An Indian woman became a nun…because of elephants?

Paris, France, Mar 3, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Asia Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic woman who was sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy against Islam.  After more than eight years in prison, she was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2018.

“I was accused because of the name of Jesus and I knew I would be freed because of Jesus,” Bibi said at a Paris press conference last week.

Bibi said that during her time on death row, her faith “was always strong because I knew that God was with me, God never leaves you alone, he always accompanies you.” 

Together with French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, Bibi has written her autobiography,“Enfin Libre” (Free at Last). The English edition is due out in September.

According to UCA News, Tollet campaigned for Bibi’s release and is the only journalist to interview her in Canada, where Bibi was granted refugee status last year.

Bibi has been living with her husband and two daughters in Canada since last May. Her refugee status is due to expire at the end of this year, and she is seeking political asylum in France, where she met with French president Emmanuel Macron Feb. 28.

Accompanied by her daughter at the press conference, Bibi recounted how the priest who baptized her told her parents that “this little girl will be tested by God.”

“My parents told me that and I knew that something would happen one day,” she said.

During her incarceration, even when she was sentenced to death by hanging, Bibi said she prayed to God for his help to overcome her ordeal.

“If you trust in God, your faith becomes stronger,” she said.

“I knew I was going to be released because I was accused because of  the name of Jesus and I would be freed because of Jesus,” Bibi said.

A mother of five, Bibi especially thanked all the people who prayed for her during her years in prison, especially pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

“When my husband came to tell me that His Holiness the Pope prayed for me, I felt really blessed from the bottom of my heart because I knew that was a blessing from God. I was very happy, I don’t have the words to thank him,” she added.

Bibi said one of her greatest desires is to meet Pope Francis.

Asked how her children handled her years in prison, Bibi’s daughter broke into tears. 

“Don’t worry, your mom is here,” Bibi consoled her daughter.

“All these people have come to see you, to meet you, to give you their love…smile,” Bibi added.

Bibi also honored the memory of the Minister for Minorities, Shabbaz Batthi, who was assassinated for defending her innocence and opposing the law on blasphemy.

She said she mourned his death very much and that “whoever dies for the truth and for his faith, is always alive, he never dies.”

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, named Bibi an honorary citizen of the city Feb. 24, RTL news reported.

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 25, 2019 / 03:34 am (CNA).- In the measure of a country, concern for human dignity and life is more important than economic strength, Pope Francis told Japanese authorities, civil servants, and diplomats Monday in Tokyo.

“Human dignity, needs to be at the center of all social, economic and political activity,” he said Nov. 25 at the prime minister’s official residence of Kantei.

He also said intergenerational solidarity and concern for the forgotten and excluded should be fostered, pointing in particular to the young, the elderly, and the lonely.

“We know that,” he added, “in the end, the civility of every nation or people is measured not by its economic strength, but by the attention it devotes to those in need and its capacity to be fruitful and promote life.”

In a change from the usual protocol, Pope Francis met with the prime minister and authorities of Japan at almost the end of his trip, rather than the beginning.

He also met with Emperor Naruhito Nov. 25.

The pope’s first full day in Japan was instead spent visiting Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where he spoke against nuclear weapons and honored the Japanese martyrs of the 17th and 18th centuries.

His visit to Japan was the second leg of a six-day trip to Asia, which began in Thailand Nov. 20-23.

Pope Francis urged authorities in Japan to include human ecology in their efforts to protect the environment, including “confronting the growing gap between rich and poor in a global economic system that enables a select few to dwell in opulence while the majority of the world’s population lives in poverty.”

He used the delicacy of Japan’s beautiful cherry blossom to illustrate the fragility of the common home to natural disasters and “to greed, exploitation and devastation at the hands of human beings.”

As a young Jesuit in Argentina, Pope Francis was inspired by the example of the first missionaries to Japan, such as St. Francis Xavier, and wanted to go to the country as a missionary, though he was prevented for health reasons.

“In these days, I have experienced and have come to esteem once more the precious cultural heritage that Japan throughout many centuries of its history has been able to develop and preserve, and the profound religious and moral values that characterize this ancient culture,” he said.

Praising the beauty of the country, he quoted the Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, who wrote in 1579: “Whoever wishes to see what our Lord has bestowed upon man need only come to Japan to see it.”

He praised Japan’s attention to the suffering of the less fortunate, the handicapped, and the disabled.

Pope Francis also said that the purpose of his trip was “to confirm Japanese Catholics in their faith, their charitable outreach to those in need and their service to the country of which they are proud citizens.”

Before the meeting with authorities, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for 50,000 people in the Tokyo Dome. Present at the Mass was ex-death row inmate Iwao Hakamada.

Hakamada, 83, was released from death row after 48 years. A boxer, he had been convicted in 1966 of a quadruple murder but was released in 2014 when new DNA evidence led to a suspension of his sentence. He is currently awaiting retrial by Japan’s supreme court.

Hakamada was baptized in prison on Christmas Eve 1984. The Catholic bishops of Japan invited Hakamada to attend the papal Mass Nov. 25.

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This work of art was displayed at St. Peter’s on the occasion of the Vatican’s Celebration of the Canonization of 117 Vietnamese Martyrs on July 19, 1988. / Credit: Public domain

CNA Staff, Nov 24, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Today, Nov. 24, is the feast day of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and companions, a group of 117 martyrs, led by Father Andrew, who died for the Catholic faith in Vietnam during a 19th-century persecution. 

The group was made up of 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spaniards, and 10 French. Roughly half were clergy and half were laypeople, including a 9-year-old child. Some of the priests were Dominicans; others were diocesan priests who belonged to the Paris Mission Society.

According to the Vatican, Father Andrew Dung-Lac was born with the name Dung An-Tran to a poor family in northern Vietnam around the year 1795. When his family moved to Hanoi to find work, the 12-year-old Dung met a Christian catechist who shared the faith with him and baptized him with the name “Andrew.” 

The climate at the time was very dangerous for Christians in Vietnam under the Emperor Minh-Mang, who banned foreign missionaries and commanded Vietnamese Christians to trample on crucifixes in order to publically renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. (Japanese authorities had for years forced Christians to do something similar, a practice that is dramatized in the film “Silence.”) 

Later, in 1823, Andrew was ordained a priest, and his preaching and simplicity of life led many others to baptism, despite the young priest needing to be hidden by the faithful in order to keep him safe from the emperor. He was imprisoned multiple times and each time was ransomed by the Catholic faithful. Many Christians during this time were suffering brutal martyrdoms — strippings, torture, beheadings — and the priest changed him name to Lac in an attempt to avoid detection. 

It’s estimated that from 1630 to 1886, between 130,000 and 300,000 Christians were martyred in Vietnam, while others were forced to flee to the mountains and the forests or be exiled to other countries.

In 1839, the Vatican recounts, he was arrested again along with another Vietnamese priest, Father Peter Thi, to whom Dung-Lac had visited in order to go to confession. The two were ransomed, then arrested again, tortured, and finally beheaded in Hanoi on Dec. 21, 1839. He is the patron saint of Vietnam. 

Described as the “Nero of Indochina” for his harsh persecutions, Minh Mang’s reign ended the next year. 

Pope John Paul II canonized the 117 martyrs together on June 19, 1988. At the time, the Vatican said, the communist government of Vietnam did not permit a single representative from the country to attend the canonization. But 8,000 Vietnamese Catholics from the diaspora were there, “filled with joy to be the children of this suffering Church.”

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