Orlandi was the daughter of a Vatican employee. She was 15 when she vanished from the street in 1983. Her fate has been the subject of much speculation.

In the latest round of speculation a document, said to have been written by a cardinal and stolen from an armoured cabinet inside the Vatican, suggests that the Vatican may have been directly involved in Orlandi's disappearance.

The document, published in Italy on Sunday, alleges the "Holy See would attest to the past payment of considerable sums on the part of the Vatican to cover Emmanuela Orlandi's stay outside Italy,".

The Secretariat of State issued a press release at the end of the day denying the document's authenticity, saying the information is "totally false and without foundation."

Even Emiliano Fittipaldi, the investigative journalist who published the document, said it could be a fake. He also noted it was unclear who wrote the document, when or why.

Despite his reservations, he included the document in a book to be published this week.

He says "that it had been found in a Vatican office raised very unsettling questions".

The Italian press has reported widely on the case.

Source

• Zenit
• New York Times
• Catholic Culture
• Image: CasertaWeb

Godoy, who works in construction, was late to meet a client for whom he was building a home extension, and his family accompanied him to the project site.

Melida and the girls—Kathryn, twelve, and Jennifer, seventeen—waited in the client's living room, snacking on cookies and checking Instagram, while Alfredo walked through the house, taking specs: how much Sheetrock he'd need, how much spackle, how many two-by-fours.

In the middle of the tour, his cell phone rang. The call came from a Texas area code.

"Are you the father of two boys?" a woman asked.

"Yes," Godoy replied. "Is everything O.K.?"

"I have them here at my house," she said.

The Godoys' younger son, Brayan, had just turned fourteen. Small for his age, he was greatly impressed by icons of the strength he hoped someday to possess: the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Robinson, a year older, was reflective and soft-spoken, a soccer player and aspiring mechanic. They had grown up in Guatemala, raised by their grandparents.

In the mid-nineties, Alfredo had been working as a security guard at Exclusivas, an upscale supermarket in Guatemala City that sold name-brand U.S. goods, when he met and courted Melida, a round-faced cashier of eighteen.

Jennifer was born in 1996, and Robinson followed, in 1998. Both Alfredo and Melida dreamed of heading north, to seek out decent-paying work that would fund their children's education.

The prospect of leaving the kids behind was anguishing, but they'd be well cared for until Alfredo and Melida returned with a nest egg, a few years later.

In 2000, the couple agreed that Alfredo would embark first on the journey to Trenton, where he had a relative who could find him a job. Melida was pregnant with Brayan; she'd wait to give birth before joining Alfredo, the next year. "That's what we decided," Alfredo told me, "with all the pain in our hearts." Continue reading

Sources

• The New Yorker
• Image: The Guardian

A Vatican spokesman called the kidnappings "a dramatic confirmation of the tragic situation in which the Syrian people and its Christian community are living".

The Asia News agency reported that the Syriac Orthodox Bishop of Aleppo, Monsignor Youhanna Ibrahim, and the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo and Iskenderun, Monsignor Boulos al-Yaziji, were stopped at gunpoint by armed men near the Turkish border on their way to the city of Aleppo.

A catechist travelling with them was shot to death while the two bishops were forced out of the car and taken away.

The two bishops were travelling on a route that was considered "safe".

According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, both are well known in Rome as veterans of ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church.

AsiaNews reported it had been told by sources that negotiations were ongoing, but nothing was known about the identity of the kidnappers, who were thought to be Chechen jihadists.

All of the churches in Aleppo — Catholic and Orthodox — have organised prayer vigils and Masses for the two prelates, the first bishops to be kidnapped in two years of civil war between the Bashar al-Assad regime and rebels.

In a strong message of solidarity, Muslim clerics in mosques across Damascus denounced the kidnapping and said the kidnappers were "violating the sanctity of Christian and Islamic clergymen".

The Organization of Islamic Co-operation also called for "immediate and unconditional release because such acts contradict the principles of true Islam and the [high] status held for Christian clergymen in Islam".

It added that Christian clergy always "lived in dignity and honour in the countries of Islam".

Sources:

National Catholic Reporter

Vatican News

Independent Catholic News

Image: The Orthodox Church

Allen offers these statistics on anti-Christian discrimination:

+ According to the Germany-based International Society for Human Rights, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.

+ According to the Pew Forum in the United States, Christians face either de jure or de facto discrimination in 139 nations, roughly two-thirds of all countries on earth.

+ The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the US estimates that an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed for the faith each year over the last decade, which works out to 11 new martyrs every hour.

Allen reports several events since Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on February 11.

On February 17, a 55-year-old Catholic priest, Father Evarist Mushi, was shot to death in Tanzania, in front of Zanzibar's Catholic cathedral. An Islamic group claimed responsibility, saying: "We thank our young men, trained in Somalia, for killing an infidel. Many more will die. We will burn homes and churches. We have not finished: At Easter, be prepared for disaster."

On February 18, Italian missionaries in Syria launched an emergency fundraising appeal called "Ransom a Christian" to help fund the release of Christians kidnapped by Islamist-inspired rebels.

The going price for a kidnapped Catholic priest was given as around $US200,000.

On February 21, Saudi Arabia's religious police swooped on a private gathering of at least 53 Ethiopian Christians, shutting down their private prayer and arresting foreign workers for practising their faith.

Also on February 21, police in India arrested four Protestant pastors while they were having dinner, after Hindu extremists accused them of forceful conversion.

Source:

National Catholic Reporter

Image: CNEWA