Narváez, a missionary sister, was kidnapped in February. She had been working in Karangasso, Mali, caring for orphans, teaching adult women to read and write, dispensing needed medications and giving assistance to women.

On the video she explains how she was kidnapped, says she is good health and asks her sisters to pray for her.

The Al Quaeda video includes five other kidnapped foreigners. They include three female missionaries from Australia, France and Romania, plus two other captives from South Africa and Switzerland.

According to the US-based monitoring group SITE, the 17 minute-footage features an English narrator who appears with his face obscured.

He introduces each of the hostages and tells their families that no negotiations have taken place for their release.

He goes on to direct a message to the captives' governments saying: "The fate of your children and citizens are within your hands. The demands of the mujahideen are simple and legitimate.To the families of the captives we say: If you desire a genuine and earnest solution for your children, then you yourselves strive to rescue them.

"We also inform you that of this moment, no genuine negotiations have begun to rescue your children. We inform you of this in case a third party deludes you that all things are going as planned and everything is ok.

"Having said this, negotiations with the mujahideen are still active. We also inform you that there are hidden hands playing with these files and are playing with the safety and lives of your children. And proof of this is in the quick and swift release of former French captive held by the mujahideen in and outside of Mali.'

Source

• Rome Reports
• Christian Today
• Source: Arquidiocesis

How true! This has been going on since the beginning of time and is showing few signs of disappearing any time soon. We still do violence and evil and justify them in God's name.

We see countless examples of this in history. From the time that we first gained self-consciousness, we've done violence in God's name.

It began by sacrificing human persons to try to attain God's favor and it led to everything from actively persecuting others for religious reasons, to waging war in God's name, to burning people for heresy at the Inquisition, to practicing capital punishment for religious reasons, and, not least, at one point in history, to handing Jesus over to be crucified out of our misguided religious fervor.

These are some salient historical examples; sadly not much has changed. Today, in its most gross form, we see violence done in God's name by groups like Al-Qaida and Isis who, whatever else might be their motivation, believe that they are serving God and cleansing the world in God's name by brute terrorism and murder.

The death of thousands of innocent people can be justified, they believe, by the fact that this is God's cause, so sacred and urgent that it allows for the bracketing of all basic standards of humanity, decency, and normal religion. When it's for God's cause, outright evil is rationalized.

Happily, it's impossible for most of us to justify this kind of violence and murder in our minds and hearts, but most of us still justify this kind of sacral violence in more subtle modes.

Many of us, for instance, still justify capital punishment in the name of divine justice, believing that God's purposes demand that we kill someone.

Many too justify abortion by an appeal to our God-given freedoms.

Not least, virtually all of us justify certain violence in our language and discourse because we feel that our cause is so special and sacred that it gives us the right to bracket some of the fundamentals of Christian charity in our dealings with those who disagree with us, namely, respect and graciousness. Continue reading

• Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI is the President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas.

Showing off its handiwork daily via Twitter and YouTube, Isis has repeatedly demonstrated that it is much more than a transnational terrorist organisation - rather, it is an entity with sophisticated command, control, propaganda and logistical capabilities, and one that has proven its ability to take and hold strategically critical territory at the heart of the Middle East.

But as world leaders grapple with how to respond to this unprecedented crisis, they must first understand how Isis came to exist.

Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched.

It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear - the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams.

Isis's rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad's Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad's army and intelligence services, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Syria's initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised - and then radicalised and violently militant.

The Shia Islamist axis used chemical weapons, artillery and barrel bombs to preserve its crescent of influence.

Syria's Sunni Arab revolutionaries in turn sought international assistance, and when the world refused, they embraced a pact with the devil, al-Qaida.

With its fiercely loyal army of transnational jihadis, al-Qaida once again gained a foothold in the heart of the Middle East.

Fuelled by the hate and fear engendered by images of dismembered children or women suffering from the effects of chemical weapons, disaffected youth from around the world rushed to Syria, fuelling an ever more violent race to the bottom. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: The Telegraph

Father Paolo Dall'Oglio disappeared on July 28, after he entered Syria, apparently in an attempt to negotiate the release of hostages held by rebel forces.

He was apparently taken hostage himself, and in the subsequent weeks, there have been occasional reports of his death.

Continue reading

Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, a religious superior in Syria, also appealed to the international community to stop supporting violent militias linked to al-Qaida and other extremist groups guilty of atrocities against innocent Syrian civilians.

Continue reading

"The situation is much more complex and difficult to assess than the media in the West make it out to be," Father Andrew Halemba, Middle East projects co-ordinator for Aid to the Church in Need, told Zenit.

"They seem to be ignoring that there are also internal power struggles and religious tensions between the different Muslim groups, tribal feuds and acts of vengeance are a daily occurrence, and crime is rising in the country due to the unstable situation.

"We are witnesses to vulgar falsehoods that brazenly and shamelessly inflate a small demonstration involving around 50 people into a major demonstration with hundreds or even thousands of persons," Father Halemba said.

"The photos are patched together from different pieces using image processing software in studios created especially for this purpose."

The Franciscans in Syria called on foreign powers to stop sending arms to the country after a reported 200 civilians were massacred in the village of Tremseh on July 12.

"It is a tragedy, the news is confusing, truth is the first victim," Father Romualdo Fernandez, director of the Ecumenical Centre of Tabbaleh, told the Vatican's Fides news agency.

"If foreign powers continue to arm and finance the warring parties, the war will continue and victims will increase."

Syria's 10% Christian minority, who have enjoyed protected status under President Assad, generally support his regime. They have also had peaceful relations with the various elements of the Muslim population.

But a Jesuit priest recently expelled from Syria, Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, said Christians seem to have traded civil rights and hopes for the country's improvement for a "controlled" religious freedom.

And last April the Franciscan Custodian of the Holy Land, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said the regime had no future and clerics who fervently defended Assad were wrong to do so.

Sources:

Zenit

Catholic News Agency

Vatican Radio

Vatican Insider

Image: Rubicon

American al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn wrote Osama bin Laden in January 2011 and laid out reasons for reaching out to Catholics, particularly the Irish. He urged bin Laden to use public anger at the church's mishandling of clerical abuse to encourage Irish people to convert to Islam, according to newly declassified documents.

The letter was contained in files allegedly found at bin Laden's Pakistan hideout after he was killed by U.S. special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, last May. Read More

The Vatican statement May 2 came the day after President Barack Obama announced that U.S. forces had killed bin Laden in an attack on his hideout in northwest Pakistan. In several U.S. cities, the news prompted street demonstrations and expressions of jubilation.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released a brief written statement reacting to the news.

"Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end," Father Lombardi said.

"In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred," the spokesman said.

The Vatican missionary news agency, Fides, reported that Christian schools and other institutes were closed and churches put on guard in Pakistan's main cities out of fear of possible repercussions on the Christian minorities there. Pakistani Christians are often identified in extremist literature with the West and the United States.

Paul Bhatti, a government adviser for religious minorities in Pakistan, told Fides that "the situation is tense."

"In fact, there are strong fears of reactions — senseless reactions — against the Christian minorities. The government is giving the maximum attention to prevention measures," he said.

Father Mario Rodrigues, director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Pakistan, said after a meeting with government officials May 2: "They put us on alert, requesting the closure of our institutes and making available additional police personnel around the churches. The Christians of Pakistan are innocent victims in this and other situations. Any pretext is used to threaten them or launch an attack."

Rodrigues said some experts predicted that bin Laden's killing would weaken the Taliban and their ideologies, which could help diminish anti-Christian persecution in the long term. But he said radical Islamic groups were flourishing in Pakistan, and other extremist leaders could arise.

What is needed, he said, is a serious policy of interreligious tolerance at every level — cultural, social, political and legislative.

Sources

• Reuters
• Catholic News Service