INDIAN CHURCH LEADERS QUESTIONS PROMISED SECURITY AFTER ANOTHER MURDER IN ORISSA

Nearly four months after tension in riot-hit Kandhamal, Orissa, India, had subsided, the murder of a Christian last week has raised eyebrows on the security of Christians and claims of "normalcy."

On Feb. 19, the body of Hrudayananda Nayak, 40, was found in a jungle near his home village of Rudangia, in Kandhamal district.
Local people claimed that Nayak, a Christian, was living in relief camps after violence broke out in the district. However, a day after his return to the village, he was killed.
"Somebody may have hit him on the head, causing his death," District Superintendent of Police S. Praveen Kumar said.
Rabindra Parichha, a social activist, claimed that Nayak, among other Christian leaders, was on the hit list of Hindu radicals.
Nayak, he said, was the fourth Christian to be abducted and killed after violence ebbed down by the end of October.
“The state should take strong action against the culprits," Parichha said.
According to Father Prasanna Singh, a parish priest in Kandhamal, the murder revealed to the world that violence against Christians still continues in sensitive areas. The murder committed during an afternoon has shocked the Christians in the state, the prelate added.
Violence broke out in August last year and has rendered thousands homeless, dozens murdered and hundreds of churches razed down.
The violence was sparked after Hindu fundamentalists accused Christians of slaying a local Hindu leader on Aug. 23, 2008, for which the Maoists had repeatedly claimed responsibility.
Earlier this month the state government had announced the shutdown of relief camps in Kandhamal district.
Despite church leaders opposing the hasty decision of the government, the Kandhamal district collector announced the closure of several relief camps, forcing many to return to homes that may have been destroyed and with little money and no immediate employment.
The National Council of Churches in India told Christian Today that victims in the state are reluctant to return to their villages, due to increasing "religious segregation" and scurrilous threats demanding "re-conversion to Hinduism."
Nayak’s murder is indeed a case in point to affirm that government claims of "safety" for Christians returning to villages are distrustful, the Church body commented.
Earlier this year, India’s Supreme Court ordered the state government of Orissa to protect the tens of thousands of Christians being targeted by Hindu extremists. Church leaders have accused the Orissa government of failing to protect the state’s persecuted Christians.

CHRISTIAN BOOK STORE VADALIZED IN TURKEY:PRAY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN TURKEY

On Feb. 12, a Turkish Bible Society bookstore in the city of Adana was vandalized by Muslim extremists for the second time in a week,News reported.

Security cameras showed two Muslim youth vandalizing the storefront of the Soz Kitapevi bookstore. They were kicking and smashing glass in both the window and the door. The door frame was also damaged.

On Feb. 7, the glass of the front door was smashed and the security camera mangled. The bookstore had in the past received threats from Muslim extremists. Last November, a man reportedly entered the bookstore and began making accusations that the bookstore was linked to the Unites States Intelligence Agency and said, “You work with them killing people in Muslim countries, harming Muslim countries.”

VOM actively supports believers in Turkey with encouraging radio broadcasts. VOM assists local Christian workers who share the gospel with their neighbors in the communities they live in. Pray for the safety of the bookstore and its owners and workers. Ask God to protect believers in Turkey and that these acts of vandalism will not develop into more serious attacks.

SOMALIA: NUNS KIDNAPPED BY ISLAMIC MILLITANTS RELEASED ; PRAY FOR SOMALIA

NAIROBI, Kenya – Two nuns working in northeast Kenya who were kidnapped last November have been freed and arrived here from Mogadishu, Somalia on Thursday (Feb. 19), but they are still traumatized.
Caterina Giraudo, 67, and Maria Teresa Oliviero, 61, both of Italy, are receiving medical care, and top leaders of the Roman Catholic Church are providing them spiritual counseling. Pastor Alois Maina of Mandera, a close friend of the nuns, told that a representative of the pope and the Cardinal of Kenya are among those counseling the nuns, who on Nov. 10 were abducted at gunpoint by suspected Islamic militants.
Father Bongiovanni Franco, who worked with the sisters in Mandera, told Compass by telephone that the sisters are fatigued.
“Their movement from one place to another, and living in house confinement most of their stay in Mogadishu, seems to have affected their health – it was like a prison cell,” Fr. Franco said. “Apart from the spiritual attention being given to the sisters, there is also the need for intensive medical examination for them.”
The nuns had been kidnapped from Elwak, near Mandera, and taken across the nearby border into Somalia. Some 20 armed Somali men suspected to be members of the Islamic insurgent group al Shabaab – said to have links with al Qaeda – had taken them away in a midnight attack using three vehicles.
Asked about the circumstances surrounding their release, Fr. Franco said, “At the moment, our focus is on spiritual and medical needs for the sisters.”
Fr. Franco added that the two nuns cultivated friendly relations with some Muslims while in Somalia, in spite of being taken there by force.
“Thank you for your prayers and concern – indeed this has helped our sisters to be released,” Fr. Franco said. “We have just completed our evening prayers with them. We are planning for a two-day retreat with the sisters.”
Fr. Franco told that the delicate security situation of the two nuns at the moment preempted the possibility of interviewing them about their ordeal. Last week Sister Giraudo reportedly told Italian television channel Sky Italia by telephone, “We are very happy ... We were treated well, we are fine.”
Sources said the two sisters are staying somewhere in Eastleigh, a few kilometers from the city center of Nairobi.
Working in Kenya since the early 1970s, the nuns had provided medical and nutritional care to poor children, the elderly and expectant mothers. They are reportedly members of the Contemplative Missionary Movement P. de Foucauld.

INDIAN NUN CLAIMS SEX IS RIFE WITHIN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Bookshops throughout India's Christian communities in Kerala have already sold out of Amen, the autobiography of Sister Jesme, who has alleged that priests and nuns not only broke their vows of celibacy with each other but regularly forced novices to have sex with them.
The Catholic Church in India is mired in a series of sexual controversies, and has only just begun to recover from the dismissal of a senior bishop who "adopted" an attractive 26-year-old female companion as his "daughter".
The book by the former nun reveals how as a young novice she was propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to "divine kisses". Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. "She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her," she claims.
When she was sent to Bangalore to stay with a priest known for his piety, he lectured her about the need for "physical love" and later assaulted her.
"Back in his room, he tried to fondle me and when I resisted, got up and asked angrily if I had seen a man. When I said no, he stripped himself, ejaculated and forced me to strip," she writes.
According to Sister Jesme, senior church officials twice tried to admit her into rehabilitation clinics and claimed she had mental problems after she complained about the scale of sexual abuse and the number of illicit affairs between nuns and priests.
Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. "How far what she says is well-founded I can't say, but the issues are not very serious. We're living with human beings in a community and she should realise this is part of human life," he told the Daily Telegraph.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH RELICS FROM ERAS OF FIRST AND SECOND TEMPLES

The Israel Antiquities Authority on Monday announced the discovery of a large building dating to the time of the First and Second Temples during an excavation in the village of Umm Tuba in southern Jerusalem.

The excavation was conducted by Zubair Adawi on behalf of the antiquities authority, prior to the start of construction there by a private contractor. The archaeological remains include several rooms arranged around a courtyard, in which researchers found a potter's kiln and pottery vessels. The pottery remains seem to date from the eighth century B.C.E. (First Temple period).

According to the antiquities authority, the site was destroyed along with Jerusalem and all of Judah during the Babylonian conquest. Jews reoccupied it during the Hasmonean period (second century B.C.E.) and it existed for another two hundred years until the destruction of the Second Temple. During the Byzantine period, the place was re-inhabited during the settlement of monasteries and farmsteads in the region between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The excavators also found royal seal impressions on some of the pottery fragments that date to the era of Hezekiah, King of Judah (end of the eighth century B.C.E.). Four "LMLK" impressions (which indicate the items belonged to the king) were discovered on handles of large jars used to store wine and oil. Seals of two high-ranking officials named Ahimelekh ben Amadyahu and Yehokhil ben Shahar, who served in the government, were also found. The Yehokhil seal was stamped on one of the LMLK impressions before the jar was fired in a kiln and this is a rare example of two such impressions appearing together on a single handle.

Excavators also discovered a Hebrew inscription - dating 600 years later than the Kingdom of Judah seals - on a fragment of a jar neck. An alphabetic sequence was engraved below the vessel's rim in Hebrew script that is characteristic of the beginning of the Hasmonean period (end of the second century B.C.E.). Three years ago, the remains of a monastery from this period were also excavated. Together with the current findings, they confirm the identification of the place as "Metofa," which is mentioned in the writings of the church fathers in the Byzantine period.

PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS URGE POPE TO CALL OFF MAY VISIT TO ISRAEL

A group of Palestinian Christians has asked Pope Benedict XVI to call off his planned visit to Israel and the West Bank this coming May. The 40 community activists wrote to the pope that his visit would "help boost Israel's image and inadvertently minimize Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation." The group urged the pope to link his visit to a series of Israeli measures, including improved access to Christian places of worship and halting taxation of church properties.

Christians from the West Bank, like their Muslim counterparts, need special permits to reach Jerusalem and its holy places. The pontiff is to visit the Holy Land May 8-15, including stops in Jordan, the West Bank and Israel.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week confirmed the pope's spring pilgrimage, avoiding any mention of tense Catholic-Jewish relations over the pontiff's rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop. This will be first by a pope to the Holy Land since John Paul visited in 2000. Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely tense since Jan. 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in 1988 when they were ordained without Vatican permission.

One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers. The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so far has not done so, saying he needs more time to review the evidence. Faced with Jewish anger over Williamson's remarks on the Holocaust, the pope said during a meeting with American Jewish leaders on Thursday that "any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable." A detailed itinerary of the pope's visit is not yet available. It would be the third visit of a reigning pontiff to Israel since the state was created in 1948. Pope Paul VI made a one-day stopover from Jordan in 1964, but since the Vatican and Israel did not yet have diplomatic relations, he avoided any statement or act that could be interpreted as even indirect recognition of the Jewish state. In March 2000, Pope John Paul II made a five-day pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories, during which he visited Christian and Jewish holy sites.