Attacks on churches in India appear to be on the rise. Four churches in the the county’s capital have been targeted in the last seven weeks, according to The Times of India.

The most recent attack in New Delhi was on Our Lady of Graces Church. The perpetrator was caught on CCTV breaking glass and toppling a statue of Mary early yesterday morning.

Archbishop Anil JT Couto of New Delhi says that these attacks illustrate a disturbing pattern. Speaking to NDTV, Couto said, “A clear pattern of orchestrated attacks is emerging as more and more churches are targeted, vandalised and set on fire.”

The most serious incident of the four occurred last month, when St Sebastian’s Church in East Delhi was burnt down by attackers. Traces of kerosene were found inside the church premises and police confirm it was a case of intentional arson.

Speaking of the attacks, Archbishop Couto says, “This is very disturbing and we request the authorities to take adequate measures to bring to book the miscreants who are threatening to weaken the social fabric of this great nation.”

Christians in India are not strangers to persecution. This year, the country ranks higher than ever on Open Doors’ World Watch List – a list highlighting the 50 most difficult countries to be a Christian – reaching number 21.

India’s Christians feared a rise in persecution following the election of Narendra Modi and BJP last May. In the first 100 days of the new government’s rule there were over 600 attacks on Christian and Muslim groups, despite promises of greater protection for religious minorities.

Source: Christian Today

Women have been banned from wearing the burqa in the capital of Xinjiang province, home to China’s largest Muslim community in an attempt to “curb growing extremism”.

State media announced the ban in Urumqi, a city of 3.1 million people, on Saturday.

“Burqas are not traditional dress for Uygur women,” the statement said. “The regulation is seen as an effort to curb growing extremism that forced Uygur women to abandon their colourful traditional dress and wear black burqas.”

Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, who account for 45.8 per cent of the population in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, according to the 2010 census.

There have been a number of clashes between the Uyghurs and Han Chinese migrants in recent years. The Chinese government has promised to crack down on extremism in Xinjiang, and has blamed extremist terror attacks elsewhere in China on Islamists from this region.

But human rights advocates have said that the government’s laws, which claim to tackle separatism and extremism, have infringed on the rights of the Uyghurs.

The announcement also made reference to the ban on the burqa in France and Belgium, both of which came into force in 2011.

The ban in Urumqi was approved by local government last month, but given the go ahead from regional authorities this weekend, according to CNN.

Source: Christian Today

Almost 5,000 Filipinos left their homes every day between 2010 and 2013 to seek work overseas, government data shows, most hoping to provide an education for their children and to meet the most basic needs of their families.

That startling statistic helped make the Philippines one of the world’s largest labour suppliers, mainly to other countries in Asia and the Middle East.

However, the strain of decades of labour migration has come with a significant social cost in Asia’s largest Catholic community and likely will be addressed by Pope Francis during his first visit to the Philippines which starts later today (Thursday).

Francis will meet ordinary Filipinos on Friday, including a migrant worker’s family. About half of the country’s 100 million people have been affected by labour migration.

It is a timely meeting for Francis, who has made defence of vulnerable migrants and workers a central issue of his papacy. At an October synod on the family, he urged bishops to find solutions to the challenges faced daily by families.

“We acknowledge the economic benefits that it brings,” said George Campos, head of Couples for Christ, the largest Catholic family movement in the Philippines.

“But it would not compensate [for] the loss of the parent from the children and the stability of the relationship within the family,” he said.

Between 10 million and 12 million Filipinos live and work overseas. With the average Philippine family comprising five members, that means at least half the population could depend on a relative working overseas sending money home to feed, clothe and educate their families.

Their remittances, which proved resilient during global economic crises, continue setting yearly records and account for about 9 per cent of Philippine GDP.

However, the social costs of such large-scale labour migration include the alienation of parents from their children and the breakdown of families.

Infidelity and marriage annulment cases have risen over the years – there is no divorce in the Philippines – although there are no official figures.

“From experience, the number one problem of couples is infidelity,” said Father Resty Ogsimer, executive secretary of the Catholic Church-based migrant welfare group ECMI.

Cases of workers being duped into human trafficking and prostitution also appear to be on the rise. Ogsimer said Filipinos often fell victim to human trafficking after leaving through unofficial channels via southwestern Zamboanga province on the way to Malaysia and elsewhere.

That is borne out by the case of a 29-year old mother of two who left in June 2012 after a Filipino recruiter and family friend promised her work with a theatre group in Singapore.

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she was sold as a prostitute in the Johor Bahru region of Malaysia.

She returned to the Philippines a month later, battered and bruised and with an injured knee after she escaped from a walled compound where she was held by her recruiters.

A few months after her return, she separated from her husband, who she said took their youngest child and never returned.

There are more unexpected problems, authorities say, with families becoming accustomed to spending money they would not normally have and workers getting into debt to maintain new-found lifestyles.

The Church acknowledges the problems and ECMI has sought to create ministries helping migrants’ families in Catholic dioceses around the Philippines over the past five years, Ogsimer said.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said the Church must help children and spouses left behind to keep their families intact.

“It is a pastoral concern,” Tagle said last week.

Source: Christian Today

Al Qaeda in Yemen has claimed responsibility for the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the Islamist militant group’s leadership for insults to the Prophet Mohammad, according to a video posted on YouTube.

Gunmen killed 17 people in three days of violence that began when they shot staff in Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week in revenge for the publication of satirical images of the Prophet.

One Western source said no hard evidence of a direct operational link to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had yet been found.

But it was the first time that a group had officially claimed responsibility for the attack, which was led by Cherif and Said Kouachi, two French-born brothers of Algerian extraction who had visited Yemen in 2011.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said the United States believed the video was authentic but officials were still determining if the claim of responsibility is true.

“As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we…claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God,” Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, an AQAP ideologue, said in the recording.

Ansi said the “one who chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is the leadership of the organisation”, without naming an individual.

“ZAWAHRI’S ORDERS”

He added that the strike had been carried out in “implementation” of the order of overall al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who has urged Muslims to attack the West using any means they can find.

Ansi also gave credit for the operation to slain AQAP propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher cited by one of the gunmen in remarks to French media as a financier of the attack.

It was not clear how Awlaki, killed by a U.S. drone in 2011, had a direct link to the Paris assault, but he inspired several militants in the United States and Britain to acts of violence.

The purported claim of responsibility put a new spotlight on a group often cited by Western officials as al Qaeda’s most dangerous branch. AQAP has recently focused on fighting government forces and Shi’ite rebels in Yemen, but says it still aims to carry out attacks abroad.

AQAP mocked a huge rally of solidarity for the victims held in Paris on Sunday, saying the shock on display showed the feebleness of the Western leaders who attended.

“Look at how they gathered, rallied and supported each other, strengthening their weakness and dressing their wounds,” it said.

Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State released a video that it said showed interviews with three French fighters in Syria praising the attacks, the SITE monitoring service reported.

One said: “I say to the French people who think that the Islamic State will not reach Europe: With permission from Allah the Almighty, we will reach Europe – all ofEurope.”

“JOY AT TORMENT”

SITE also said Nigeria’s Boko Haram group had released a video showing its leader welcoming the attacks. “We have felt joy for what befell the people of France in terms of torment, as their blood was spilled inside their country. Allah is Great!” Abubakar Shekau said in the recording, according to SITE.

One Western source described Ansi as an Al Qaeda hawk reputed to have advocated a merger with the even more hardline Islamic State.

Two senior Yemeni sources said Cherif and Said Kouachi had met Awlaki in Yemen and undergone weapons training in the eastern province of Marib. However, aMarib tribal leader denied that they had trained there in 2011 or that Awlaki had been based there.

AQAP’s Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, was once a close associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in Yemen, a neighbour ofSaudi Arabia.

Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi complained on Wednesday that Yemen had been subjected to a politicised media campaign over the alleged 2011 visit.

“The person reported to have travelled to Yemen to learn in three days how to fire a pistol had been detained and under investigation for two years in France,” Hadi said, according to the state news agency Saba. Hadi asked why such suspicious elements had been allowed to travel to Yemen and return home without being questioned.

Source: Christian Today

Two climbers completed a historic 19-day ascent to the summit of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan in California on Wednesday after scaling the rock formation’s 3,000-foot (900-metre) sheer granite face without climbing tools, representatives said.

Tommy Caldwell, 36, and Kevin Jorgeson, 30, made it to the top of El Capitan at 3:30 pm, said spokeswoman Jess Clayton of clothing company Patagonia.

The two men, who were the first to climb El Capitan’s so-called Dawn Wall without bolts or climbing tools but used safety ropes in case of falls, climbed the rock face in stages beginning on December 27. They had been expected to reach the summit on Wednesday afternoon.

The Dawn Wall of El Capitan is divided into 32 climbing pitches, which are varying lengths of rock that the climbers mastered with only their hands and feet. The wall has been scaled before, first by legendary climber Warren Harding in 1970, but never without climbing tools.

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder and owner who climbed El Capitan in 1964, joked about attitudes toward evolution in a tongue-in-cheek statement celebrating the ascent. He said it “leaves Pope Francis with no choice but to admit our closest relative is the chimpanzee.”

Caldwell and Jorgeson reached the final 11 pitches on Tuesday after working their way past some of the toughest stretches on the rock.

Since the warmth of the day caused their hands and feet to perspire, the two often started climbing at dusk. They used ropes and other tools to move back and forth between the pitches they were attempting to master and their campsite, perched high on the rock.

Jorgeson struggled for several days last week on difficult pitch 15, at one point being forced to rest for two days while the skin on his fingers healed after being ripped off by razor-sharp ledges.

Their attempt on El Capitan was closely watched in the climbing world and drew worldwide news headlines and attention on social media as they made progress toward the summit.

Caldwell, 36, who is sponsored by Patagonia and is one of National Geographic’s “adventurers of the year” for 2015, conceived of the climb in 2007, the company said. Jorgeson spent five years preparing for the climb, his website said.

Source: Christian Today