Sri Lanka: Sister Mary Eliza Cleared Of 'Baby Farm' Allegations
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan court on Thursday cleared a Roman Catholic nun from Mother Teresa's charity who was accused of selling babies for adoption.
Judge Yvonne Fernando discharged Sister Mary Eliza without presenting charges. The nun, from Mother Teresa's Indian-based Missionaries of Charity, was arrested last month for allegedly selling babies born from unwed mothers.
The Missionaries of Charity says its home in Moratuwa, south of Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, houses women who become pregnant outside of marriage or after being raped, and gives the babies up through legal adoption if their mothers don't want them.
Officials from the National Child Protection Authority and police raided the home on Nov. 23 and arrested Sister Mary Eliza, its head, after a tip-off.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the head of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, called the allegations groundless and vowed to boycott all state functions until the case was resolved.
Joined by the leaders of Northern Ireland’s Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian communities, Cardinal Seán Brady of Armagh traveled to Westminster to urge lawmakers not to adopt a proposed cuts in welfare benefits.
“As Christian leaders we feel we have a responsibility to speak up for the most vulnerable in our society and for those in our congregations, especially children and their families who will be pushed even further into poverty by some of these reforms,” the Primate of All Ireland told Vatican Radio.
“We are taking a united stand as Church leaders to say, ‘Give us a shared future which is a better future, not one that pushes Northern Ireland further back as the most impoverished region of the UK,’” he added. “We need investment for peace, stability and growth, not measures that leave tens of thousands of our young people without hope or a stake in a better future.”
A fungus caused a communion wafer dropped at a South St. Paul church to turn red when placed in water.
A communion wafer that fell to the floor at a South St. Paul church and turned blood red is not a miracle. Twin Cities archdiocese officials said Wednesday that the discoloration was instead caused by a fungus.
The wafer was dropped during mass after it had been consecrated on June 19 at St. Augustine Church. Catholics believe that after consecration the wafer becomes the actual body of Christ. In order to show the proper reverence, the host was placed in a chalice-like container with water so it would dissolve.
However, a week later, the host had not dissolved but had shrunk and turned a blood-red color, leading some to question whether the church was dealing with something miraculous or something biological like a fungus or bacteria.
The church's pastor turned it over to the archdiocese for examination.
The archdiocese sent the host to an unnamed laboratory to be tested and released the results Wednesday in a statement from archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath.
"Exhaustive biological analysis by an independent scientific laboratory has determined that the reddish coloration on the Holy Communion host fragment that was kept in a water solution after it was discovered on the floor of St. Augustine Church ... was caused by a fungus. The host in question has been disposed of in a manner prescribed by church law.
"While the Catholic Church fully recognizes the possibility of miracles and remains open to their possibility, it does so with extreme scrutiny, investigation and care. This incident was the result of natural biological causes and should not be considered in any other way."
Instances of so-called Eucharistic miracles, such as "bleeding hosts" that emit blood, have been reported by Catholics for centuries. Archdiocese officials said that one of the most recent reports came from a Catholic church in Texas. In that case, biologists determined the red color of the host was caused by a combination of a fungus and bacteria that were incubated in water in a glass stored in the open air.
If Alex Jones only knew how involved the Vatican is in, not only Mexican immigration, but the Ford Foundation and both the Democratic AND Republican parties and all the other things he mentioned, maybe he'd have spent more time putting all the blame on Rome where it belongs instead of cluttering our minds as though Rome were only a small part of it. Rome is behind gun control (both political parties), taking away the right to own private property (Rerum Novarum), Gardasil (sterilization of young girls), the union of church and state to establish a state religion of Roman Catholicism (Counter Reformation, Vatican Council II), creating a total police state (hierarchical Roman Catholic government just like Nazi Germany, the Patriot Act, Romeland Security), destruction of free speech (no one may criticize the Pope or the king), destroying U.S. national sovereignty (UN control, CFR), bankrupting the country through the Vatican bankers (Rothschilds) who own the Federal Reserve, redistribution of U.S. wealth (Caritas in Veritate), destruction of the middle class to make it a two class system just like all other Catholic countries, and on and on and on.
Did Alex ever once mention that 98% of Mexicans are Roman Catholic? He mentioned that they all vote "Democratic". But in reality, Catholics vote for Catholic candidates for BOTH political parties. And that's exactly why neither party will finger ROME! Precious few dare to put the finger on Rome fearing charges of "bigotry" and "hatred" and "religious persecution". But what is the end in view here in America? A total Roman Catholic Church/State and government sponsored INQUISITION. But by the time America wakes up and finds the courage to call the Pope "Antichrist," it will be too late.
On Inquisition Update, I put the focus where it belongs. ROME! If Alex Jesuit Jones ever mentions Rome, he then covers it up with so much other stuff that everybody forgets he even mentioned Rome. People in our camp notice that Rome is merely an occasional side issue with Jones. We believe that his occasional mention of Rome is merely to silence some of his critics in our camp and to draw listeners out of our camp. But America will never understand what really ails our country until we begin to comprehend it in terms of the "Counter Reformation." The target in this country is Protestantism, the Bible, Liberty in Christ, and the ascendency of the Biblical Antichrist, the Pope of Rome. The endgame is the complete destruction of Biblical Christianity (true Bible Protestantism) and a total Roman Catholic superstate and a full blown concordat with Rome. The New World Order is only the Old World Order revived on a global scale. It is a global Roman Empire and the king of kings and the lord of lords is the Papacy. Alex Jones wouldn't dare suggest it. I do every single day.
It's been a frightening year for people of faith, especially Catholics. The Obama administration has launched a war against religion and family values. As a result, we've lost many of the freedoms and liberties we've cherished for generations.
For example, Obama promised he would protect the conscience rights of pro-life health care providers and now they're being taken away.
America was founded by Christians — from all denominations — including Catholics. Thus, she was founded upon the morals and values derived from God's law. To remove these values is an attack on the character of America itself! I'm writing today to share with you our leaders' most shocking comments and decisions of 2011 and to ask for your help in making 2012 the year we restore our Christian heritage and reclaim our fundamental right to religious liberty in America.
"I'm a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it...but they have this conscience thing..." -Nancy Pelosi
The blatant attack on our religious liberties, most importantly the freedom of conscience, is appalling. In the past year, the Obama administration and its allies on the left have stripped health care providers of their rights of conscience. They've forced private insurers to provide contraception like the morning after pill to women at no charge and forced doctors and nurses to perform abortions.
Although Nancy Pelosi makes it out to be, this isn't just a Catholic issue — it affects all men and women of faith. Catholic Advocate has been leading the charge to reclaim our liberties because Catholic voters make up nearly a quarter of the electorate and can have a drastic impact on the 2012 elections. We've been able to make a difference thanks to the support of concerned citizens of all religious denominations.
"[China's one-child policy] has been one which I fully understand — I'm not second-guessing..." -Joe Biden
Vice President Biden reminded us that it's more than our religious liberties under attack when he endorsed China's one-child law, a law that has resulted in millions of forced abortions each year. It's also the fundamental respect for human life -- shared by the people of faith -- which is under attack.
From refusing to protect the Defense of Marriage Act; reversing the ban on federal dollars from funding stem cell research; to forcing Catholic Charities out of the adoption business; and cutting funding from the Bishops' initiative to help victims of human trafficking because they refuse to provide contraception or abortions to pregnant women, one thing is clear: the government is trying to take away our family values and pro-life beliefs!
Unless we want to wake up one morning to find that our religious liberties are a thing of the past or worse, that certain aspects of Christian morality have been criminalized, we must act now. Please stand with Catholic Advocate as we fight to defend our religious liberties and values for all men and women of faith by following this link right now to make the most generous contribution you can afford.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Deal Hudson
President, Catholic Advocate
P.S. In 2011, the Obama administration and its allies on the left have trampled upon our religious liberties and trashed our pro-family, pro-life values. It's time to fight back. Catholic Advocate has been leading the charge to combat the consequences these new policies have caused for men and women of all faiths. Will you help us continue this fight and make 2012 the year we win the war on religious liberties? Please follow this link to make a generous donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more today.
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Inquiry: Thousands abused in Catholic institutions
By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press Mike Corder, Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions, and church officials failed to adequately address the abuse or help the victims, according to a long-awaited investigation released Friday.
The report by the an independent commission said Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abuse "to prevent scandals."
Based on a survey among more than 34,000 people, the commission estimated that one in 10 Dutch children suffered some form of abuse. The number doubled to 20 percent of children who spent some of their youth in a Catholic institution.
The commission said it received some 1,800 complaints of abuse at Catholic schools, seminaries and orphanages and that the institutions suffered from "a failure of oversight."
The commission was set up last year under the leadership of former government minister Wim Deetman to investigate allegations of abuse dating from 1945.
The investigation followed allegations of repeated incidents of abuse at one cloister that quickly spread to claims from Catholic institutions across the country, echoing similar scandals around the world.
The Dutch branch of the Catholic church agreed last month to launch a compensation system that clears the way for victims of abuse by priests and other church workers to receive payments.
The new compensation system has a scale starting at euro5,000 ($6,500) and rising to a maximum of euro100,000 ($130,000) depending on the nature of the abuse.
According to the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics, 29 percent of the Dutch population of 16 million identified themselves as Catholics in 2008, making it the largest religion in the country.
The 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha. Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted. That is one of the main reasons that all American combat troops are leaving by the weekend.
Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq
Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
Transcripts of military interviews from the investigation into the Haditha massacre were found at this trailer in a junkyard in Baghdad, which specializes in selling trailers and office supplies left over from American military base closings.
BAGHDAD — One by one, the Marines sat down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America’s time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.
“I mean, whether it’s a result of our action or other action, you know, discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there,” Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar Province at the time, told investigators as he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by “grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.”
The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.
The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.
Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted. That is one of the main reasons that all American combat troops are leaving by the weekend.
But the accounts are just as striking for what they reveal about the extraordinary strains on the soldiers who were assigned here, their frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they did not understand. In their own words, the report documents the dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not “remarkable,” but as routine.
Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.”
The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.
Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine is scheduled to go to trial next year.
That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House could not accept.
Told about the documents that had been found, Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the United States military in Iraq, said that many of the documents remained classified and should have been destroyed. “Despite the way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession, we are not at liberty to discuss classified information,” he said.
He added: “We take any breach of classified information as an extremely serious matter. In this case, the documents are being reviewed to determine whether an investigation is warranted.” The military said it did not know from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha. The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine Corps’s chain of command engaged in “willful negligence” in failing to investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties. That report, however, did not include the transcripts.
Under Pressure
Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or the United States were clearly under scrutiny for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover up the events. But the accounts also show the consternation of the Marines as they struggled to control an unfamiliar land and its people in what amounted to a constant state of siege from fighters who were nearly indistinguishable from noncombatants.
Some, feeling they were under attack constantly, decided to use force first and ask questions later. If Marines took fire from a building, they would often level it. Drivers who approached checkpoints without stopping were assumed to be suicide bombers.
“When a car doesn’t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and, yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing to do with it,” Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified.
He added, “I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with that.”
Sergeant Major Sax said he would ask the Marines responsible if they had known there had been children in the car. When they said no, he said he would tell them they were not at fault. He said he felt for the Marines who had fired the shots, saying they would carry a lifelong burden.
“It is one thing to kill an insurgent in a head-on fight,” Sergeant Major Sax testified. “It is a whole different thing — and I hate to say it, the way we are raised in America — to injure a female or injure a child or in the worse case, kill a female or kill a child.”
They could not understand why so many Iraqis just did not stop at checkpoints and speculated that it was because of illiteracy or poor eyesight.
“They don’t have glasses and stuff,” Col. John Ledoux said. “It really makes you wonder because some of the things that they would do just to keep coming. You know, it’s hard to imagine they would just keep coming, but sometimes they do.”
Such was the environment in 2005, when the Marines from Company K of the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton, Calif., arrived in Anbar Province, where Haditha is located, many for their second or third tours in Iraq.
The province had become a stronghold for disenfranchised Sunnis and foreign fighters who wanted to expel the United States from Iraq, or just kill as many Americans as possible. Of the 4,483 American deaths in Iraq, 1,335 happened in Anbar.
In 2004, four Blackwater contractors were gunned down and dragged through the streets of Falluja, their bodies burned and hung on a bridge over the Euphrates. Days later, the United States military moved into the city, and chaos ensued in Anbar Province for the next two years as the Americans tried to fight off the insurgents.
The stress of combat soon bore down. A legal adviser to the Marine unit stopped taking his medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and stopped functioning.
“We had the one where Marines had photographed themselves taking shots at people,” Col. R. Kelly testified, saying that they immediately called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and “confiscated their little camera.” He said the soldiers involved received a court-martial.
All of this set the stage for what happened in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.
A Tragedy Ensues
That morning, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one of the vehicles was hit by a roadside bomb.
Several Marines got out to attend to the wounded, including one who eventually died, while others looked for insurgents who might have set off the bomb. Within a few hours 24 Iraqis — including a 76-year-old man and children between the ages of 3 and 15 — were killed, many inside their homes.
Townspeople contended that the Marines overreacted to the attack and shot civilians, only one of whom was armed. The Marines said they thought they were under attack.
When the initial reports arrived saying more than 20 civilians had been killed in Haditha, the Marines receiving them said they were not surprised by the high civilian death toll.
Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood, who received reports from the field on the day of the killings and briefed commanders on them, testified that 20 dead civilians was not unusual.
“I meant, it wasn’t remarkable, based off of the area I wouldn’t say remarkable, sir,” Mr. Norwood said. “And that is just my definition. Not that I think one life is not remarkable, it’s just —”
An investigator asked the officer: “I mean remarkable or noteworthy in terms of something that would have caught your attention where you would have immediately said, ‘Got to have more information on that. That is a lot of casualties.’ ”
“Not at the time, sir,” the officer testified.
General Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine the events because they were part of a continuing pattern of civilian deaths.
“It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country,” General Johnson testified, using a military abbreviation for allied forces in western Iraq.
“So, you know, maybe — I guess maybe if I was sitting here at Quantico and heard that 15 civilians were killed I would have been surprised and shocked and gone — done more to look into it,” he testified, referring to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “But at that point in time, I felt that was — had been, for whatever reason, part of that engagement and felt that it was just a cost of doing business on that particular engagement.”
When Marines arrived on the scene to assess the number of dead bodies, at least one Marine thought it would be a good time to take pictures for his own keeping.
“I know I had one Marine who was taking pictures just to take pictures and I told him to delete all those pictures,” testified a first lieutenant identified as M. D. Frank.
The documents uncovered by The Times — which include handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by Marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where dead women and children were found, and pictures of the site where the Marine was killed by a roadside bomb on the day of the massacre — remain classified.
In a meeting with journalists in October, before the military had been told about the discovery of the documents, the American commander in charge of the logistics of the withdrawal said that files from the bases were either transferred to other parts of the military or incinerated.
“We don’t put official paperwork in the trash,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Richardson, at the meeting at the American Embassy in Baghdad.
The documents were piled in military trailers and hauled to the junkyard by an Iraqi contractor who was trying to sell off the surplus from American bases, the junkyard attendant said. The attendant said he had no idea what any of the documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.
He said that over the course of several weeks he had burned dozens and dozens of binders, turning more untold stories about the war into ash.
“What can we do with them?” the attendant said. “These things are worthless to us, but we understand they are important and it is better to burn them to protect the Americans. If they are leaving, it must mean their work here is done.”
I am growing increasingly concerned about the presidential race.
You see, right now Newt Gingrich is the front-runner for the Republican ticket and that scares me.
He has yet to return my Official 2012 Presidential Survey.
When a politician refuses to sign a survey, it almost always means he has something to hide.
Of course it shouldn’t be a surprise. He has never displayed any respect for traditional morality.
He shamelessly cheated on and divorced not one wife, but two.
He attacked the military and forced them to allow homosexuals to serve in uniform.
You and I have a great responsibility this year, and Newt Gingrich plays an important part in it.
Public Advocate is virtually the only group in America fighting to protect classrooms and families from the twisted schemes of the radical homosexual lobby.
And the greatest weapon we could hope for is a true pro-Family president in the White House.
That’s why I mailed every candidate for president Public Advocate’s Official 2012 Presidential Survey.
I am demanding that they return it no less than 100% Pro-Family.
But I am worried because the deadline to return them is only a few days away, and Gingrich has not answered.
That’s why I need you and every pro-Family supporter to call his headquarters and demand that he return his completed (100% Pro-Family!) survey right away.
