Category Archives: Religion

PMQs live: Boris Johnson refuses to apologise to archbishop of Canterbury after criticising his stance on Rwanda policy – as it happened

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Prime minister refuses to apologise for reported comments about archbishop and denies criticising BBC’s Ukraine coverage

Asked if the House of Lords Appointments Commission ever approves people for a peerage, only for a peerage not to be awarded, Bew says this has happened, but that it is very rare.

He also says that, under his chairmanship, the commission for the first time rejected a nominee who was subsequently appointed by Downing Street.

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No 10 goes into battle with archbishops over Rwanda asylum plan

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Downing Street refuses to deny PM told MPs archbishops were being unfairly critical as church figures defend Justin Welby

Downing Street has gone into open battle with the Church of England over its condemnation of the Rwanda deportation scheme, with No 10 officials doubling down on Boris Johnson’s claim that archbishops were being unfairly critical.

The prime minister reportedly told Conservative MPs on Tuesday evening that senior clergy had criticised plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda more than they had condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This was not denied by No 10.

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Australia has ‘moral duty’ to take 20,000 more Afghan refugees, Catholic bishops say

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Election statement also calls for a special intake of Ukrainians and a wider reassessment of refugee policies

Australia’s Catholic bishops have called for a special intake of 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan, saying the country has a “moral duty” to do more.

As part of its election statement, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said the country had an obligation to take more refugees from Afghanistan because of the support shown to Australian military forces.

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Christian lobby groups push major parties to support unamended religious discrimination bill

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FamilyVoice says Labor not to blame for ‘Morrison’s failure’ to pass bill as Albanese pledges to extend school chaplaincy program with secular pastoral care

Christian lobby groups are pressing both major parties to recommit to the unamended religious discrimination bill as Labor guarantees to extend the chaplaincy program with a secular choice for schools.

Guardian Australia understands Labor has told FamilyVoice it has “consistently supported” the $61m-a-year chaplaincy program but will move to give schools the option of a secular pastoral care worker.

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Schools chaplaincy provider bans cohabitation and ‘sexually intrusive’ behaviour in staff’s private life

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Exclusive: whistleblower says code of Schools Ministry Group, Australia’s second biggest provider, could discriminate against workers

Australia’s second biggest schools chaplaincy provider imposes a code that discriminates against staff based on relationship status and sexual conduct, a whistleblower has alleged.

Caragh Larsen, a former Schools Ministry Group chaplain at two Adelaide public primary schools, said the code banning “cohabitation” and “sexually intrusive” behaviour left unmarried and LGBTQ+ staff vulnerable.

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Nigerian humanist jailed for 24 years after pleading guilty to blasphemy

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Mubarak Bala’s case seen as part of a clampdown on critics of religious orthodoxy in a deeply conservative region

A prominent Nigerian humanist has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to blasphemy charges, in a landmark case that has put a new focus on the threats to freedom of expression in the west African country.

Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was sentenced on Tuesday afternoon, two years after his arrest at his home in the northern Kaduna state on 28 April 2020. He was then taken to neighbouring Kano, where calls for action against him had been made by members of the religious establishment in the majority Muslim and conservative state.

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Pope Francis says visit to Kyiv ‘on the table’ after invitation from Zelenskiy

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Move would be highest-profile visit of a world figure since Vladimir Putin began invasion of Ukraine

Pope Francis has said he is considering visiting the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in what would be the most high-profile visit of a world figure since Russia invaded the country.

The head of the Catholic church was invited by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, along with Ukrainian religious leaders on 8 March.

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Former Catholic bishop admits covering up sexual abuse allegations

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Howard Hubbard made admission during a deposition last year as part of a response to dozens of claims filed in New York

The former bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Albany, New York, has acknowledged covering up allegations of sexual abuse against children by priests in part to avoid scandal and protect the reputation of the diocese.

Howard Hubbard made the admission during a deposition taken last year as part of a response to dozens of claims filed under New York state’s Child Victims Act. A judge ordered the deposition released on Friday.

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Hillsong is facing catastrophe but the Houstons will be loath to give up control

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Analysis: the global church, founded almost 40 years ago in north-west Sydney, has little choice but to launch an independent inquiry

Judgment Day has come for Hillsong – but not in the way its pastors promised.

To recap a damning week for the church, its founder and global senior pastor, Brian Houston, has resigned after an internal investigation found he had breached the church’s code of conduct twice over the past decade by behaving inappropriately towards two women.

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Hillsong’s Brian Houston resigns from megachurch

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Resignation comes after internal investigations found Houston engaged in inappropriate conduct ‘of serious concern’

Hillsong’s founding pastor, Brian Houston, has resigned from the megachurch he founded in Sydney two decades ago after internal investigations found he had engaged in inappropriate conduct of “serious concern” with two women.

Houston stood down last Friday, but following another emergency staff meeting on Wednesday the Sydney-based church issued a brief statement announcing his resignation.

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Citipointe Christian College teachers threatened with dismissal for expressing homosexuality

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Exclusive: Only last month, the school apologised to students over enrolment contracts that described homosexuality as ‘immoral’

Teachers at Brisbane religious school Citipointe Christian College are being asked to sign employment contracts that warn they could be sacked for being openly homosexual.

The school says the wording of staff employment conditions is “under review” but one former teacher, who refused to sign the document last month, says he has now effectively lost his job for taking a stand.

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Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, imprisoned for ‘insulting Islam’, freed after 10 years

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It’s unclear if Saudi authorities placed restriction on his release but human rights campaigners promise to fight them

Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been released from prison in Saudi Arabia after serving a 10-year sentence for advocating an end to religious influence on public life, his wife said on Friday.

“Raif called me. He is free,” his wife, Ensaf Haidar, who lives in Canada with their three children and had been advocating for his release, told AFP.

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Victims of ‘vile’ abuse of children in care in Northern Ireland reject apology

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Religious orders called on to pay compensation for physical, sexual and psychological abuse carried out for more than 70 years

Victims of sexual, psychological and physical abuse of children in care in Northern Ireland have rejected a formal apology by religious orders and called on them to pay compensation.

Ministers and representatives of six institutions at the centre of the scandal on Friday issued a long-awaited statement saying sorry for what was described as “vile” and “unimaginable” abuse carried out for more than 70 years.

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Ukraine’s pro-Russian monasteries draw local suspicion

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War has sharpened the split between Ukraine and Russia’s Orthodox churches, with some historic sites in Ukraine still loyal to Moscow

As war kicked off in Ukraine, soldiers at a military airstrip in the west of the country went hunting for the origin of a laser pointer they feared was marking out targets on their base.

They found it in a nearby church. Behind the thick walls of the building in Kolomyia, run by monks loyal to Moscow, they also discovered a large stockpile of food and alcohol, and three guns.

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Kicking the habit: footballing nuns’ goal is to pass on word of God

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The nuns, based in Italy, have heeded the advice of Pope Francis to get out more and avoid becoming ‘old maids’

The women huddled in the centre of the pitch, to briefly strategise, to pray for Ukraine. Then the whistle blew, and to cries of “Forza, sisters!” from their fans, they prepared for kick-off.

The youngest player is 27, the eldest 52, and they are among the 18 brought together from congregations across Italy to form the first national football team for nuns in the world.

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Argentinian bishop sentenced to prison for sexual abuse despite pope’s defense

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Gustavo Zanchetta convicted by court in a major blow to Pope Francis, who had initially defended the bishop

A court in Argentina has sentenced a Roman Catholic bishop to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse of two former seminarians in a major blow to Pope Francis, who had initially defended the bishop.

Gustavo Zanchetta, 57, was convicted on Friday of “simple, continued and aggravated sexual abuse”, with his offense aggravated by his role as a religious minster.

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A moment that changed me: I was so desperate to leave home I agreed to smuggle 80,000 Bibles into the USSR

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One day a man in a tan mac and a comb-over appeared at my family’s door. I have no idea how he found me but he had an exciting proposition

I grew up in a modest, family hotel on the Dutch coast. The scenes of my boyhood were of German seaside tourists, drunken men and women at the bar, wedding receptions, and bingo nights in the function room. We slaved all year round – my father at the kitchen stove, my mother serving, cleaning the hotel rooms, and caring for three children. Books passed me by so it was an anomaly that, at the age of 12, I found myself attending a grammar school in Haarlem that churned out politicians, artists and writers.

I was embarrassed about my non-intellectual origins. Each morning, when my classmates’ fathers drove their expensive cars to solicitors’ offices, banks or ministries, my father would don his cook’s uniform. One day, when I was 14, I went to our village library. After I’d filled out the membership card, a woman said: “And now you can choose three books!” I snatched three off the shelf. The thinnest was First Love, by Ivan Turgenev. From the start, the words struck me like a hammer-blow. I was drawn in by the language and the 19th-century Russian world that the writer evoked. I’d become a reader.

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Reviled, harassed, abused: Narenda Modi’s most trenchant critic speaks out

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The Indian journalist Rana Ayyub speaks about the campaign to silence her that has led to charges of sedition and ‘defaming Hindus’

When I talked to the journalist Rana Ayyub in her Mumbai home last Wednesday she was calmer than she was when I had spoken to her three days earlier. But that is not saying much. Last Sunday her words were jumbled, her voice on edge. She said she had not slept. That she could not eat or keep food down. That she had had thoughts of self-harm.

“I was on a plane yesterday and I said to my brother, ‘Can you feel me sitting next to me?’ And he said, ‘Have you completely lost it?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just not sure I’m sitting next to you. I feel like I’m in a dream.’ And afterwards, I spoke to my psychiatrist and she said, ‘You’re dissociating. You’ve had a traumatic experience –that’s your brain shutting down.’”

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‘Shoot them’: Indian state police accused of murdering Muslims and Dalits

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Ahead of key Uttar Pradesh elections, state police accused of being ‘mercenaries’ of hardline Hindu nationalist government

According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.

The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day?

Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet.

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Uncertainty over jobs data due to Omicron as nation records at least 47 virus deaths – as it happened

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Uncertainty over jobs data due to Omicron; Mark McGowan says WA border reopening still to be decided; Daniel Andrews announces LGBTQ+ support package; Victoria’s Covid rules under review as nation records least 47 Covid-related deaths; Scott Morrison condemns ‘bullying’ on Ukraine border. This blog is now closed

Things get trickier when Speers asked Keneally whether Labor believes schools should be allowed to hire and fire teachers based on whether they are gay or transgender under the law.

Keneally started by saying that “Labor also supports the right of religious schools, faith-based schools to be able to hire staff, whether it is teachers or other staff, that support the mission and the values of the school.”

And so it’s straightforward with children, we think there are some slight complexities with teachers and staff that should be looked at by the Australian Law Reform Commission.”

David, let’s look at what Labor did in the parliament this week. We do believe that people of faith deserve protection from discrimination and extending the law to do that and we think that should not come at the expense of increasing discrimination to other groups of people. We also believe that students at school should be protected and that reflected in the amendments we moved and supported.

So we would like to see the government now accept that amendment that has been supported by the House of Representatives with those five Liberals crossing the floor, and they should just get this bill done. The prime minister promised some years ago to people of faith he would provide this legislative protection. He promised in writing that he would protect children. He is – if he is going to break that promise, he needs to explain it to the Australian people.

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