News/International

OXFORD, England - A spokesman for Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels said the transcript of an April meeting with a victim of clergy sex abuse has been interpreted out of context.

“There was no intention of any cover-up,” said Toon Osaer, spokesman for the cardinal, who retired in January as archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels.

TORONTO - After a slow start, Canadian Catholics have responded, online and in parishes, to the flood crisis in Pakistan.

Contributions over the Internet pushed the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace disaster relief fund for Pakistan over the $100,000 mark on the Aug. 22 weekend. In the archdiocese of Toronto, the ShareLife Pakistan Flood Relief fund went from less than $11,000 on Aug. 16 to $38,497 as of 3 p.m. Aug. 23.

With the federal government giving in to pleas from Development and Peace and other agencies to establish a dollar-for-dollar program to match private donations, Development and Peace is hopeful Canadian generosity will begin to equal the massive scale of the floods in the Indus River valley.

WASHINGTON - The controversy over plans to build an Islamic cultural centre and mosque a couple of blocks away from ground zero in New York is but the latest manifestation of a historic cycle of distrust of immigrants — and their faith.

Public outcry erupted this summer over plans to convert a former Burlington Coat Factory store, located a little more than two blocks from the World Trade Centre complex, into a nine-storey Islamic cultural centre, with a mosque included. The area’s Muslim community already uses the vacant retail space for worshippers who overflow from the al-Farah Mosque, about a dozen blocks north of the trade centre property, according to The Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY - Christians and other minorities affected by severe flooding in Pakistan are being discriminated against in government-run rescue and aid programs, said the director of pontifical missionary societies in Pakistan.

Fr. Mario Rodrigues, the Lahore-based director of the mission awareness and funding agencies, said, "While Caritas and the pontifical mission societies are working on providing humanitarian relief to displaced persons without discrimination of origin, race or religion, in other areas, the Christian refugees, even in the midst of this tragedy, are being treated as second-class citizens.

LONDON - Honduras' environmental prosecutor has filed criminal charges against two mining executives with a Canadian company and a former government official after a British Catholic aid agency provided evidence to show that they ignored the alleged pollution of rivers.

The mining officials, Christian Pineda and Renan Santamaria, could face up to six years in jail if convicted of contaminating water and polluting the environment around the San Martin gold mine, the largest open-cast gold mine in Central America until its closure in 2008. Pineda and Santamaria are employed by Entre Mares, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldcorp Inc., a gold-mining company based in Vancouver.

DUBLIN  - Pope Benedict XVI has decided not to accept the resignation of two Dublin auxiliary bishops who resigned in the wake of the Murphy Report investigation into clerical child abuse in the archdiocese.

Auxiliary Bishops Raymond Field and Eamonn Walsh resigned Dec. 24 after coming under intense pressure because they served as bishops during the period investigated by the Murphy Commission.

In a letter to priests of the Dublin archdiocese Aug. 11, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin confirmed the development.

Pakistani Christians are looking at a long road to recovery after the worst flooding in 80 years. Catholics in Canada and the United States are stepping up to help them rebuild.

Canada's Caritas partner, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace has contributed an intial $50,000 to Caritas Pakistan efforts to aid 13.8 million people affected by the floods. The Canadian agency is accepting further donations at 1-888-664-3387 and at www.devp.org. People can make cheques out to Development and Peace and mail them to Pakistan Floods, Development and Peace, 1425 René-Levesque Blvd. W., 3rd Floor, Montreal, QC, H3G 1T7.

Six months after the earthquake, nobody wants to rebuild Haiti — at least not the Haiti from before the earthquake.

That Haiti was a country in which 30 per cent of its 9.2-million people suffered malnutrition, barely half the population over 15 could read and write, 80 per cent lived below the poverty line and 54 per cent lived in abject poverty. Infant mortality ran at 58.07 per 1,000 live births, about 12 times the rate in Canada.

ROME - Pope Benedict XVI has given his new papal delegate broad powers of authority over the Legionaries of Christ as part of a major Vatican-led reform of the order.

Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis has authority over the order's current superiors and can even override the order's constitutions. He will have a say in all areas of the order including its governance, decisions involving personnel, education and ordination, as well as how assets are spent.

FAISALABAD, Pakistan - Two Christians have been killed, a church ransacked and shops burned as Muslim-Christian tensions erupted into five hours of violence in Faisalabad July 19.

Police restored order and dispersed the crowds by using shellfire. One day later, the situation remained tense, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News.

The murdered Christians were brothers who had been charged with publishing and distributing a blasphemous, anti-Islamic pamphlet. They were shot dead as they arrived at court to face the charges.