Religion News Australia 2014 - 25 (July 13 - 20)
(19 July 14)by Greg Spearritt
Religion News Australia
July 13 - 20, 2014
Religion news stories from Australia
(Research: Greg Spearritt)
abuse / anglican church / catholic church / education / international stories / islam / politics / religion & society
ABUSE
Pope's estimate on
paedophile priests only half of real number, Australian Catholic Church body
says (ABC News)
July 15 - A key Catholic Church body says 4 per cent of priests in Australia
have been paedophiles, double the number estimated by the Pope.
Interview: Salvation
Army victim Graham Rundle (Brisbane
Times)
July 20 - GRAHAM Rundle was seven when he became a number, in the quiet outside
a storeroom at a Salvation Army boys' home in the Adelaide Hills.
ANGLICAN CHURCH
Central West Anglican
parishioners asked to bail out Bathurst Diocese (ABC
News)
July 17 - The Anglican Diocese of Bathurst will ask it's Central West
parishioners to help fund it's legal fight with the Commonwealth Bank.
CATHOLIC CHURCH
Memorial service
farewells Sydney nun Philomene Tiernan (ABC
News)
July 19 - A Sydney school community has paid its respects to one of its nuns
who was among those killed in the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash.
Also:
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17: grief and happiness at memories
of Sister Philomene's life lived well
July 19 - Sister Philomene Tiernan was "on a spiritual high" the
night before she died, according to a friend.
EDUCATION
Ethics classes rolled
out to kindergarten students in New South Wales public schools (ABC
News)
July 17 - Ethics classes are being introduced to kindergarten students in New
South Wales public schools this week.
Catholic teachers to
strike over new pay structure (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 19 - Catholic school classrooms will be disrupted next week when teachers
strike in protest against a planned new system which will for the first time
pay teachers according to standards and not just years of service.
INTERNATIONAL STORIES
Abuse
Pope says 2 per cent of
clergy are paedophiles, flags celibacy reform in article refuted by Vatican (ABC News)
July 14 - Pope Francis has been quoted as saying reliable data indicates about
2 per cent of the Catholic Church clergy are paedophiles, in a report that was
quickly refuted by the Vatican.
Also:
Two per cent of Catholic
priests are paedophiles, says Pope: paper (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 14 - Rome: About two per cent of Roman Catholic clerics are sexual
abusers, an Italian newspaper on Sunday quoted Pope Francis as saying, adding
that the pontiff considered the crime "a leprosy in our house".
Also:
Pope puts level of
pedophilia in church at 2pc, La Republicca reports (The Australian)
July 14 - POPE Francis promised “solutions” to the issue of priestly celibacy
in an interview on Sunday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could
eventually lift a ban on married priests, but was quickly refuted by the Vatican.
Anglican Church
Church of England votes
'yes' to women bishops (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 15 - London: The Church of England voted on Monday to allow women to
become bishops, a historic decision which overturns centuries of tradition in a
Church that has been deeply divided over the issue.
Also:
Church of England
approves women bishops in historic vote (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)
July 15 - CHURCH of England parishes across the UK were celebrating today as
centuries old laws were swept aside to allow women to become bishops.
Also:
Church of England votes
to allow women to become bishops (ABC
News)
July 15 - The Church of England has voted in favour of female bishops, sweeping
aside centuries of male-dominated tradition.
Religious Violence
Malala Yousafzai vows to
help free missing Nigerian girls (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 14 - Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban
after campaigning for the right to education for girls, promised on Sunday to
help free a group of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militants,
multiple news outlets reported
Possible terror group
links for Australian cleric (Brisbane
Times)
July 14 - Philippine police are investigating whether Australian Islamist
cleric Musa Cerantonio has had contact with outlawed separatist terror group
Abu Sayyaf, which is an offence that could see him jailed in Australia.
Iraq crisis: Twelve
found dead north of Baghdad as Sunni insurgents turn on each other (ABC
News)
July 15 - The bodies of 12 men have been found with execution-style bullet
wounds north of Baghdad after fighting between rival Sunni insurgent groups
that could eventually unravel the coalition that seized much of the north and
west of the country.
U.N. accuses Islamic
State of executions, rape, forced child recruitment in Iraq (The West Australian)
July 18 - BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United Nations accused Islamic State fighters
in Iraq of executions, rape and forced recruitment of children during a
campaign to seize much of northern Iraq, part of a conflict it said has killed
almost 5,600 civilians this year.
Islamic State killed 270
in Syria gas field battle: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (ABC
News)
July 20 - Militant group Islamic State killed 270 soldiers, guards and staff
when they captured a Syrian gas field in the bloodiest clash yet between the Al
Qaeda offshoot and president Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to a
monitoring group.
Also:
Battle for Syria gas
field after jihadists execute hundreds (The West Australian)
July 20 - Beirut (AFP) - Syrian regime forces launched an offensive Saturday to
retake a gas field in Homs province seized two days ago by jihadists who killed
270 people, most of them executed, a monitoring group said.
Five car bombs in
Baghdad kill 28 (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 20 - BAGHDAD - Five car bombs killed at least 28 people in mostly Shi'ite
Muslim neighbourhoods in Baghdad on Saturday, police and medics said.
Christians flee jihadist
ultimatum in Iraq's Mosul (The
West Australian)
July 20 - Mosul (Iraq) (AFP) - Hundreds of Christian families fled their homes
in Mosul Saturday as a jihadist ultimatum threatening their community's
centuries-old presence in the northern Iraqi city expired.
Other
Archaeologists discover
Roman 'free choice' cemetery (The
West Australian)
July 20 - Rome (AFP) - Archaeologists in Italy have uncovered a cemetery in the
2,700-year-old ancient port of Rome where they believe the variety of tombs
found reflects the bustling town's multi-cultural nature.
ISLAM
Muslim youth leader Fadi
Abdul-Rahman pleads guilty to drug supply (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 14 - A prominent Muslim youth leader who helped young men in his community
turn away from drugs and crime has pleaded guilty to supplying $2 million worth
of cocaine.
Hijabs get a guernsey in
AFL team colours (The
Courier-Mail, Brisbane)
July 15 - MUSLIM head scarfs in the colours of every AFL team will go on sale
from today, in the lead-up to the league’s multicultural round.
More businesses
targeting Ramadan, says expert (Brisbane
Times)
July 17 - It is one of the holiest times of the year for Muslims around the
world, and for some it is also one of the busiest.
‘Executioner’ Khaled Sharrouf
taunts authorities (The
Australian)
July 17 - KHALED Sharrouf, one of Australia’s most hardened terrorists, has
posted fresh pictures of battlefield executions conducted in Syria and claimed
he received religious instruction from a notorious jihadi scholar while in
prison in Australia.
Returned radicalised
jihadis ‘a significant risk’, says ASIO (The Australian)
July 17 - AT least 20 Australians, possibly many more, are back home after
fighting in Syria and pose a serious risk to national security, say the
nation’s intelligence chiefs.
Bendigo mosque Facebook
administrator loses VCAT battle to have identity suppressed (ABC
News)
July 17 - A Bendigo woman behind the Stop the Mosque Facebook page has lost her
bid to have her identity suppressed in a Victorian Civil and Administrative
Tribunal (VCAT) appeal against the planning approval of a mosque in the town.
Religious extremist Musa
Cerantonio set to walk free after his deportation (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 18 - Philippine authorities are treating Australian religious extremist
Musa Cerantonio as a "high risk and high value" prisoner but he is
set to walk free after his imminent deportation to Melbourne.
First Australian suicide
bomber in Iraq reportedly kills three people in Baghdad (Sydney Morning Herald)
July 18 - The first Australian suicide bomber in Iraq reportedly killed three
people in the heart of Baghdad on Thursday, raising the involvement of local jihadists
in the spiralling violence to a chilling new level.
Also:
Iraq suicide bomber was
Australian, say ISIS fanatics in sickening tribute to ‘Abu Bakr al Australi’ (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)
July 18 - THE suicide bomber at the centre of one of Iraq’s most recent bloody
tragedies was an Australian, according to the brutal fanatics wreaking havoc
across the nation.
Muslim bin John made bid
to recruit Sydney man (The
Australian)
July 18 - AN Australian al-Qa’ida foot soldier killed in a US drone strike in
Yemen last November had tried to recruit a former Sydney man to the terrorist
group in 2009.
Halal food outrage from
anti-Islam critics (Herald-Sun, Melbourne)
July 18 - MAJOR food companies are paying Islamic organisations millions of
dollars to ensure their products comply with religious laws.
POLITICS
Political parties walk a
fine line pandering to the views of the religious right (The Age, Melbourne)
July 20 - Margaret Tighe calls it “punishment politics”.
Unholy discourse clouds
debate on Australians fighting in Syria (The Saturday Paper, Australia)
July 20 – (Opinion: Martin McKenzie-Murray) Ben “Ballistic” Meadows skipped
imperiously towards the ring, draped in an Australian flag, buoyed by the
strains of gangsta rap.
RELIGION & SOCIETY
Ian Thorpe comes out:
Ken Thorpe says he loves his son ‘unconditionally’ (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)
July 14 - IAN Thorpe’s deeply religious father Ken has spoken for the first
time since his son’s coming out interview with Sir Michael Parkinson on Sunday
night, saying “God loves Ian and we love Ian unconditionally”.
Shite mosque approved
next to Assyrian Christian church, triggering tension (The Age, Melbourne)
July 15 - A new mosque in Melbourne’s outer north proposed next door to an
Assyrian Christian church - many of whose members fled persecution and violence
at the hands of Islamic extremists - has been approved.
Anti-gay and anti-Islam
activists team up (Brisbane Times)
July 17 - One of Australia's highest-profile anti-gay activists has recruited
one of the nation's busiest anti-Islam campaigners to help him get his job back
as an Army Reserve officer.
Koori courts will
divide, not bind our society (Herald-Sun,
Melbourne)
July 19 – (Opinion: Tom Elliott) DIFFERENT courts for different racial or
religious groups are a divisive concept in countries where every person is
supposed to be equal before the law.
Malaysia flight MH17:
Victims remembered at Sydney Ukrainian church memorial service (ABC
News)
July 20 - A group of parishioners has gathered at the Ukrainian Catholic Church
in western Sydney to pray for the victims of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17
which was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Queensland sees surge in
‘no body’ funerals as more opt out of formal services (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)
July 20 - QUEENSLAND families are opting out of any form of send-off for their
deceased.
From the Archive…
Religion News Australia 2014 – 24 (July 6 - 13)
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