News Briefing: The Church in the World

West condemned over Syria
The head of the Syriac Catholic Church has strongly criticised “American, French, English, and European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been “disastrous” for the region’s Christians. Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan told the National Catholic Register last week in Rome that Saudi Arabia and its Western allies, especially the United States, decided that Syria had a “dictatorship they had to knock down”, even though “they were fighting against illiteracy, you had medical care for all [and] you could go wherever you wanted to go, 24 hours a day without any problem”. Referring to the displacement of 150,000 Syriac Catholics who lived in Mosul and other areas in the Nineveh Plain, by Islamic State, he said: “They are all gone, uprooted from their ancestral lands”.


Bishop’s murderer killed in jail
The Guatemalan man who murdered Bishop Juan José Gerardi (pictured) in 1998 was killed in a prison riot in Guatemala City on Monday 18 July. Byron Lima Oliva, an army captain and intelligence officer, was convicted of the murder along with his father, Byron Lima Estrada, an army colonel.

Bishop Gerardi, Guatemalan of Italian descent, was a vocal advocate for indigenous communities targeted during the country’s 1960-96 civil war, when government forces systematically killed indigenous Mayan people. He served on the National Reconciliation Commission to investigate and prosecute war crimes. Just days before his death, he published a damning report on atrocities in the civil war, implicating the armed forces and paramilitaries armed by the Government.

Lima was convicted in 2001 and was serving a 20-year sentence in the El Pavón prison in Guatemala City. He controlled gangs behind bars, becoming the most powerful prisoner in Guatemala.


Child malnutrition crisis
Around 240,000 children in Nigeria are facing acute malnutrition due to the humanitarian crisis caused by Boko Haram Islamist militants, church sources and UNICEF have warned. Aid agencies say that over 130 children are dying each day. The state of Borno, where much of the fighting between government forces and the militants has taken place, is facing the highest risk.

Treating malnourished children in Maiduguri, the medical charity Médecins sans Frontières reports “the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed and survived many horrors”.


Hope for kidnapped priest
A photo of the Indian Salesian priest kidnapped in the Yemeni city of Aden in March has been posted on his Facebook account, raising hopes that he has survived. Bishop Paul Hinder, apostolic vicar of Southern Arabia said last week: “I think he is still alive”. The photo of Fr Tom Uzhunnalil shows a frail man with a beard and long hair whom relatives believe is their loved one. There is also a video of a man being beaten by captors while blindfolded. Relatives believe this shows Fr Uzhunnalil, 56, who was abducted in March during a raid on a Missionaries of Charity retirement home in Aden in which Islamists killed 15 civilians, including four nuns.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has stressed the importance of national unity after recent sectarian violence at Minya in Upper Egypt. In a speech on 21 July to a military academy graduation class, he stressed that the law in Egypt guarantees equal rights and duties for its Muslim and Christian citizens and that “any attempt to insert a wedge between the two communities” would be dealt with. The previous weekend, violence in the region led to the death of one Coptic Christian and the torching of a number of houses.