Influential Muslims on this East African island have begun building what appears to be a hotel on a 100-year-old burial site owned by an Anglican church, Christian leaders said.

Church leaders with ownership papers for the land told Compass they are disturbed that authorities have taken no action since they filed a police complaint in December about the seizure of the burial site three kilometers (nearly two miles) from Zanzibar city’s airport. Tanzania’s Zanzibar archipelago, including the largest island of Zanzibar (officially known as Unguja), is 99.9 percent Muslim.

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Jennifer Anguko was slowly bleeding to death right in the maternity ward of a major public hospital. Only a lone midwife was on duty, the hospital later admitted, and no doctor examined her for 12 hours. An obstetrician who investigated the case said Ms. Anguko, the mother of three young children, had arrived in time to be saved.

Her husband, Valente Inziku, a teacher, frantically changed her blood-soaked bedclothes as her life seeped away. “I’m going to leave you,” she told him as he cradled her. He said she pleaded, “Look after our children.”

Half of the 340,000 deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes each year occur in Africa, almost all in anonymity. But Ms. Anguko was a popular elected official seeking treatment in a 400-bed hospital, and a lawsuit over her death may be the first legal test of an African government’s obligation to provide basic maternal care.

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There is clearly a deep anger among ordinary priests. This is reflected in the 550-plus membership of the fledgling Association of Catholic Priests. But where were those angry, articulate voices when the damage was being done, when Rome was directing this republic’s affairs and their brothers in Christ were violating the young and vulnerable? They were where they always were, says Hoban, “trying to do 1,001 things and trying to do them the best they can.”

So does that explain their silence? There are two “difficulties”, Hoban says. The first is the mistaken belief that a diocese is run by the bishop and the priests together. “The fact is we are totally excluded from any say . . . Priests are effectively disenfranchised.”

The other difficulty is loyalty. Priests live isolated lives. “The dynamic of our ministry is that friends are very few and far between, but there is extraordinarily strong loyalty among the clergy,” Hoban says. As well as that, “we were not people who would challenge the status quo. Those who would were weeded out in the seminary.” Then there is the perennial problem of being “at the bishop’s mercy” in relation to transfers and advancement. And thus the silence. Does it all sound a bit self-serving? “Yes, it’s fair to say that it was self-serving. That lack of moral courage.”

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One can certainly share the sense of frustration and, indeed, quite patent anger and irritation of the Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, in his recent criticisms of the Vatican. In the face of overwhelming evidence of sexual and physical abuse by clergy, religious and Catholic institutions in Ireland, the Vatican seems reluctant to accept its share of responsibility. It also seems unwilling to co-operate without reservations with the Irish government’s proposals to prevent such abuse in future.

The most startling new measure in a system of mandatory reporting is the obligation for priests to violate the sanctity of the “sacramental seal” of Confession when a paedophile reveals that he or she has been involved in such activities. Senator Nick Xenophon has proposed a similar measure for Australia.

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The Vatican has recalled its ambassador to Ireland for “consultations” on the official church response to a government report that tallied how abuse cases were mishandled as recently as two years ago.

The extraordinary move to recall the papal nuncio, Monsignor Giuseppe Leanza, is also meant to show “a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions” to the report, Vatican spokesman Rev. Ciro Benedettini said on Monday

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A 50-year-old South African man woke up inside a mortuary over the weekend and screamed to be let out – scaring away attendants who thought he was a ghost.

His family presumed he was dead when they could not wake him on Saturday night and contacted a private morgue in a rural village in the Eastern Cape.

He spent almost 24 hours inside the morgue, the region’s health department spokesman told the Sapa news agency.

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The Church’s commitment to human rights rooted in the Biblical founding of human dignity is amplified in God’s covenant promises and supremely revealed in the incarnation of Jesus as the true image of God. Our understanding of human rights must be measured by the Bible’s revelation of human worth.

Governments at all levels should not by their actions or inactions, be seen to project or succumb to pressure from any religious, cultural, ethnic or interest groups to enable it have or appear to have dominance over others. A typical example is the promotion of Islamic banking (Sharia-compliant) by the Central Bank of Nigeria over and above other forms of non-interest banking institutions. For a state institution to promote one view sanctioned by one religion violates the rights of others. Instead, the CBN should give general guidelines for non-interest banking for all: whether Christian, Traditional or Islamic.

Political leaders are urgently charged to be cautious not to adopt self centered instrumentality of religion, cultural or ethnic sentiments to propagate their ambition for power and undermine the rights of the electorate.

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What is your view on the vexed issue of Islamic banking in Nigeria?

It is a time bomb that is about to explode. This nation is secular in nature. It is a constitutional stipulation that no religion should be adopted as a state religion. The fact remains that Christians cannot claim to be the sole owners of Nigeria. Muslims and African Traditional Religion practitioners cannot equally claim to be owners of Nigeria. If that is the case, foisting or attempting to foist the religious practices of a particular religion on this nation is a time bomb that will explode.

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After philosophy students and faculty members rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students, Islamists on campus struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say, the radicals showed up at a men’s dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle chains.

They burst into dorm rooms, attacking philosophy students. One was pistol-whipped and hit on the head with a brick. Gunfire rang out, although no one was injured. Police were called, but nearly a month after the attack, no arrests have been made.

Few on Punjab University’s leafy campus, including top administrators, dare to challenge the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or the IJT, the student wing of one of Pakistan’s most powerful hard-line Islamist parties.

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In language never before used by an Irish government leader, Enda Kenny yesterday accused the Vatican of downplaying or “managing” the rape and torture of children in order to uphold its own power and reputation.

Speaking in the Dáil in a debate on the Cloyne report, he said it excavated the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism” dominating the culture of the Vatican to this day.

The Taoiseach’s speech was reported around the world with many media organisations praising Mr Kenny for his criticism of the Catholic Church.

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Religious history has been made with the first ordination of a former Anglican clergyman in Scotland into the Catholic priesthood.

Father Len Black, 61 and a grandfather of two, was ordained into the priesthood this weekend, at a ceremony at St Mary’s Church in Greenock performed by Bishop Philip Tartaglia of Paisley.

Father Black was an Episcopal minister for 30 years before converting to Catholicism. Until recently he was the minister at St Michael and All Angels in Inverness and was also the regional dean of Forward in Faith, the leading group of traditionalist Anglicans.

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Five years ago, I was among those who argued that the probability of a collapse of the eurozone was close to zero. Last year, I wrote it was no longer trivial, but small. The odds have risen steadily since, not because of the crisis itself, but the political response. I now would put the odds of a break-up of the eurozone at 50:50. This is not because I doubt the pledge by the European Council to do whatever it takes to save the euro but because I fear it has left things too late. The council may be willing but it will not be able to deliver. As I argued last week, a eurozone bond is the only solution to the crisis. But this gets progressively more expensive, and politically less realistic, once bond spreads of large countries widen.

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They never gave up–congratulations to them.

Clarke, 42 years old, of Northern Ireland, was the clear local favorite. He has won 14 times on the European Tour and will almost certainly one day be the European Ryder Cup captain.

But he’d never won a major, despite playing in 53 of them before this week, including 19 previous British Opens, and there was a prevailing sense that this may be his last, best chance. After shooting opening rounds of 68, 68 and 69, he said Saturday that he was playing some of the best golf of his life.

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The segment description is as follows:

Fr Joseph Marious is a priest with the young Uganda-based congregation, the Apostles of Jesus. Originally from Juba in South Sudan, he worked in the Nuba mountains as a missionary before coming to Rome, where he’s studying at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. He talked to Philippa Hitchen about his hopes for the birth of the new nation and about the ongoing plight of the people in the resource-rich Nuba mountain region….

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, hosted a roundtable meeting on South Sudan today at Lambeth Palace, with participants from government, NGOs, churches, media and academia.

The meeting, chaired by Baroness Kinnock, focused on the links between large scale development needs of the world’s newest state, and ongoing governance, peace and security issues. The Archbishop spoke about the urgent need for peace dividends to be delivered in South Sudan in education and health, in order to foster long term peace.

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Less than a week after South Sudan celebrated its long-awaited independence, Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail of the Episcopal Diocese of Kadugli has said it is “devastating and saddening” to learn that his people of the South Kordofan region, “friends, brothers and sisters, children, my flock, have been killed mercilessly and are lying now in mass graves in Kadugli.”

Elnail was responding to the Enough Project’s Satellite Sentinel report that revealed the extent of the atrocities committed along the north-south border in recent weeks and identified what it says are three vast excavated sites used to dump the bodies of those who’ve been slaughtered.

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The European debt crisis has entered “uncharted territory,” rekindling concern it will spread eastward through banking and trade links, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Italy’s Unicredit SpA (UCG) and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP), two of eastern Europe’s biggest lenders, fell to the lowest in more than two years July 11 as political infighting threatened to delay efforts to cut the budget deficit in the country with Europe’s largest debt burden. European leaders this week failed to agree on a new aid package for Greece.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Erik Berglof, chief economist at the London-based EBRD, which invests in eastern Europe and Central Asia, said in a July 12 interview. “The source of the contagion seems to be in worse shape.”

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The international community must not take its “eyes off Southern Sudan at the moment”, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned on Saturday, the day the new African republic was founded.

Dr Williams told the General Synod in York that the situation in the region could not be ignored, as there was still the threat of “genocidal violence”, after reports of unrest in border regions, including Abyei and south Kordofan.

He said that he would write to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, “celebrating the inauguration of the republic, but urging the same level of international attention at this critical period” as in the run-up to the referendum in January. He would also register “profound concern” over the instability in Abyei and south Kordofan, and the “deliberate tar­geting” of the Nubian people.

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The Bishop of Kubwa Diocese (Anglican Communion), Rt. Reverend Duke Akamisoko, has said that the proposed Islamic Banking is making some people to be apprehensive, saying that the development is overheating the polity.

The cleric, who spoke to journalists at the Pre- Synod press conference in Abuja yesterday, added that World Bank statistics had revealed that 60-70 per cent of citizens of countries like Pakistan, Kuwait, Sudan that had practiced Islamic banking for over 40 years lived below poverty level.

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Pakistan’s increasingly “close and effective defense ties” established with China during the past decade will allow Islamabad to “fill the gap” arising from the prospect of reduced military aid from the United States, a senior Pakistani official said on Sunday after reports emerged of cuts of up to $800 million in U.S. aid.

Amid tense relations with the United States, Pakistan officials have increasingly pointed towards Beijing as the country’s natural ally, offering the possibility of becoming at least a half-substitute to ties with the U.S.

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Father Lombardi noted how John Paul II “addressed, with his typical extraordinary courage in the face of rulers, the dramatic themes of justice and freedom” and was “welcomed with incredible enthusiasm by an immense crowd of Sudanese Catholics, mostly refugees from the south, who had fled from the violence of an endless civil war.”

“Eighteen years have passed,” the spokesman reflected. “It is estimated that 2 million have died and 4 million have been displaced, but now we hope that the war is truly over and that the new republic of South Sudan, desired by the majority of its inhabitants, might begin a new history of peace.”

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In an exuberant and joyous three-and-a-half hour service here July 10, South Sudanese Episcopalians celebrated the birth of their new nation, even as they looked towards the difficult future of their country.

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With South Sudan set to become an independent nation Saturday, Rhode Island Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf will go to Washington in coming days to advocate for a renewed effort by the United States to secure peace and security in the troubled region.

Bishop Wolf noted that she has been invited by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to lead the U.S. Senate in prayer at its July 14 session. Following that, she said, she and her husband, Thomas Bair Jr., plan to meet the other members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, Sen. Jack Reed and Representatives David N. Cicilline and James R. Langevin, about the problems facing the people of South Sudan.

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A Dorset bishop who was invited to South Sudan to see the country celebrate its independence said it was a “jubilant” occasion.

The Diocese of Salisbury has had links with the region for 39 years and has sent several figures to the region.

Bishop of Sherborne, Dr Graham Kings, said it was important to show support for the new nation.

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European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has called an emergency meeting of top officials dealing with the euro zone debt crisis for Monday morning, reflecting concern that the crisis could spread to Italy, the region’s third largest economy.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will attend the meeting along with Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the region’s finance ministers, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Olli Rehn, the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, three official sources told Reuters.

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Wow.

Japan have recorded a famous 1-0 extra-time win to eliminate reigning champions and host nation Germany from the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cupâ„¢ and reach the semi-finals for the first time.

Substitute Karina Maruyama scored the decisive goal on 108 minutes as Germany suffered a first defeat for 16 matches, dating back to the quarter-final stage at USA 1999. Japan will now face the winner of Sunday’s semi-final between Sweden and Australia.

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Across South Sudan, jubilant crowds are celebrating their freedom and what they hope will be the start of a peaceful and prosperous future.

In a statement, the head of the Episcopal Church in Sudan, Archbishop Daniel Deng said, “We now have a real government and can now be identified as a nation, which has attracted international support.

“These are great achievements which must be recognized, celebrated and guarded carefully.”

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