www.scross.co.za
March 14 to March 20, 2012
Catholics must stand for human rights
Finding God in a gap year
Page 9
Page 3
R5,50 (incl VAT RSA)
Reg No. 1920/002058/06
No 4767
The miracle of abundance in our lives
Page 7
Politics behind Jo’burg murder of cardinal’s nephew? BY CLAIRE MATHIESON
T A Stations of the Cross procession takes place in Havana during preparations for Pope Benedict’s upcoming visit to Cuba. The Holy Father will visit the island nation as well as Mexico from March 27-28. It will be the second papal visit to the communist-ruled island; Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998. (Photo: Reuters/CNS)
Terror attacks on Christians have tripled in seven years BY BRIDGET KELLY
T
ERRORIST attacks on Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia tripled in a seven-year period, a Vatican official has told a United Nations meeting. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer to United Nations offices in Geneva, told the UN Human Rights Council that while Christians are not the only victims, attacks on them in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia “increased 309% between 2003 and 2010”. He did not offer any specific numbers. “Approximately 70% of the world’s population lives in countries with high restrictions on religious beliefs and practices, and religious minorities pay the highest price. In general, rising restrictions on religion affect more than 2,2 billion people,” the archbishop told the council members. The archbishop denounced “intolerance that leads to violence and to the killing of many innocent people each year simply because of their religious convictions”. In some countries, which the archbishop did not name, religious freedom is threat-
ened by “government-imposed and unjust restrictions”. Yet religious freedom is a fundamental and inalienable right, which can foster a healthy cooperation and spirit of shared responsibility among believers of different religions, he said. Education and the media are two powerful tools for promoting respect for religions and for religious freedom, he said. Unfortunately, many countries where there is a lack of religious freedom or outright persecution have weak schools and weak media because of underdevelopment, poverty or a restricted access to information. The archbishop also said the international community can prevent future violence by promoting and protecting the human rights of everyone. The international community must work, “to sustain mutual tolerance and respect of human rights and a greater equality among citizens of different religions in order to achieve a healthy democracy where the public role of religion and the distinction between religious and temporal spheres are recognised,” Archbishop Tomasi said.—CNS
HE murder in Johannesburg of the nephew of a Congolese cardinal might be connected to political instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Christian Monsengwo, 22, was fatally shot at close range at the entrance to his family home in Alberton while returning from university on February 24. He was the only nephew of Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, the archbishop of Kinshasa, who was leading the pope’s annual Lenten retreat at the time of the murder. Congolese born Fr Jean-Marie Kuzituka Did’ho of St Joseph’s parish in Mokoena, Soweto, said members of the Congolese community in South Africa suspect that the murder might have been an attempt to intimidate the cardinal who has been outspoken about the political situation in the DRC. “Some people believe that this could be related to the uncle’s stance on the political issues in the country. It may have been an attempt to silence the cardinal,” said Fr Kuzituka Did’ho.
Church friends are ‘super-charged’ BY NANCY FRAZIER O’BRIEN
H
ARVARD University public policy professor Robert D Putnam has a tonguein-cheek suggestion for parish priests: “Spend less time on the sermons, and more time arranging the church suppers.” That’s because research by Prof Putnam and Chaeyoon Lim, assistant professor of sociology at the University of WisconsinMadison, shows that the more church friends a person has, the happier he or she is. “Church friends are super-charged friends, but we have no idea why,” Prof Putnam told a summit on religion in Washington. “We have some hypotheses, but we don’t know for sure.” The researchers found that non-church friends do not provide the same benefit in terms of well-being and that other measures of religiosity—belief in God or frequency of prayer, for example—do not serve as a reliable
predictor of a person’s satisfaction with life. “People who frequently attend religious services are more satisfied with their lives not because they have more friends overall but because they have more friends in their congregations,” the two researchers wrote in the American Sociological Review. And church-going alone without making friends does not improve well-being, they found. “In short, sitting alone in the pew does not enhance one’s life satisfaction. Only when one forms social networks in a congregation does religious service attendance lead to a higher level of life satisfaction.” According to a new Gallup study on how religion affects well-being, both in the United States and worldwide, those who were considered “very religious” not only had higher well-being but were much less likely to smoke and more likely to exercise and eat five fruits and vegetables a day.—CNS
Congolese Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo of Kinshasa offers spiritual reflections to Pope Benedict and Vatican officials during the week-long papal Lenten retreat in the Vatican. While he was in Rome, the cardinal’s only nephew was shot dead in Johannesburg in what some Congolese Catholics believe was a political assassination designed to intimidate the cardinal and the Church. (Photo: L’Osservatore Romano/CNS)
Catholics in the DRC have been targeted by police recently as the Church is a key force in the country. Some 30 000 Catholics monitored the recent election, the largest monitoring group in the country. The results have been widely viewed as fraudulent by the Church and international observers. In January, the DRC’s 35 bishops issued a scathing report calling the election corrupt. “People are afraid in Kinshasa, especially Catholics who are being targeted,” said Fr Kuzituka Did’ho. Most recently, a peaceful Christian march ended when heavily armed police turned violent on the participants. Organised by the Council of Congolese Catholic Lay Apostolate and supported by Cardinal Monsengwo, the march went through Kinshasa to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the massacre of Christians on February 16, 1992. The march also aimed to demand justice and the truth of the polls and the resignation of the Independent National Electoral Commission members. “Government refused to allow the march to take place peacefully. Several parishes were looted and many nuns and priests were arrested,” said Fr Kuzituka Did’ho. He said Catholics were being targeted by government forces and pro-government supporters. Marchers were subjected to tear-gas and water cannons to halt their movement. At the parish of St Joseph Matonge, in the capital city, local media reported that women were beaten in and around the parish and the office of Friends of Nelson Mandela for Human Rights was violated by police looking for marchers. Local human rights NGOs denounced the action on the peaceful marchers, many of whom were clergy wearing white cassocks, carrying Bibles, rosaries, crucifixes, statues of Mary and other sacred images, as well as praying and singing religious hymns. Since then things have calmed in the city, according to Missionaries of Africa Father Evans Chama, who is based in a Kinshasa parish. “It is visibly calm [now]. Given what is on the ground now, there's very little, if not nothing, to fear,” Fr Chama said. The priest said that there has been isolated talk linking the murder of the cardinal’s nephew to the Church’s opposition to the election results, but “there are even many people who are not aware of the assassination”. Archbishop Buti Tlhagale, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), has offered his condolences to Cardinal Monsengwo. “The loss of any life by violence is not according to the will of God. The fact that another life is lost in Johannesburg—whoever it is—is very sad,” said Archbishop Tlhagale in a statement. The archbishop assured the Congolese community in the archdiocese of his prayers and “full cooperation to bring the perpetrators of this violence to law”.