WORLD - News Briefs

National Catholic Reporter, June 15, 2001 by Gill Donovan

Official says Internet cannot offer sacraments

Though the Internet offers the church new possibilities for bringing priests and faithful together in cyberspace, the sacrament of reconciliation will never be administered online, said the Vatican's top communications official.

"The Internet offers an opportunity for dialogue, for response to questions, for interactive instruction and even for pastoral counseling," Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said June 5.

"It does not offer the opportunity for online confession -- which must always be done in the sacramental context of personal encounter," he said.

The U.S. archbishop made his remarks during a World Communications Day celebration in Vienna, Austria. The text of his speech was released at the Vatican.

Foley noted that his council is working on two possible documents regarding concerns and opportunities presented by the Internet.

One document will examine the "responsible use" of the Internet; the other will be devoted to its effective use "by the church itself as a marvelous instrument for evangelization and pastoral service," he said.

In the past, Foley has defended use of broadcast media for presentation of the Catholic Mass, defending the practice against critics who say the Mass is by definition a community event and therefore should not be available in the isolation of one's living room. (NCR, April 17, 1998)

Women often forgotten in fight against AIDS

As nations grapple with a growing AIDS epidemic, the ways in which women are especially vulnerable to the disease are too often overlooked, a panel of doctors and advocates for reproductive services said May 24.

"HIV-positive women bear a double burden -- they are infected and they are women," said Dr. Geeta Rao Gupton, president of the International Center for Research on Women. "It is women's gender that contributes to their vulnerability."

Women around the world often don't have the option of refusing to consent to sex and are often subjected to violence such as beatings and rape when they refuse to give men access to their bodies, said Dr. Nancy Padian, director of international research at the University of California at San Francisco AIDS Research Institute.

AIDS/HIV prevention efforts need to address that reality by focusing on preventing violence against women as one strategy to help stop the spread of AIDS, Padian said.

"Simplistic measures like counseling women to use condoms or choose their partners wisely have little hope for stemming the epidemic" among women facing those circumstances, said Padian, who is also co-director of the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy.

Poverty also makes women particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, Padian said, noting that women comprise an estimated 70 percent of the world's 1.2 billion people living in poverty.

"Many women have to exchange sex for material favors just to survive," she said.

Worldwide, women comprise 47 percent of the nearly 35 million people living with AIDS, according to a U.N. report.

India to accept religious refugees

Authorities in India have offered to open their borders to minorities from Afghanistan who want to escape the strict policies of the country's Islamic Taliban rulers.

"India will certainly provide them full shelter," the country's external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, told Reuters news agency, pointing out that many Afghan nationals have moved to India in the past.

Singh said he was "deeply troubled" by the Taliban's decision last week to require non-Muslims to wear a yellow badge on their shirt pockets.

Taliban officials said the identification would help Hindus and other minority faith groups in the country avoid run-ins with religious police enforcing Islamic law, and came at the behest of Hindus themselves.

Women particularly have lived under strict controls in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 1996. The group, which controls about 90 percent of Afghanistan, has barred women from the work force and from schools.

Priest faces church trial over Gerardi's death

A priest accused of killing a Guatemalan bishop could stand trial in a church court once his criminal trial concludes, said Auxiliary Bishop Mario Rios Mont of Guatemala.

Fr. Mario Orantes is one of five people accused in the murder of Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala City, who was bludgeoned to death in April 1998. Three military officers are also on trial for the killing, and a parish housekeeper is accused of coveting up evidence of the crime.

The trial began March 23 and is expected to conclude sometime in June.

Rios said the objective of such a trial was to learn the truth about what happened the night Gerardi was killed and to decide about Orantes' future.

The bishop said May 29 that before a church trial could begin, a thorough evaluation of Orantes' health would be carried out. The priest is currently under guard in a Guatemala City hospital and appears each day in court in a wheelchair.