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The Catholic archbishop of Port Moresby, John Ribat, says the plan by the speaker of parliament, Theo Zurenuoc, to place the bible in parliament to symbolise Papua New Guinea’s status as a Christian nation has political aspects to it.
He says that the speaker’s plan is backed by a small group of people who do not represent the majority of the country’s churches.
Ribat told Radio Australia that such an effort should be “solely the church’s and not the government’s.”
Gregory Poling is an expert on Southeast Asia with the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
The late Rev. Gene Hood donated the Bible.
Hood, 77, did not live to see the fuss.
He died suddenly of a heart attack, just days after handing over the Bible.
He was an Indianapolis based preacher and globetrotting missionary.
He handed out a lot of Bibles in his life time — in Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Korea, South Africa.
He oversaw the dispensing of more than a million of them in Russia alone, according to his obituary.
The Bible was not just any Bible.
It was a King James first edition believed published in 1611.
One expert told the ABC the Bible is worth $63,000 to $95,000.
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