Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has launched a survey on behalf of the Church. It’s seeking the views of people with first-hand experience of abuse to find out what a good response from the Church should look like.

Dr Sheila Fish, who reviews safeguarding in faith contexts for SCEI, told Premier the Church has a responsibility for anyone who has been abused by people who work for the Church. She said it is also committed to keeping everyone involved in Church activities safe.

“We also want to hear from people who needed help for other reasons not related to abuse by people in church roles. You might have been a victim of domestic abuse, you might have been vulnerable due to different life circumstances and turned to church for help and support.

“If the Church is going to have a chance to improve how it treats people when they do disclose abuse… it’s vital that they hear directly from people who had that first-hand experience.”

SCEI stated that it fully appreciates that survivors will have painful experiences and strong feelings about their personal cases. The aim of the survey is not to gather survivors’ testimonials of past or current experiences of Church responses, but to hear survivors’ views and perspectives of what should happen at different stages of engagement.

Fish added that it wants to hear from people who’ve had both good and bad…

Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan said in a letter to members of the Church that “murders continue without relent”.

He added: “God’s justice be upon those who kill the Lord’s anointed ones. There is a special place in hell for killers. There is a worse place for those who kill priests.”

Two gunmen killed a priest as he prepared to celebrate Mass at the altar of a chapel in the north of the country on Sunday.

The killing is the latest deadly attack on priests in Asia’s largest predominantly Catholic nation. The two men shot the Rev Richmond Nilo with pistols in the chapel in Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province.

Fr Tito Paez was killed in December 2017 and Fr Mark Anthony Ventura was killed in April this year.

Archbishop Socrates called for the Church to observe “day of reparation” on 18th June.

He encouraged Christians to “stand up for the Lord and courageously correct error and sin” and “work actively for social and political changes grounded in Catholic moral teachings and Christian social ethics”.

18th June will also be a day of fasting and abstinence for the priests and other leaders in the Church.

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Set up by the National Churches Trust and 2buy2, the national buying group for UK, charities, schools and churches, MaintenanceBooker helps churches to prevent problems such as leaking roofs and crumbling stonework.

Churches and chapels of all denominations can use the website to get professional help for essential maintenance tasks, thereby preventing the need for expensive repairs.

They can book gutter clearance and repairs, lightning protection inspection, tree surveys and maintenance as well as asbestos surveys and removal.

More services will be added later in the year, such as stonework and lime mortaring with bat surveys, and grounds and graveyard maintenance in the pipeline.

Becky Clark, director of churches and cathedrals for the Church of England said the website will make it easier to keep church buildings in good repair.

“Simple tasks like keeping gutters and drains clear, identifying problems with trees and properly maintaining them and ensuring stonework is well looked after will help prevent unexpected large repair bills and can encourage local people, whether churchgoers or not, to take an interest in their church,” she said.

For many churches the cost of maintenance can be a major barrier to keeping their building in good repair, so users of MaintenanceBooker can obtain Preventative Maintenance…

Lord Alton asked about the UK government’s response, including “what consideration they have given to the case for referring the government of Burma to the International Criminal Court?”

According to the United Nations (UN), renewed fighting between the Myanmar Army and Kachin Independence Army has led to the displacement of at least 4,000 civilians since early April.

In a statement on 9th June, to mark the seventh anniversary of the resumption of conflict in Kachin State, Global Kachin Communities claimed as many as 7,000 have been displaced in the past two months.

In his response, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), expressed the government’s “deep concern” at the situation.

“We have called upon the Burmese military and all parties to cease hostilities and allow the humanitarian access that is required to be provided to displaced people.

“Turning to Rakhine, the Burmese authorities must show that the commission of inquiry can deliver accountability for the perpetrators of atrocities. If not, the Government will consider supporting international routes to justice,” he said.

Rt Rev Alan Smith, Lord Bishop of St Albans noted that “the reported atrocities against the Rohingya have been described as crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide”, and asked “whether the human rights violations in Kachin and Shan states meet the criteria of at least…