Tarpaulin sheets supported by bamboo poles covered the front side of St. Joseph Church as they celebrated the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Sept. 8.

St. Joseph Church of St. Philip's Parish under the Archdiocese of Karachi is the only surviving church in the Sadiq Nagar area of Karachi following the government's anti-encroachment drive near two narrow streams locally known as the Gujjar nullah and the Orangi nullah in the wake of the 2019 flash floods in the capital of Sindh province.

Mansha Noor, executive secretary of Caritas Pakistan Karachi, handed over two tarpaulin sheets with four bamboo poles to the church committee this week. Continue reading

"Decapitation is the punishment of blasphemers," read one of the placards carried by protesters.

The cartoons sending up the Prophet Mohammad triggered outrage and unrest among Muslims around the world in 2005 when they were first published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Earlier this week, Charlie Hebdo - a satirical weekly - revived the cartoons to mark the start of the trial of suspected accomplices in an Islamist militant attack on its Paris office in January 2015. Read more

Tahir Ahmed Naseem was shot dead in Peshawar district court where he was due to attend a hearing on charges of blasphemy.

Naseem was a former member of Pakistan's minority Ahmadi group, which has been constitutionally declared to be non-Muslims.

The gunman told local media that he was ordered by Prophet Muhammad in his dreams to kill Naseem because he was an Ahmadi. Read more

Tabassum Yousaf, the lawyer fighting for the freedom of 15-year-old Catholic girl Huma Younus who was kidnapped in October 2019 and forced to convert to Islam, told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that the abducted teen had managed to contact her parents and update them. Read more

Before Jamshed Eric plunges deep below Karachi's streets to clean out clogged sewers with his bare hands, he says a little prayer to Jesus to keep him safe.

The work is grueling, and he wears no mask or gloves to protect him from the stinking sludge and toxic plumes of gas that lurk deep underground.

"It is a difficult job," Mr. Eric said. "In the gutter, I am often surrounded by swarms of cockroaches." Read more

The foundation stone of St. Mary's Church, which is being rebuilt to accommodate more worshipers, was laid in the Butranwali district of Gujranwala in November last year.

Around 50 Christian families are estimated to be living in the Muslim-majority community where the church is being rebuilt.

"It is an example of true love and brotherhood that Muslim people have opened their hearts and are financing the construction work," the parish priest, Father Samran said.

"A church is the physical body of Christ on earth and we are the living parts of that one body because of the spirit of God. It is the physical representation of Heaven itself and the Holy Mass is celebrated in a church.

"We are glad that not only the local Christian community but also our Muslim brothers are supporting the construction work, which is a true sign of brotherhood and peace."

"The contribution coming from our Muslim neighbours for this holy cause will never be forgotten."

But why is the church so important to this community?

A local teacher who is in charge of the renovation work, said St. Joseph's Parish is one of 27 parishes in Lahore Archdiocese.

"It is one of the oldest mission stations in the archdiocese," Nazir Masih said.

"It was founded in 1953 by Capuchin missionaries from Belgium."

Masih says the rebuilt church will "be a visible sign of our identity and a shelter for the faithful. We need financial support to complete the construction work without any further delay."

When asked, local Muslims said they were helping to maintain a long community tradition of living in peace with one another.

Another Muslim said he had contributed 60,000 rupees (about US$400) to the cause.

"My small contribution for the House of God has filled my heart with joy which cannot be expressed in words. We [Muslims and Christians] live side by side in peace and harmony. Our community is a shining example for others," he said.

Source

• UCA News
• Image: UCA News

Sharia law is the religious law of Islam derived from the teachings of the Quran, which acts as a divine code or guide for living.

The ruling was made by the Sindh High Court on Feb. 3 during the hearing of Huma Younus, a 14-year-old Catholic girl who was abducted, pressured to convert to Islam, and forced into child marriage. Read more

Francis Javed, a father of six who works as a cobbler, told ucanews.com that he received a phone call from Caritas Pakistan Karachi at 11 a.m. on July 30. They warned him about an overflowing dam not far away.

"I shifted my family to a relative's house, alerted the community members and made announcements in the local mosque requesting people to evacuate or climb on to their rooftops," he said. Read more

The men who took them forced the girls to convert to Islam.

"We were walking back to our house after working on the farm when men in a car came out of nowhere and dragged us in with them," said Suneeta, who is Hindu and lives in Badin, a small city in the south of Pakistan. "The next thing we knew, we were in a shrine being forced to say the kalma (acceptance of Islam) by a cleric."

The men who kidnapped the girls told their mother to pay the equivalent of $365 — an enormous amount for the poor farming family — or the men would marry off the girls.

Their mother begged and borrowed from within the Hindu community and paid the ransom. She got her girls back.

The family considers itself lucky.

Every year, thousands of Hindu and Christian girls and young women are kidnapped in Pakistan and forcibly married, disappearing from their families. And while these forced conversions have been going on for decades, a recent surge in reported cases has brought the issue back into the limelight.

Around 1,000 cases of Hindu and Christian girls being forced to convert were estimated in the province of southern Sindh alone in 2018, according to the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

There are no concrete numbers for the rest of the conservative country, which is around 96 percent Muslim.

"This appears to be a systematic, organized trend and it needs to be seen in the broader context of the coercion of vulnerable girls and young women from communities that are already marginalized by their faith, class and socioeconomic status," said Mehdi Hasan, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "The ugly reality of forced conversions is that they are not seen as a crime, much less as a problem that should concern ‘mainstream' (Muslim) Pakistan."

In the majority of these cases, the girls are under 18. And while marriage under the age of 18 is illegal in Pakistan, the law is often ignored.

Meanwhile, there is no law banning forced conversions.

Child advocates say there is a clear lack of will by the government to tackle the problem.

"The government has done little in the past to stop such forced marriages," the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report. "(The executive branch) asked lawmakers to pass effective legislation to end the practice," the report added, but nothing happened.

Meanwhile, the parents of victims are often ignored by authorities and have few options, say civil rights activists.

"Injustice is being done … and there is no one here to listen to these poor people," said Veeru Kohli, a human rights activist based in Sindh. "I've lost count of the number of cases that have come up every month."

One case that made it to court was that of Shalet Javed, 15, a Christian from the city of Faisalabad in the east of Pakistan, who was kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted and married to a Muslim man in February.

"They forced me to become Muslim and married me off to a man named Zafar," she told the Lahore High Court in April during a hearing on a complaint of kidnapping filed by her father, Javed Masih. "I ran off from the house where they kept me, and now I want to live with my parents.

"I am still a Christian," she added.

Locals from Sindh province say that one reason the practice not only persists but is escalating is that powerful officials run the Muslim shrines and seminaries where Muslim clerics are converting and marrying off these girls.

They are shielded by the government, which is afraid of upsetting them in the tense, often volatile environment of Pakistani politics, in which an attack on a religious figure is seen as an attack on Islam and liable to draw out extremists.

Kohli, meanwhile, said the conversions operate like a factory assembly line.

"With the number of cases and with the impunity these cases have, it is evident that the forced conversions (are) a business being run like a factory," she said.

Mian Abdul Haq, also known as Mian Mitho, a local political and religious leader in Sindh, is allegedly responsible for numerous forced conversions of girls, according to victims' families and activists.

Speaking about a recent case in which two Hindu sisters, Reena Meghwar, 12, and Raveena Meghwar, 14, were abducted, converted and married off to Muslim men in Ghotki in Sindh, he said the girls voluntarily switched faiths.

"They wanted to convert, it was their own free will, and there is no point in stopping those who want to embrace Islam," said Mitho.

Mitho denied accusations that Hindu girls are being targeted for conversion.

"Boys also convert, there are entire villages that convert," he said. "This is just a conspiracy against Islam that Hindu girls are being forced to convert. They all convert on their own."

Meanwhile, the case of the Meghwar sisters has ignited a debate across Pakistan about the issue.

After the girls were taken, their father, Hari Daas, tried in vain to get authorities to act. When that failed, out of frustration, he tried to burn himself alive in protest but was stopped before he could do serious injury to himself.

The government reacted, filing a complaint on kidnapping charges. However, when the girls were brought to the court with their husbands, they gave statements saying they married and converted without coercion.

The Islamabad High Court sent the girls home with their husbands.

"This is where the problem lies — girls in all these cases are threatened, and they will only give these kinds of statements," said Kohli, who also said courts are not enforcing laws barring underage marriage.

"These so-called marriages are illegal and so are the conversions," Kohli added.

As a result of the kidnappings and conversions, thousands of Hindus seek asylum in India every year. Others are thinking about it.

"We were saved once from the abduction but I am afraid that it will happen again to us," said Suneeta, the 16-year-old who was kidnapped with her sister. "What if this time they come for us and there is no one to bring us back. We are not safe here in our own country."

Mick Kelly remembers the phone call from his friend in Pakistan as if it was yesterday.

"He asked me to help out this one guy who was fleeing Pakistan, and on his way to Bangkok. That was more than five years ago," Kelly recalls.

That friend - like Mick, a Jesuit priest - was asking for the Sydney-born Kelly to give a Pakistani Christian and would-be refugee help when he arrived in Thailand's sprawling, unfamiliar capital.

"It all started by accident and has grown from there."

Kelly, a journalist by training and founder of the Melbourne-based Eureka Street magazine, had moved to Bangkok in 2009 to run UCAN, the Union of Catholic Asian News.

Ten years later, he is still in Bangkok and at the helm of UCAN, which has about 45 journalists in countries throughout the region.

But it's his "accidental" job, helping the small community of Pakistani Christian and Achmadi refugees ("it's about 400 families") trapped in a legal limbo in Bangkok, that he wants to talk about.

The families come to Xavier Hall - just a short walk from Bangkok's Victory Monument that commemorates Thailand's defeat of France in a series of skirmishes in 1941 - for food, for money, for education, for informal legal advice and - not least - spiritual counsel.

The operation runs on the smell of an oily rag, funded by donations.

The UN refugee agency officially estimates there are around 97,000 recognised refugee living in Thailand. Most are ethnic minorities from Myanmar. But there are tens of thousands more undocumented people.

The tiny cohort of Pakistani Christians and Achmadis, most of whom fled between 2012 and 2014 when tourist visas were readily available, is just one drop in a vast ocean.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age spent a day with Kelly, meeting some of the families at Xavier Hall and travelling to their tiny flats on the outskirts of the capital.

Unable to work legally, they live jammed into one room flats that cost between 3000 and 5000 Thai Baht per month (NZ$140-$240), fretting away their days inside, afraid to go out lest they be arrested and sent to Bangkok's notorious Immigration Detention Centre.

One man shared a harrowing story of how his wife had been raped, five days earlier, by Thai police. They did not want their names published, and were afraid that if they went to authorities they would invite further legal problems upon themselves. The wife sobbed, shoulders shaking.

Another woman, Soniazahid Younis, spoke though she was afraid of Thai authorities, who have held her husband Zahid in the IDC for more than a year.

She came to Xavier Hall with her four sons, Shahzaib, 16, Shahwaiz, 14, Sharaiz, 10 and Zohaib, 8, to share her story.

One day, Soniazahid says, her eldest son translating, some men came to their house, in a small village outside Lahore, and demanded that they be allowed to pray inside the house. The men were Muslims, and the Younis family is Christian.

"After that, the trouble started. They said we had converted. They said my husband's name was now Mohammed. But we are Christians. So they submitted a report of blasphemy. We were accused of desecrating the Koran" she says.
One day 40 or 50 men surrounded their home.

"They tried to choke me. They cut my husband's hand. They threatened to cut off his head," she says.

"First my husband went to Dubai, but we didn't have money for Dubai visas. So a pastor helped us, he said he had friends in Thailand. So we came here."

That was nearly six years ago. Since then, the family has lived in hiding and been unable to work. They get by on donations from Kelly and his community, and on remittances from Soniazahid's elderly father.

In January 2018, the older members of the family were thrown into the IDC, Soniazahid in the women's section of the prison, her husband and two older boys in the men's section. Her 10- and eight-year-old boys were cared for by friends.

It was only in December 2018 that a mystery benefactor paid their fines and Soniazahid and her older boys were allowed out. Her husband remains in detention.

"All we want is a better place to live, where my kids can study, where we can get a job and a house. We can never go back to Pakistan," she says.

Where does she want her family to go? Perhaps Australia, or Canada?

"The country which God has blessed for us," Soniazahid replies.

Later, Simon Sultan, a 12 year old boy from Pakistan, invites us in to his home. He is sitting on the double bed he shares with his mother, 11-year-old sister and four-year-old younger brother. Their flat is perhaps 20 metres square, ancient, the yellow paint on the walls fading, but everything is neatly arranged in the tiny space.

It's 3 o'clock on a hot January afternoon and the fan is shuddering and squeaking overhead.

Simon's mother, Rifaffat, doesn't want to be photographed but she wants the world to know her story.

"It was August 17, 2013, at around 10.30 am. That's when my husband would open his shop. He fixed motorbikes. Another man, Amjad Ali, he was jealous. So he came to the shop and he took the Koran and he ripped it. And then he told other Muslims that my husband had ripped it," she explains, her son Simon helping with the translation.

"After 10 or 15 minutes he came back with other men and that's when they tried to kill my husband. So we fled to Thailand."
"They hit him with screwdrivers and other mechanical parts, they threw food at him and spat on him. When my father ran, they tried to shoot him. But he jumped over a wall behind our shop, so the bullets hit the wall," Simon adds.

Rifaffat's husband, Justin, has been in the IDC for more than a year. One day, he went out to buy milk for their youngest son and was picked up by Thai police. Rifaffat makes money by baking naan bread for a rich Indian family, which helps them scrape by, and sends food to her husband in the prison each day via a neighbour.

"When we came from Pakistan we thought we would go to a third country after one year. But we can't go anywhere," she says.

As the Sultans' share their story, Kelly nods, grim-faced. He's heard hundreds of stories like this.
Working with these families, he later says, "has been a continuous experience of helplessness as I share the life of people who have no options and who are struggling to find the best way out of a very dark corner".

"They are escaping persecution and when they get to Bangkok they are punished. They are routinely harassed by police," he says.

He's working on a plan to get some of the families asylum in a European country which he won't name but his frustration is plain.

"I want Australia to take some of these people and help them. They fulfil all the criteria. They are fluent in English, many are tertiary-educated and they have refugee status. But they can't get to Australia because for some reason Immigration has decided Pakistanis in Thailand are just not a priority."

• James Massola is The Sydney Morning Herald's south-east Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta. He was previously chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He has been a Walkley and Quills finalist on three occasions.
• Photo: James Massola
• This article first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.

She has now been released from jail.

Observers who've watched the Bibi's story unfold over the past eight years say the Pakistani Supreme Court's decision to acquit the mother of five of blasphemy charges marks a major step toward making the country a more modern, tolerant nation.

In 2009 Bibi was charged with blasphemy after fetching water for herself and fellow workers on a hot summer day. Two women refused to drink from the same container as a Christian. The following year Bibi was sentenced to death.

According to the blasphemy laws in Pakistan's Penal Code, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a crime punishable by death. Offending the ‎Koran, Islam's holy book, incurs life imprisonment.

After speaking to Bibi's 18-year old daughter about Bibi's release, John Pontifex of Aid to the Church in Need (UK), said:

"We have to salute the courage of the justices in reaching this decision in the face of huge opposition from powerful extremists mobs. This really is a victory for justice, a triumph of honesty and truth over tyranny and oppression.

"For so many thousands of people who have prayed for Asia, this is a long-awaited day. We need to continue praying because now is the most delicate time.

"So many extremists want her dead and as the process towards her release gets underway, security concerns will be acute. Her family - indeed everyone associated with her - is in danger."

Evangelical Christian writer and teacher Krish Kandiah spoke of his joy at Bibi's release and concern for Pakistan:

"This is fantastic news. Asia Bibi is to be freed. Please pray for peace in Pakistan as the nation responds to the news."

Father Bernard Cervellera, head of Asia News for Crux Now, says the decision to acquit Bibi "is something big," and is proof that there are groups in Pakistan, even among Muslims, "who want a more modern Pakistan, more tied to the origins of this country.

"It must be a country that allows people to be free to practise their religion more than a state religion."

Cervellera says the decision is also a show of courage from the judges, who sometimes cave under pressure from fundamentalist Islamic groups including death threats.

Source

• The Tablet
• The Tablet
• Vatican News
• Image: Christian News Journal

Coutts, who is a doctor of philosophy, is the second Pakistani to become a cardinal. The late Joseph Cordeiro was made a cardinal in 1973.

Coutts is known for his services for interfaith relations, human rights and minorities in Pakistan.

He has a deep communion with Muslim, Hindu and Sikh scholars and with the common people and has helped build bridges among different faiths in Pakistan.

The Shalom Prize, which is awarded to those who promote peace in the world by the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt in Germany, went to Coutts in 2017.

It rewarded his dedicated service to human rights and interfaith dialogue in Pakistan.

In a joint statement, Pakistan Catholics Bishops' Conference President and National Commission of Justice & Peace Chairman (NCJP) Joseph Arshad, Reverend Emmanuel Yousaf and NCJP Executive Director Cecil Shane Chaudhry praised Coutts.

They said his selection as a cardinal is truly a historic and a great moment of pride for the Catholic community and the entire nation.

"We have very optimistic feelings regarding this decision. Archbishop Coutts is a visionary with immense knowledge and in-depth understanding of political matters," they said.

Yousaf said the issues of human rights in Pakistan will now carry more weight and people will have a stronger voice internationally.

"We believe his [Coutts's] leadership will boost our morale and Archbishop Coutts will be a reason for progress of the local church."

Priests as well as students from the Oblate Community of Lahore are delighted with the news.

"Finally we get recognition on a wider scale," said seminary professor Father Cecil Paul.

"Now we shall have direct representation in the Vatican, just like neighbouring India who have four red hats."

Father Paul hoped the incoming cardinal would develop diplomatic relationships with foreign representatives as well as top military and political leaders in Pakistan.

Two and a half million Christians in Pakistan have faced increased discrimination and violence since the government enacted anti-blasphemy laws in the 1980s that have been used by some hard-line Islamic groups to target other faiths.

Source

• La Croix
• UCA News
• Daily Times
• Image: UCAN Directory

The attack has been condemned by the country's church leaders.

Suneel Saleem, 34, was critically injured when about 20 security guards and 14 doctors punched and attacked him and other family members with batons, chairs and belts.

Aneel Saleem, a brother of the deceased who was also attacked, said he and other family members received internal injuries and called the police.

"The ribs and legs of Suneel were fractured. He fainted and later died in the same hospital."

Local police have registered a murder case against five doctors and a number of the hospital's security guards.

"The sudden increase in incidents of violence and intolerance have reached an alarming level," a statement from the National Commission for Justice and Peace says.

The National Commission is part of the bishops' conference.

The statement says doctors are responsible for giving care and support to a patient and treating them with respect regardless of their class, colour or creed.

"A doctor's responsibility is to save lives and not take lives," Commission chairman Archbishop Joseph Arshad of Islamabad says.

Church officials have demanded the Chief Minister of the Punjab province bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice.

"Justice must be served to the poor family of Suneel," Father Emmanuel Yousaf Mani, the Commission's national director says.

"The government and concerned departments should take strong measures to ensure that such tragic incidents do not occur in the future."

Only 2 percent of Pakistan's population are Catholic.

They face constant discrimination from the country's Muslim majority.

The country's anti-blasphemy laws often see religious minorities accused of blaspheming Islam to settle private land or family disputes.

Source

• UCA News
• Crux Now
• Image: Vatican News

The Bethel Memorial Methodist Church, which was targeted in the attack, was on high alert as Christian places of worship are often targeted by Islamist extremists over the Christmas season.

Over 400 people were attending a service at the time of the attack.

Nine people died and over 57 others were injured, according to reports. Children were among the victims.

Police say the death toll could have been much higher if the two gunmen responsible for the attack had forced their way into the sanctuary.

A spokesman said the Police exchanged fire with the attackers and shot one dead outside the church.

The other blew himself up inside the church.

Both attackers were carrying weapons.

Reuters news agency says Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Christians are a minority in Pakistan. Of the country's 200-million people, only 2 million are Christian.

They have been targeted in several attacks by Islamic radicals in recent years.

Eighty-five people were killed in twin suicide bombings in a church in Peshawar in 2013 and suicide attacks on two churches in the city of Lahore in 2015 left 15 people dead.

Source

• Mirror
• RT
• Reuters
• euronews
• independent
• Image: My Republica

An increasingly beleaguered minority in an Islamic republic, they have become targets of harassment and violent attacks, often motivated by tensions and conflicts between Islamists and the West on the world stage.

This week, however, brings a notable exception.

On Saturday there will be a state funeral at St Patrick's Cathedral in Karachi for the German-born Catholic nun and doctor, Ruth Pfau, who died last week at the age of 87 after giving 50 years of her life to the service of patients with leprosy and other needs in Pakistan.

Announcing her death (and quoting a predecessor in office) Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi said:

"Dr Ruth came to Pakistan here at the dawn of a young nation, looking to make lives better for those afflicted by disease, and in doing so, found herself a home. [Although she] may have been born in Germany, her heart was always in Pakistan."

Dr Pfau was made an honorary citizen of Pakistan in 1988.

Like Mother Theresa of Calcutta, to whom she is often compared, Ruth Katharina Martha Pfau found her special vocation among the "poorest of the poor" in the post-independence era of the Indian sub-continent.

It happened, humanly speaking, by accident.

After converting to Catholicism while studying to be a doctor, she had joined a religious order in 1957. In 1960 she was on her way to a posting in southern India, when she found herself stuck in Karachi over a visa issue.

By chance, during the delay, she visited a leper colony in the city. The shock of the encounter moved her so much that she decided to dedicate herself to these souls. The BBC recalls:

"Well if it doesn't hit you the first time, I don't think it will ever hit you," she told the BBC in 2010.

"Actually the first patient who really made me decide was a young Pathan.

He must have been my age - I was at this time not yet 30 — and he crawled on hands and feet into this dispensary, acting as if this was quite as if this was quite normal, as if someone has to crawl there through that slime and dirt on hands and feet, like a dog." Continue reading

Sources

• MecatorNet article by Carolyn Moynihan
• Image: Tribal Network News

Sister Ruth Katharina Martha Pfau, who was a member of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary died last week at the age of 87.

Pakistani leaders mourned her death, praising Pfau who was both a doctor and religious sister, for her contributions in fighting the disfiguring disease that usually leads to its victims being ostracised.

"Sister Ruth was a model of total dedication. She inspired and mobilised all sections of society to join the fight against leprosy, irrespective of creed or ethnic identity," says Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi.

"We are happy that the government is according her a state funeral".

Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi says Ruth, who became a citizen of Pakistan, would be remembered "for her courage, her loyalty, her service to the eradication of leprosy, and most of all, her patriotism.

"Pfau may have been born in Germany, her heart was always in Pakistan," he said.

Ruth, who had studied medicine in France, founded the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi. It was Pakistan's first hospital dedicated to treating Hansen's disease.

She later set up branches in all provinces of Pakistan.

In 1996, the World Health Organization declared Pakistan one of the first countries in Asia to be free of Hansen's disease. In 2016 the number being treated for the disease in Pakistan had fallen from over 19,000 in the 1980's to 531.

Source:

• The Catholic World Report
• The Tablet
• Image: Pakistan Defence

However the Archbishop of Lahore, Sebastian Shaw, says Pakistani Christians are realizing that God gave them a special calling to be his witnesses and work for the human rights and dignity of all in their country. Read more

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said told the Catholic Register that there is "currently no travel program to Pakistan being studied."

Pakistani Shipping Minister Kamran Michael and Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Muhammad Yousaf told reporters March 3 that they had come to Rome "to ask the Holy Father to come to Pakistan and he agreed."

The pope was grateful for the invitation but neither accepted nor declined, according to Vatican sources.

In a press release, Aid to the Church in Need said the two ministers told Shahid Mobeen, founder of the Association of Pakistani Christians in Italy, that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has "much respect" for the pope and "strongly desires the pope to receive him in the country."

Lombardi said the pope receives invitations from visiting dignitaries of many countries but does not immediately accept or decline them.

Pakistan, where the Pope is considered highly popular, hopes to be included in any upcoming trip to South Asia. This comes amid speculation that the Pope may soon visit India to canonize Mother Teresa.

Sources

National Catholic Register
Pakistan Today
Image: Pakistan Today

The state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported that the pontiff has accepted the invitation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The invitation was extended by Pakistan's Ports and Shipping Minister Kamran Michael, a Catholic, and Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Yusuf during a meeting in the Vatican last month.

Bishop Rufin Anthony of Islamabad-Rawalpindi told ucanews.com that the possibility of Pope Francis coming to Pakistan was good news.

"The minority Christians will be definitely encouraged," he said. "However the security of the Holy Father will be sole responsibility of the government," added the prelate.

"This is totally unexpected," said Father Saleh Diego, director of the bishops' National Commission for Justice and Peace in Karachi Archdiocese.

The priest, however, said the visit will be a "big risk for the government as things are different than they were when Pope John Paul II had visited Karachi in 1981."

Father Diego noted that "intolerance is generally prevalent in the society."

Christians make up for 1.6 percent of Pakistan's population, which accounts for about 2.8 million people.

Sources

ucanews.com
TIME
The Indian Express
NDTV
Image: Pakistan Information Department/ucanews.com

Last week, the Lahore High Court upheld the sentence handed down in 2010 against Asia Bibi.

She is the first Christian woman ever to be given the death sentence in Pakistan.

One source expressed hope that the sentence would be overturned in the Supreme Court, which has reportedly never upheld a blasphemy charge.

Mrs Bibi, 50, was first arrested in 2009 in a village near Lahore, after colleagues claimed she had insulted the Prophet Mohammad.

This stemmed out of an argument she had with two other women in a fruit field over a drinking glass.

High profile Pakistani politicians Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti spoke up in her defence and were subsequently assassinated in 2011.

Taseer was killed by his own security guard and Bhatti by the Pakistani Taliban.

Mrs Bibi's husband, Ashiq Masih, said Muslim clerics attending the Lahore hearing had shouted out "blasphemer" and "kill her".

"I have not told my children about the court decision. How can I? I am too scared of their reaction - they are already very depressed. We all were expecting her to come home and now this happens," said Mr Masih.

A statement from the Cecil & Iris Chaudhry Foundation, a Catholic group named for a critic of Pakistan's blasphemy law, expressed disappointment in the ruling.

"We remain optimistic that the rule of law will prevail and justice will be done (when the appeal is heard in the Supreme Court). For now that is our only hope," said the statement by the Catholic advocacy group.

However, advocates for Mrs Bibi expressed fears that even if she is freed by the Supreme Court, extremists will be given tacit encouragement to pursue and kill her.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Christian Today
• Christian Today
• Image: Catholic Herald