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But premier of New South Wales says "question of the seal of confession" will be addressed at national level.The government of the Australian state of New South Wales is seeking to implement a range of laws targeting child abuse, in response to the final report of a broad investigation into abuse perpetrated by institutions, including members of the Church, which was released last year. Among the proposals being considered are those which would apply to priests, including regulation or negation of the seal of confession. The seal of confession is a set of strict rules keeping priests from revealing or...

The Bible appears to have been removed from online marketplaces in China, as Beijing clamps down on how its citizens practice religion. China has always controlled sales of the Bible, only allowing it to be distributed and printed by state-sanctioned churches, but in recent years it had been available to buy online. That loophole now appears to be firmly closed. Searches for "Holy Bible" did not return results on JD.com, and results on Amazon.cn did not include the main text, but did include study guides and the Koran. On Taobao, China's biggest online marketplace, a search returned results for the...

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime is not the first to employ a puppet church to absorb, and finally dissolve, the genuine one. In the Ukraine of the 1920s, the so-called Living Church prefigured the Catholic Patriotic Association, a creature of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s. It is to this counter-church that Pope Francis bows, in effect making the Catholic Church in China a client of the CPC... Of relevance here is that the Living Church, with Soviet support, evolved rapidly into a tool of the State Political Police (GPU). It functioned within the orbit of the NKVD, an...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer for our nation.

YOUTONG VILLAGE, China (Reuters) - Choosing a church can be complicated in China under the rule of the officially atheist Communist Party - especially in Youtong village, where roughly half the 5,000 residents are Catholics. Within a mile radius, the village in northern China’s Hebei province hosts a Catholic church sanctioned by Chinese authorities, two large “underground” churches, and numerous smaller unofficial house churches, according to villagers. Youtong provides a snapshot of the muddled and delicate situation for China’s estimated 12 million Catholics, with allegiances split between government-sanctioned churches and the underground ones endorsed by the Vatican, amid expectations that...

What legal protections priests should have in the confessional needs to be decided on the national level in Australia, according to the premier of the eastern state of New South Wales. The government of the state - which includes Australia’s largest city, Sydney - is instituting a range of new laws targeting child abuse in response to the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released last year. The royal commission was established in 2013 to investigate how institutions like schools, churches, sports clubs and government organizations have responded to allegations and instances of...

Holy Saturday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a government-approved church in Beijing. BEIJING — China will not allow any foreign interference in religious affairs in the country, a senior official said on Tuesday, dousing expectations of an imminent deal with the Vatican over control of the Roman Catholic Church here. “I think there is no religion in human society that is above the state,” the official, Chen Zongrong, said during a briefing on religious affairs in China, underscoring the government’s intention to maintain strict control over all religious organizations and their believers. Mr. Chen’s remarks came...

In reference to the Vatican's pending agreement with the Communist Chinese government on a shared role in the appointment of Catholic bishops, famed Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng said the Vatican "has abandoned its principles" and is "making a deal with the Devil," the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)."After the CCP holds the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March this year, Beijing will send representatives to the Vatican to sign the agreement," said Chen in a commentary published by Radio Free Asia and translated by Chinascope.org.  "This, in fact, is the equivalent of selling out...

SAIQI, China (AP) — The twin-spired church in this southern Chinese village was packed with more than a thousand Catholics observing Good Friday, but the bishop who tends to the congregation was not among them. Just a day earlier, government agents had taken him away. Bishop Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that will likely yield a deal on who appoints bishops in China. The move would be historic, uniting the country’s Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. At...

Widespread protests have forced the government in Christian-majority Meghalaya State in north-east India to restore the Good Friday holiday. The coalition government, to which the Hindu nationalist BJP is a partner, had declared in a circular that Good Friday would be a normal “working day”, but the move was withdrawn on Tuesday, 27 March. “We are happy that the government officials acted promptly and reversed the controversial order,” a senior Christian leader based in state capital, Shillong, told World Watch Monitor today (29 March). P.B.M. Basaiawmoit, a Presbyterian Church member and former vice-president of the National Council of Churches in...

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by the Christian ex-governor of Jakarta to review his conviction for insulting Islam, a court spokesman said on Monday, so the politician will serve out his two-year sentence. A lower court jailed Basuki Tjahaja Purnama for blasphemy last May after a doctored and incorrectly subtitled video spread on social media that appeared to show him insulting the Koran. At the time, Purnama, who is popularly known as Ahok, was popular and looked set for re-election to govern the capital of a country with the largest Muslim population in the world....

" ... to protect from enmity toward Russia by the Western political system and its main stream media, ... only a ... Christ-bearing Tsar would be incorruptible ...... he has no interest in any lobbies and cannot be bribed, but by the very essence of his service to Christ, he would never sacrifice the interests of his nation ... The time is ripe for such an understanding.The more the Russian people ... return to their Orthodox roots, then could come the restoration of our most treasured sacred monarchy."ARCHBISHOP GABRIEL was born in 1961 and currently is serving as Bishop of...

When Hungarians head to the polls on April 8, they will not just be deciding about their country’s future for the next four years, but for many decades to come, the prime minister said in an interview to a local broadcaster in south-western Hungary’s Nagykanizsa on Thursday. “This will not be a regular election,” Viktor Orban said. “There is a struggle going on in Europe,” Orban said. At the centre of it is the question of which countries will get to “stay out of the global trend which creates immigrant countries taking in more and more mixed populations, cultures and...

US President Donald Trump's unabashed support for the Jewish state and his public recognition of Jerusalem as its capital have many Israelis electrified. The current American leader's positive attitude toward Israel seems nearly illogical, especially after decades of far more hostile trends. A prominent Israeli rabbi believes the reason for this unprecedented (at least in modern times) shift is that Trump has a big role to play in the building of the Third Temple and the coming of Messiah. Rabbi Yosef Berger is the rabbi in charge of King David's Tomb on Mount Zion, and the son of a widely...

Please join with each other to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Family, Government, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (I John 5:14) Religion forum threads labeled "Prayer" are closed to debate of any kind.

Members of China’s Christian community feel betrayed by the Vatican’s negotiations with Beijing over Chinese bishop appointments. In fact, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) writes of Catholics feeling as “betrayed and abandoned” as Jesus on Good Friday.Christian faith occupies a curious position in Chinese society—frowned upon and distrusted by the Communist elite, but not currently oppressed as savagely as in neighboring North Korea. Some Chinese Catholics belong to churches authorized by the state, but others say those churches are controlled by the state and prefer to worship at “underground” churches free of political influence. Some of those churches are...

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, March 28, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The city of Philadelphia will no longer place foster children with parents through the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Catholic Social Services (CSS) because the archdiocese won’t place kids with same-sex couples. “A short time ago, the City ceased new foster care child intakes with CSS,” Kenneth Gavin, the archdiocese’s chief communications officer, told LifeSiteNews via email. “CSS is, at its core, an institution founded on faith based-principles. As such, CSS conducts its operations based upon deeply held religious beliefs and principles.” The archdiocesan program “recognizes the vital importance of the foster care program in...

STANBUL – Turkey's president has recited an Islamic prayer in the Hagia Sophia, a historic Istanbul landmark that has become a symbol of interfaith and diplomatic tensions. Speaking for an art festival opening Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recited the Quran's first verse, dedicating the prayer to the "souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror." The Hagia Sophia was built during the 6th century Christian Byzantine Empire and served as the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was converted into an imperial mosque with the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453.

This Sunday, Christians around the world will celebrate Easter. Some prefer to call it Resurrection Day. Now most Christians – whether nominal or serious – just accept the holiday without much thought. But if they would examine the claims, most Christians would be shocked. The basic premise behind Christianity is that humanity, and also by extension the universe, is flawed – the theological term is fallen – so flawed that there is no way any human could set himself right with a just, perfect, and holy Creator. If humanity is to be reconciled to the Creator, it must be the...

LIVERPOOL, England, March 29, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The father of a 22-month-old boy condemned to die by the European court says he is being “blackmailed” into cutting off his life support. In a Thursday Facebook post, Thomas Evans said personnel at England’s Alder Hey Children's Hospital won’t let him hold Alfie Evans until he agrees to allow his son’s ventilator to be removed. “I have just brought my sister niece and younger brother in Alfies room to give him cuddle time,” Evans says, “and was told that my family cannot hold my son until I speak about removing the vent...