From: Ouko joachim omolo
FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2013
Today is a very special day for fellow Muslims across the world. They are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan. The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste is in solidarity with them.
Traditionally, the holy month of fasting ends with the sighting of the new moon.
It culminates in scenes of merriment and thanksgiving, with families and friends gathering to exchange gifts enjoy food and festively decorate their homes.
Here in Magadi Soda in Ngong Catholic Diocese there are about 30 Muslim families and children are going to be supplied with sweets and cookies. The Imam here is a young committed man from Homa Bay County. I spoke to him a while ago and told me how the day is very significant with Muslims’ faith and charity.
And in London as charity worker Abid Choudhry told the BBC, some 400 Muslim prisoners were treated to special Eid packs, supplied by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. The packs contain halal sweets, an organic tooth chew, a pocket-sized prayer book and an Eid card prisoners can send to their loved ones.
As the day being celebrated in joy, in South Sudan Yei Catholic Bishop Rt. Rev. Bishop Erkulano Lodu Tombe is howling to the government over heavy tax charges demanded from foreign priests, brothers and sisters working in the country.
AMECEA in its News Blog online quoted Bishop Lodu Tombe to have made the remarks on Sunday at Christ the King Cathedral while launching a new transmittersfor Easter Radio for live transmission of Holy Mass.
Bishop Erkulano Lodu Tombe said the tax on the expatriate is worse than what Sudan government was asking before South Sudan became independent. He said this signifies as if the government of South Sudan wants to tell them to return to their own countries of origin.
Among the missionaries who will be overburdened with the heavy tax include Father John Barth, a native of Buffalo and Maryknoll priest who for 22 years, has spent the past three years in South Sudan working and administrating skilled training for the blind. The people he helps are able to be integrated into public schools and various jobs.
Father Barth got his start and interest in missionary work at the New York State Department of Health in Albany, and later as a volunteer for two years in Tijuana, Mexico, for an organization called Los Ninos. Soon after, Father Barth wanted to do more missionary work and applied to Maryknoll. He was officially ordained in 1991.
Father Barth received his first assignment in Cambodia, and after spending 11 years there he founded Rehabilitation, an organization to train social workers to help the incurably blind, train eye doctors and eye nurses.
Now beginning his work in South Sudan, Father Barth plans to implement the same kind of training and work as he did in Cambodia. After the war, when Sudan split into two separate countries, it had peaked his interest to start work in South Sudan.
Father Barth has joined with Catholic Health Training Institute to help train registered nurses and nurse midwives in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in Juba, South Sudan. Father Barth has also been very active in skilled training for the blind, as he was in Cambodia.
There are 9 million people in South Sudan, and only two eye surgeons for the whole country. It’s not just the health care that needs help, South Sudan’s schools, agriculture and infrastructure need renovation.
Father Barth was in Buffalo for a short two weeks for a conference downstate and returned to South Sudan on June 11 to continue his work.
The day is also being celebrated at the time Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad is killed by jihadi fighters. He was beheaded last week according to a report by Catholic Online which is linking to video purportedly showing the brutal murder.
Murad, 49, was setting up a monastery in Gassanieh, northern Syria when extremist militants trying to topple President Bashar Assad breached the monastery and grabbed Murad.
While earlier reports suggested Murad may have been shot to death, Catholic Online reported Saturday: “The Vatican is confirming the death by beheading of Franciscan Father, Francois Murad, who was martyred by Syrian jihadists on June 23.”
The Catholic news service quotes local sources who report that the radical Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, or Al-Nusra Front, was behind the savage killing.
It quotes Custos of the Holy Land, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa who says, “Unfortunately Syria has now become a battleground not only between Syrian forces, but also between Arab countries and the international community. And those paying the price are the poor, the young and the Christians. That the international community must put a stop to all this”.
Vatican Radio writes, “Fr. Mourad was just one of the many men and women religious putting their faith on the front line in Syria, refusing to abandon the communities they serve, Christian and Muslim. They stay because they want to be a sign of hope, light and comfort to people in the midst of destruction.”
Meanwhile, a priest working in the devastated city of Homs in Syria has given an account of some of the horror he’s facing every day. The priest, who cannot be named, sent a report to the charity Aid to the Church in Need, which is supporting Syrians with an aid package of £25,450 (€30,000) for a center in Homs, on top of £42,450 (€50,000) given last year.
The report details the priest’s struggle to provide basic food, shelter and medicine to more than 30,000 people fleeing violence amid ongoing bomb blasts and other violence.
Tensions are also high in Egypt as Al-Qaeda leaders’ message incites violence against Christians. The message accuses Coptic Catholics of plotting the overthrow of Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi with Americans and the Egyptian military.
According to Fides News Agency, the physician-theologian Egyptian terrorist blamed the Copts of having supported Morsi’s removal with the intent to “create a Coptic State in southern Egypt”. In past days, assaults on churches and houses of the Copts occurred throughout the Country.
Some episodes have been reported in Assiut and Sohag. But the most serious cases relate to some villages in the area around Minya. As Zenit reports, in the village of Bani Ahmed, on Saturday evening, August 3 gangs of Islamist extremists caused the flight of the entire population and the burning of at least 9 homes and 24 shops owned by Christians as well as trucks, buses and cars burned in the streets.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002
told the BBC,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23589092
report
http://catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=51537