WORLD

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 5, 2001 by Teresa Malcolm

Forensic and video evidence showed it would have been impossible for Kaiser to kill himself, said the vicar general of the Mill Hill order, Fr. Bernard Phelan.

He challenged the apparent findings of the FBI, which alongside Kenyan detectives has been probing Kaiser's death for almost four months. The FBI was due to present a report on its findings to the U.S. Congress in mid-December.

A U.S. official in Nairobi, who did not wish to be named, said evidence gathered so far pointed to suicide. However, the official stressed the FBI investigation was not yet completed. Some evidence was still being analyzed in police laboratories, and the December report was likely to consist of a brief interim statement. The full report is scheduled to be published in January.

In a telephone interview from London, Phelan said he had absolutely no doubt that it was a case of murder. He said the official post mortem carried out by the Kenyan state pathologist concluded that Kaiser had been shot from a distance of at least one meter. Private video footage in the possession of the missionaries in London showed Kaiser lying on the ground with the back of his head shot off, Phelan said.

Phelan said he was "not confident" that the truth about Kaiser's death would come out. "In the past, missionaries have been killed in strange circumstances in Kenya. There has never been an explanation to their deaths," he said.

Pope decries absence or God in European charter

By avoiding all references to God in the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights, the continent's political leaders have ignored the tree basis for guaranteeing human rights, Pope John Paul II said.

"I cannot hide my disappointment that the text of the charter does not include even one reference to God, the supreme source of the dignity of the human person and his fundamental fights," the pope said in a letter published Dec. 16.

The European Union officially proclaimed the 54-point charter Dec. 7 during its summit meeting in Nice, France.

Pope John Paul commented on the charter in a message to a Vatican-hosted conference marking the 1,200th anniversary of Pope Leo III's crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. The king united the continent under the banner of Christianity, which has continued to mold its identity, the pope said.

"One cannot forget that it was the denial of God and his commandments that created in the century just past the tyranny of idols expressed in the glorification of a race, a class, of the state or nation or party in place of the living and true God," Pope John Paul said.

The pope said the European charter could have been and should have been "more courageous" in protecting the right to life and the rights of the family.

Priest survives stabbing in India

A Catholic priest survived an attack Dec. 15 by two men who stabbed him 14 times in Port Blair, the capital of the Indian territory of Andaman and Nicobar.

Pilar Fr. John Peter, 33, was recuperating at a hospital in Port Blair, said Fr. Walter Fernandes, vicar general of Port Blair diocese.