Two Christian girls, aged 3 and 5 years old, were rescued recently after being held hostage in Yemen for 11 months, according to Compass Direct News .

The girls, Lydia hentschel, 3, and Anna, 5, were rescued through a collaboration of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni security forces in what was described as a “humanitarian gesture” the BBC reported.

They were kidnapped with their parents and two-year-old brother while on a picnic in the northern region of Saada in June last year, according to the BBC.

Also kidnapped were four other Christian foreigners.  Three of the adult hostages, a Korean and two German women, were murdered shortly afterwards, the BBC reported.

The foreigners worked in a hospital near Saada city.  No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, and it is not known if they were kidnapped because of their faith, according to CDN.

The parents, Johannes Hentschel,  a mechanical engineer and Arab speaker, and Sabine, a nurse, sold their belongings seven years before and left their home in Lauske, Saxony for Yemen as part of a long-held dream, according to guardian.co.uk.

According to the Guardian, they worked at the Protestant al-Jumhuri state hospital in Yemen, employed by Worldwide Services, a Netherlands Christian charity.

They had planned to return to Germany this year for Anna to start school.

According to CDN, at present it is unknown where the girls’ parents and 2-year-old brother Simon are; as well as the Briton, only known as Anthony.  The Briton works as an engineer.  According to a report by the news magazine Spiegel, the Hentschels’s kidnappers had demanded $2m ransom for their release. The German foreign ministry refused to comment, according to the Guardian.

Yemen is the Arab world’s poorest country and is struggling with a secessionist movement in the south, an on-off revolt in the north, and intensified al-Qaida militancy, according to the Guardian.

Over 200 foreign nationals have been kidnapped in the country in the last 15 years. Most have been released unharmed, the Guardian reported.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

The recently announced plans by the Vatican to designate a papal envoy to head the Legionaries of Christ renders this powerful, conservative Catholic order directly under Vatican control.

The Vatican made this move after an eight-month inquiry by five Vatican investigators who reported directly back to Pope Benedict XVI about the double life of its late founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Associated Press reported.

The Vatican report said Maciel had been sexually assaulting minor seminarians and fathered at least three children from two different women—a daughter from what was described as a “stable relationship”, and two sons who are now grown, who admitted to being his children with another woman, according to CNN.

However, the Vatican hoped that by appointing a personal delegate to lead the order, they could help them “purify” what good still remains, and at the same time help them to undergo a “profound revision”, the AP said.

Maciel was born in Mexico in March 1920.  In January 1941 he founded the Legion of Christ, a powerful and wealthy order that spans 24 countries including Spain, Rome, Ireland, the United States, and several countries in South America and Central Europe.  Recently it had begun projects in Eastern Europe and the Philippines, according to CNN.

With a membership of over 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians, the Legion also has some 70,000 members in the Regnum Christi movement, which was also founded by Maciel. The Legion runs Catholic news outlets, charities, seminaries for boys, schools, and universities in Italy, Mexico and Spain, among others, The Seattle Times said.

In response to the Vatican announcement the Legionaries issued a statement on its website where they said that they “embrace his provisions with faith and obedience”, the AP said.

Critics and advocates of the victims are dissatisfied with the Vatican’s latest move.  They wanted the order to be dissolved.   Others felt the larger part of the Legion’s leadership should be taken out, noting that Macial could not have lived his double life without the knowledge of some of the order’s top leadership, the Seattle Times said.

The Vatican’s statement said, “Of this side of life, a great part of the Legionaries were in the dark — especially given the system of relationship built by P. Maciel, who very skillfully knew how to create alibis, obtain loyalty, trust and silence from those around him and strengthened his own role as charismatic founder,” the CNN reported.

The Vatican said that Macial “…created around him a defense mechanism that made him unassailable for a long period, making it difficult to know his true life.”

According to the AP, Maciel’s victims had tried in the 1990s to bring a canonical trial against him but were shut down.  The late Pope John Paul II had long championed the Legionaries for their orthodoxy and ability to bring in vocations and money.

In 2006, one year after Benedict became pope, the Vatican ordered Maciel to lead a “reserved life of penance and prayer,” and rendered him a priest in name only. He died in 2008 at age 87, the AP reported.

The Catholic church is also investigating complaints of abuse allegedly committed in Britain, Germany, Ireland and other countries, the CNN reported.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Warsaw (ENI). Almost two-thirds of Europeans think Christian values are still relevant to contemporary life and are ready to acknowledge the Church’s efforts to promote them, a recent survey carried out for La Croix daily newspaper has found.

“Whether rooted in Christianity or not, Europeans recognise a privileged place for this religion in its Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox forms,” France’s Roman Catholic-linked newspaper commented on 1 April.

“Yet while two-thirds think Christianity’s message is still up-to-date, this isn’t the case for the other third. So, Christianity remains an element marking the religious culture of the Old Continent, but no longer claims exclusivity,” the newspaper noted.

In the survey, conducted during March by France’s Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique (IFOP) in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, 57 percent of respondents said they believe Christians are “sufficiently visible” in society. That was compared to 28 percent who thought they were “not visible enough” and 15 percent who considered them “too visible”.

Although 61 percent of Europeans said the “message and values” of Christianity remain topical, only Italians believe churches are doing a good job in communicating and reaching out to young people, compared to between 74 and 80 percent of British, French, German and Spanish respondents who thought the opposite.

Forty-eight percent of Europeans assigned a key role to Christian values in promoting “dialogue with different cultures and religions” and “solidarity with the poor,” compared to between three and 13 percent believing these values are important in bioethics and respect for life, in “moralising capitalism” or on issues such as immigration and environmental protection.

At the same time, slightly more than 80 percent of respondents said church priorities for the 21st century should include action for world peace and combating poverty at home, while a third believe churches should be “available at life’s key moments” and one in five think their priorities should include “making Christ’s message known”.

In its commentary, La Croix said the “Christian anchorage” of Europeans appears “too deep to be shifted by the waves stirred by current events”, and has been little affected by current abuse scandals in the churches. However, it also notes strong national differences in attitudes to Christianity, with French citizens voicing stronger criticisms than their Italian neighbours.

In Britain and Germany, where religious pluralism and coexistence are a “well anchored historical reality”, according to La Croix, more citizens regret the failure of traditional churches to hold their ground against new minority faiths.

“For the English above all, religion is a private affair. The Church should be there at life’s important moments, rather than to support world peace, whereas in Germany the churches have a recognised social role as a sort of State institution,” the newspaper noted.
“By contrast, if the majority of French are strongly detached from religion, French Catholics display a more marked religious outlook than Italian or Spanish Catholics. They are also proportionately more numerous in voicing an attachment to Christian values,” it stated.

The survey by IFOP, which was founded in the 1930s, follows other poll results suggesting interest in religion remains extensive in Europe, despite what many see as the continent’s outwardly secular character.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Scientists are cautious about labeling the discovery two years ago of two fossils in Johannesburg, South Africa, the ‘missing link.’

The debate about the findings was renewed recently after the journal Science featured two articles on the discovery which said they may be a new species that “might help reveal the ancestor” of the genus Homo.

In fact, the authors of the two science papers do not claim themselves claim that Australopithecus Sediba is a direct ancestor of modern humans.

And like many in the science community, they reject the term “missing link” saying that it implies a chain in evolution rather than the more widely accepted ‘tree model’ of evolution.

Australopithecus Sediba, discovered  near Johannesburg, South Africa, has been deemed to be slightly less than two million years old.  The remains of a woman and a younger man, Sediba was discovered in a pit that was once part of a cave.  It is outstanding as the most complete early hominid skeletons, more so than the “Lucy” fossil in Ethiopia, and in better condition.

Scientists think the fossils were well preserved because the woman and young man probably died suddenly because of a natural disaster and were buried rapidly.

Found with Sediba were the bones of other dead animals such as a sabre-toothed cat, antelope, mice and rabbits, all appearing non-scavenged.  They were found by paleo-anthropologist Lee R. Berger of South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand.

Berger’s team of researchers are looking for any proteins that may be preserved in one of the skeletons, which they suspect might contain the remnant of the dried brain.  If soft tissue is found, there is a slim chance the researchers could yield DNA that might unlock the genetic code for Sediba.

Other points of confusion surrounding Sediba are:

• Scientists disagree on what the individuals were.  They were included in genus Australopithecus (with ape-man “Lucy”), but some like Colin Groves of the Australian National University believe the bones should be classified as Homo instead.
• Evolutionists have dated the bones as younger than remains that have already been labeled Homo—which would imply that the individuals discovered could not have been human ancestors.
• Berger notes the remains have similarities with early Homo, but also have a small cranial capacity like the Australopithecine.  He says that makes it also similar to the Indonesian hobbit species, Homo floresiensis, which others say are fully human.
• Berger says this particular portion of the fossil record “is one of the most poorly represented in the entire early hominid fossil record . . . a very small, very fragmentary record, ” which coincides with the time evolutionists believe apes were supposed to have evolved into men.

Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research said, “[T]he situation seems to grow more convoluted with each newly unearthed specimen.”

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute said, “This fossil has been surrounded by the standard overhype we’ve come to expect from those on a campaign to evangelize for Darwin.”

Similar uproar had been raised over the “Ida” fossil in Germany last year and the “Lucy” fossil in Ethiopia five years before that.

Sources:

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100414/new-missing-link-claim-spurs-debates/index.html

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/04/10/news-to-note-04102010

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8609192.stm

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

As you know, I’m all about the news. I was reading sophisticated, snooty British news, when something caught my eye. I clicked on the link.

In big black letters, I read the headline “Singer with most popular German band faces jail for infecting man with HIV.”

I don’t even know any German bands, besides Tokio Hotel and Rammstein, but I continued reading because I was curious to see who the culprit was.

I scrolled down. The next things my eyes fell on was the picture of a beautiful woman. I thought to myself, “Maybe she was a victim.”

As I read the article, I learned that she was the culprit.

According to the BBC, Nadja Benaissa, a multi-platinum German recording artist was arrested shortly before she was due to give a solo performance on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm by infecting a partner with HIV.

The fact that she is so famous and beautiful, yet she might have handed some men their death certificates, made my mind do back flips. All I could think about were her motives. Why would she do that?

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I still don’t know why she gave those men HIV. She could have been trying to get revenge on the man who gave it to her, so she used sex as a biological weapon. She could’ve also just been looking for love. Maybe she thought she was going to settle down with the men she slept with. It’s also possible that she didn’t know she had HIV.

No matter the real reason, Nadja’s story is sobering. Her story reminds me that beauty and money really don’t matter a whole lot. Her money and fame can’t erase her HIV status. It reminds me that God’s plan for intimacy inside of marriage is best.

And then, when I try to walk in Nadja’s shoes, I realize that that could’ve been me. Before God opened my eyes, I too slept around looking for love, so I have compassion for her. I can’t think of her as the monster society would have us believe she is. She’s a broken person, who has made mistakes, just like you and me. Hopefully God will use this situation to open her eyes, and the eyes of other people who are being promiscuous.

–Tiff-The Underground Site, editor

Be Sociable, Share!

•