism and indigenous groups. The group claims its membership totals 4 million in Vietnam, according to Reuters news agency.

Two of the five defendants received three-year jail terms from the southern Vietnamese court, while two others were given two-year sentences and another received one year in jail, according to a court official in Long Xuyen, capital of the southern province An Giang.

In a statement released Tuesday (Sept. 26), the Buddhist group’s California-based central council insisted the group had been falsely accused. The council maintained the five were arrested six months ago after complaining to Hanoi that provincial officials abused their power.

Knights of Columbus Names New Supreme Knight to Top Post

(RNS) The Knights of Columbus has appointed Carl A. Anderson as the 13th Supreme Knight, the organization’s highest executive position. Anderson will succeed Virgil C. Dechant, 70, who is retiring after serving 24 years in the post.

Anderson, 49, has served as supreme secretary since 1999 and in a variety of posts since joining in 1985. The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization with 1.6 million members.

A former Reagan administration official and Capitol Hill staffer, Anderson is now an educator, attorney and corporate executive. In 1998, Pope John Paul II appointed him to the Pontifical Academy for Life, and he is also a member of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great and the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Dechant, who will remain on the Knights’ Board of Directors, said Anderson is more than qualified for the post.

“His strength of character, vast Knights of Columbus experience, together with the know-how and policy skills he acquired in a distinguished public service career, make him especially well qualified to lead the order in its next phase of growth,” he said in a press release.

Anderson, who lives in Madison, Conn., said he sees a bright future for the Knights.

“Pope John Paul II has said we are in a new springtime for the gospel, a new springtime for the church,” he said. “If this is so, then it must also be a new springtime for the Knights.”

Falun Gong Member Said to Die in Jail

(RNS) A member of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement jailed for pro-Falun Gong protests has died in a labor camp in northern China, according to human rights monitors.

Tao Hongsheng, a former public security officer, died Sept. 20 in Hebei province after suffering from severe diarrhea. Though he received medical care Sept. 13, the treatment came too late, said the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Chinese officials arrested the 46-year-old in December and sentenced him to three years of labor re-education for protesting the government’s treatment of the Falun Gong group, according to Reuters news agency.

The movement _ a combination of traditional Chinese exercises and Buddhist and Taoist principles _ was banned in July of last year after Chinese leaders decided the group was a threat to the Communist Party.

Since then, Chinese authorities have arrested thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and sentenced movement leaders to prison terms as long as 18 years.

Tao Hongsheng had been sharing a cell with three other Falun Gong followers since July because he refused to denounce the group.

Another Falun Gong follower died at a psychiatric hospital Sept. 10, the Information Center reported. Si Pei, 49, was sent there last June by Chinese authorities after she refused to denounce Falun Gong.

Quote of the day: Yashwant Sinha, Indian finance minister

(RNS) “Violence has no place in a civilized society and I stand here on behalf of India, the land of Mahatma Gandhi who espoused the cause of nonviolence, and I condemn the violence which was unleashed here yesterday. Whether the IMF and the World Bank exist or do not exist is a matter which will be decided by the will of the 182 countries who are represented here, not by a handful of hoodlums in the streets of Prague.”

_ Yashwant Sinha, Indian finance minister, in a speech Sept. 27 to the International Monetary Fund meeting in Prague following a night of violent clashes between police and anti-IMF demonstrators. He was quoted by Reuters.

DEA END RNS