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National Catholic Reporter, July 30, 1999 by Matt Kantz

Guerrillas threatened with excommunication

Archbishop Isaias Duarte of Cali, Colombia, has threatened a group of leftist guerrillas with excommunication unless they release 36 worshipers kidnapped during a church service six weeks ago.

"I'm telling them officially that if they [the rebels] don't release their kidnap victims by July 30, they will be excommunicated," Duarte said July 13.

The rebels from the National Liberation Army, the country's second largest rebel group, kidnapped more than 150 people during a Mass in a Cali church at the end of May. Although the guerrillas released many of the hostages last month, they are still holding the 36 and are thought to be demanding ransoms for their release.

The leader of the rebel group, Nicholas Rodriguez, recently slipped out of Colombia and traveled to the Vatican to apologize to church leaders for the raid on the church.

Underground Chinese priest dies after being arrested

Religious activists have appealed to the U.S. State Department to take action following reports that an underground Chinese Catholic priest was found dead after being taken into police custody. A second Catholic was reportedly tortured.

Fr. Yan Weiping, 33, was arrested in mid-May while celebrating Mass in Beijing without government permission. That night, he was found lying dead in a street, according to the Stamford, Conn.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation. The foundation said no cause of death has been given by Chinese authorities. Yan was last seen alive while in police custody.

That same month, seminarian Wang Qing was arrested at the home of a Catholic family in Hebei province and then tortured, the foundation said.

Free The Fathers, a human rights group in Tennessee, reported that Yan, vicar general of the Yixian diocese, was thrown from a fifth-story window by police.

Freedom House, a Washington human rights organization, July 7 said the two May incidents reflect a pattern of ongoing Chinese persecution of Catholics and other Christians.

"For the sake of international religious rights, the United States must raise its voice in protest against this escalating martyrdom and persecution of Chinese Christian leaders," Freedom House's religious freedom director Nina Shea said in a statement urging Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to publicly address the issue.

Letter suggests Pius XII opposed creation of Israel

An unpublished letter from a special representative of Pope Pius XII to a diplomatic emissary of Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II has shed new light on the late pope's controversial attitudes toward Jews at the height of the Holocaust.

The letter, from papal representative A.G. Cicognani to U.S. Ambassador Myron Taylor, was uncovered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as part of a research project on Pius XII. It was published July 10 in the English language Jerusalem Post.

"It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left 19 centuries before," states the letter, dated June 22, 1943. "If a `Hebrew Home' is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave, new international projects would arise."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal center, was quoted describing the letter as an "indictment" of Pius XII. "Where is a similar letter to Adolf Hitler telling Hitler that the Vatican finds his policies against the Jews repugnant? But at the height of the Holocaust, the Vatican knew how to oppose the state of Israel," he said.

Meanwhile, a papal representative shocked the crowd at a conference on anti-Semitism in Israel July 19, blaming Israel for tensions between Jews and Catholics and called the alleged failures by Pius XII "blood libel."

Fr. David Yager said that Israel's anti-Catholic attitude was preventing relations from warming and that the Jewish mistrust of Catholics was unjustified and creating antagonism.

"Our questions, our desires to search the truth are not libelous," said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League. "We both have responsibilities we haven't fulfilled."

Caritas Moscow obtains government registration

Caritas Moscow has successfully registered with the Russian government in accordance with that country's religion law.

Last year the government rejected registration of Caritas Russia, the country's largest Catholic charitable organization. However, Caritas Moscow officials used the same organizational structure the Russian Orthodox church uses to obtain registration for its humanitarian organizations, said Antonio Santi, director of Caritas for Northern European Russia.

"The main reason we were successful this time is because of the form we used and the principles it was based on. Each of the four [Caritas] centers is based on the blessing of the bishop, just like the Orthodox," said Santi, referring to Russia's dominant, 80-million member faith.