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Apostles
The Bishop’s 150 wives
on Board Cruise ship chaplains have complex jobs - to say the least ... Page 12
How a missionary bishop in the Northern Territory acted to protect the dignity of women and girls - Pages 10-11
Good, bad, news for British Christians after Euro Court discrimination cases
Flight attendant wins case
THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights has ruled that the British government violated the rights of an airline flight attendant by failing to protect her right to conscience and religion. It found that Nadia Eweida, 60, a Coptic Christian, suffered discrimination when she was told by British Airways, her employer, to stop wearing a cross on her uniform. Her case was one of four claims of religious discrimination against English Christians heard by the court, but the only one to succeed. A January 15 ruling dismissed the cases brought by Gary McFarlane, a relationships counsellor fired after he said he had a moral objection to offering therapy to same-sex couples; Lillian Ladele, a registrar who objected to presiding over civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples; and Shirley Chaplin, 57, a nurse who said she was forced from her job for wearing a cross in breach of uniform policy. McFarlane and Chaplin said they would appeal the judgement. The court decided that in the case of Eweida there had been a violation of Articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion and prohibit unjust discrimination. It awarded her US$2,670 in Continued on Page 7
Nadia Eweida, 60, a Christian, poses for a photograph in a church in London on January 15. Eweida, an employee who was asked by British Airways to remove a cross from around her neck, has won a religious discrimination case at Europe’s human rights court, but three other claimants lost similar cases. PHOTO: LUKE MCGREGAOR, REUTERS
Annual statements keep leprosy scourge in mind WHILE THE global rate of new infections of Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, continues to decline, the stigma associated with the disease has not, and that often is the focus of annual Church statements marking World Leprosy Day. For the past 60 years, Christians around the world have marked the last Sunday of January as a day to pray for those with Hansen’s disease, to raise awareness about it and to thank ministers and health care workers – many of them Catholic – who offer treatment, therapy and support to patients. Pope Benedict XVI and the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry traditionally both issue messages for World Leprosy Day, which is January 27 this year. According to the World Health Organisation, which provides free
medication for Hansen’s disease patients around the world, since 1985 there has been a “dramatic decrease in the global disease burden”. WHO reported the number of Hansen’s cases went “from 5.2 million in 1985 to 805,000 in 1995 to 753,000 at the end of 1999 to 181,941 cases at the end of 2011”. While great strides have been made in eradicating the disease, WHO said, “pockets of high endemicity” remain in some areas of Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Congo, India, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal and Tanzania. World Leprosy Day was begun by Raoul Follereau, a French writer and poet, who first encountered people with Hansen’s disease in North Africa in the late 1930s and began speaking tours and raising money for treatment facilities. In
Saint Damien de Veuster in bed shortly before he died in 1889 at the Kalawao settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. PHOTO: CNS
1964, he met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican and asked the Pope to beatify Father Damien de Veuster
of Molokai, Hawaii. In 1873, Fr Damien was assigned to work at what was then called a leper colony
on Molokai. He soon gained a reputation as a pastor, medic, adviser and guardian to the 800 members of the colony. He campaigned vigorously for improvements in the colony and for greater respect for the dignity of people with the disease, who were treated as social outcasts at the time. Fr Damien contracted the disease in 1884 but continued working in the colony until a month before his death in 1889, at age 49. Fr Damien was beatified in 1995 by Blessed John Paul II and canonised by Pope Benedict in 2009. In October, Pope Benedict canonised St Damien’s successor, Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai, a Sister of St Francis who travelled from the US to Hawaii to take over the ministry. - CNS