Police said Fr Raja Reddy engineered the kidnapping and attack on Bishop Prasad Gallela last month and this was motivated by "greed for money and power".

According to police, the suspects confessed to four earlier attempts to kidnap the bishop between April 6 and 15.

Continue reading

"We join with our leaders and with all people of faith in Fiji to pray for our soldiers who have been held captive," Archbishop Winston said in a statement.

"We pray also for the families and communities whose loved ones are victims of violence in the Middle East."

"This situation of crisis for Fijians serving in the UN Peace Keeping Force brings home to us strongly our deep connections with many other victims of violence."

"It brings home to us the need to work and pray for peace in our communities, our countries and our world."

Archbishop Winston called on all parishes in Polynesia to pray intentionally this Sunday and the week following:

• for the well-being and the release of those held captive,
• for families and friends of Fiji soldiers,
• for the UN Peace Keeping Force and its mission.

Fijian Army Commander Brigadier General Mosese Tikoitoga said they "are continuing negotiations at all levels".

He said they had been assured that the men were being treated well and had come to no harm.

"However, we are still very concerned that we cannot confirm at this stage their exact location, whether they are still in Syria or whether they have been moved to neighbouring countries," he said.

On Monday afternoon Tikoitoga said the situation surrounding the detained Fijian peacekeepers remained unchanged.

In a statement, he said the Fijian army is coordinating closely with the United Nations team for the safe release of the 45 Fijian troops.

He emphasised that despite the situation, the troops have access to food, water and medical supplies and all are reported to be in good health.

The U.N. peacekeepers from Fiji were seized by Islamist militants on Thursday, one of several groups attacked in the volatile frontier between Syria and Israel. U.N. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that they were now treating it as a case of kidnapping.

Archbishop Winston encouraged parishes to use this prayer for peace from the NZ Prayer Book:

O God,
it is your will to hold both heaven and earth
in a single peace.
Let the design of your great love
shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows,
and give peace to your Church,
peace among nations,
peace in our homes and peace in our hearts.

Source

• Anglican Taonga
• Reuters.com
• ABC.net.au
• Fiji Times
• Image: Twitter

'Imagine your brothers, sisters, your mothers, your nieces, your nephews, your children, everybody that makes you smile, the good time you're having,' she says.

'Open your eyes. The time that you took closing your eyes and thinking of your people, imagine now everybody you thought of disappeared from the face of this earth just in that minute. That's my life in the DRC.'

There is stunned silence.

It's lunchtime in Sydney and we are sitting in the shadow of the beautiful Harbour Bridge, a symbol of wealth, progress and equal access for all.

In Lulu's homeland, the ironically-named Democratic Republic of Congo, it is not yet dawn; soon the cockerels will begin crowing and the women will rise to start their work for the day, stoking fires, collecting water, tending crops, dodging the men — soldiers and militia and civilians — who will almost certainly threaten to rape and abuse them.

Northwest of there, in Nigeria, parents of around 300 girls abducted in the past month by Islamist group Boko Haram will have in all likelihood spent the night sleepless, wondering in the agonisingly slow pre-dawn hours how it is that evil is allowed to reign in a world as powerful and learned as ours.

It's a stark contrast and one that can no longer be used as an excuse by westerners who turn a blind eye to the evils that millions of people — girls and women in particular — endure in countries far removed from our own.

It is also a reminder of our willingness to be led by the media when deciding which events and atrocities to solemnise, rather than speaking out about all issues — and brainstorming responses to them — even when they're not trending on social media or being glamorised by celebrities. Continue reading.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: Melbourne Archdiocese

It's a country of—so to speak—unspecified data and dimensions. Nigeria is not simply plagued by inexactitude; it cultivates numerical and other forms of fuzziness.

The other day, Ikhide Ikheloa, one of Nigeria's most pugnacious gadflies, was waxing indignant on Facebook and Twitter.

His grouse? Nigeria has been in the global news circuit on account of the dreadful abduction, on April 14, of teenage girls from their secondary school in Chibok, Borno State.

Mr Ikheloa was riled that nobody in Nigeria, least of all reporters, seemed to know the exact number of girls who were abducted by suspected Boko Haram terrorists.

The initial figures ranged from 100 to more than 200.

Later, Asabe Kwambura, the principal of the Government Girls Secondary School, stated that 230 girls were abducted. Some said 234.

An official of the Borno State government said 129.

That manner of inexact information is painful to stomach. Yet, Nigerians have grown accustomed to it. Continue reading.

Okey Ndibe is an acclaimed Nigerian writer, essayist and political columnist. He teaches African and African Diaspora literatures at Brown University.

Source: The is Africa

Image: The Guardian

Sources in Ukraine say Father Mykola Kvych, a pastor and a Ukrainian military chaplain, was abducted by pro-Russian forces after celebrating the liturgy.

Continue reading

Father Renato Salvatore, who was re-elected at chapter meeting in May, and five other men were arrested by Italy's finance police Nov. 6. Continue reading

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has declared that Egypt will "control all parts of Sinai", where clashes have been occurring between militants and Egyptian soldiers. The Al-Qaeda-inspired militants are seeking to set up an Islamic state in the area.

The Catholic bishops of the Holy Land — including Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal, Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour and Holy Land Custos Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa — urged Egypt to act on the crisis facing Sinai asylum seekers.

"We, the heads of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, continue to call out to the world in our deep concern for the fate of the African asylum seekers who have been kidnapped as they pass through Sinai," they said.

The bishops said hundred of victims, many kidnapped in Sinai while on their way from Eritrea and Sudan, "are being tortured — suspended by the limbs, burnt by white hot irons, electrocuted on their body parts and systematically raped."

"At this very moment, the relatives of the victims are paying extortion money to release their loved ones," they said. "May the cry of the oppressed be heard by those who now have the opportunity to release them from their bondage."

Up till now, Egyptian authorities have cited the 1978 Camp David agreement with Israel as a reason for being unable to act effectively in the demilitarised Sinai Peninsula.

But now that forces have been deployed against the Islamic militants, the bishops said, the Egyptian authorities should seize the chance to come to the aid of Sinai asylum seekers "and make sure the trafficking in human beings stops".

Source:

Catholic News Agency

Image: Mondoweiss

Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared in 1983 after leaving her family's Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was an employee of the Holy See.

A former member of the Magliana gang, Mancini said that young Emanuela Orlandi was kidnapped after Mafia figures learned that they had lost "more than 200 million dollars" that they had sought to launder through the Vatican bank. Depositors took huge losses because of the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, with which the Vatican bank had extensive ties.

"There was a problem with money not being returned, and the choice was between leaving some cardinal's body by the side of the road or hitting someone close to the Pope," said Mancini. He added that Enrico De Pedis, a noted crime figure in Rome, drove the car that was used in the abduction of Emanuela Orlandi.

Police investigators exhumed the body of Enrico De Pedis, searching for clues that might help to solve the mystery of Emanuela Orlandi's disappearance. Several organized-crime figures have said that De Pedis was involved in the girl's disappearance.

De Pedis' body was located in the basilica of Sant'Apollinare. One informant had suggested that Emanuela Orlandi might have been buried in the same tomb.

Investigators found only one body but had found some 200 containers with bones near De Pedis' tomb in the ossuary, and said that they would be tested in the coming days and weeks.

The remains of Enrico De Pedis will be re-interred in another burial ground—not in the Roman basilica.

Image Times Colonist