US Secretary of State visits a site of Sri Lanka’s 2019 Easter bombings

Canberra, Australia, Dec 13, 2018 / 03:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid competing claims of religious freedom rights and LBGT rights, the Australian prime minister said Thursday the government will next year introduce a bill to protect against discrimination based on religious belief or activity.

“Australia is a place where discrimination on the basis of a person’s identity – including their religious identity – is unacceptable,” the office of Scott Morrison said Dec. 13.

“It is also a place where we respect the right of religious institutions to maintain their distinctive religious ethos. Our laws should reflect these values.”

Morrison also plans to appoint a freedom of religion commissioner at the Australin Human Rights Commission.

The government wants to make religious belief and activity a protected class, like race or sex. It also hopes to ensure that groups rejecting same-sex marriage are not stripped of their charitable status.

The proposals are among the government’s response to a review on religious freedom in Australia, which was finished in May.

Australia has seen debate over religious freedom in recent years with respect to the seal of the confessional, hiring decisions, and same-sex marriage.

The religious freedom review made 20 recommendations, of which the government will implement 14 as soon as practicable.

One recommendation, a Religious Discrimination Bill, will be “implemented following consultation to seek bipartisan support.”

Five more recommendations “require further consideration,” the government said. These include provisions relating to employment and enrolment in religious schools.

The head of the religious freedom review panel, Phillip Ruddock, told the Guardian Australia that it had “looked for examples of questionable conduct” against LGBT employees and students, but such examples were “few and far apart and ill-defined”.

Morrison’s governing Coalition alliance has been at odds with the opposition Australian Labor Party over efforts to legislate regarding religious schools’ ability to discriminate against LGBT students and staff.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney noted earlier this year that “we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia,” and that “powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections.”

For example, in July, a group of trade unions in the country passed a motion saying that they will lobby to restrict the right of religious organizations to make hiring decisions based on adherence to Church teaching on sexuality.

And when same-sex marriage was legalized in Australia in 2017, efforts to include amendments that would protect religious freedom failed during parliamentary debate.

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Melbourne, Australia, Mar 6, 2019 / 11:25 am (CNA).- An Australian court announced Wednesday that Cardinal George Pell’s application for leave to appeal his conviction of sexual abuse will be heard June 5-6.

Pell, 77, was convicted in December on five counts of sexual abuse stemming from charges that he sexually assaulted two choirboys while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He has maintained his innocence.

It was the cardinal’s second trial, as a jury in an earlier trial had failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The first jury were deadlocked 10-2 in Pell’s favor.

Pell’s appeal will by led by barrister Bret Walker, SC, who will be assisted by Robert Richter, QC, the cardinal’s defense lawyer; Paul Galbally, his solicitor; and Ruth Shann, Richter’s junior barrister.

The cardinal’s appeal will be made on three points: the jury’s reliance on the evidence of a single victim, an irregularity that kept Pell from entering his not guilty plea in front of the jury, and the defense not being allowed to show a visual representation supporting his claim of innocence.

The appeal document, The Age reported, says that “the verdicts are unreasonable and cannot be supported, having regard to the evidence, because on the whole of the evidence, including unchallenged exculpatory evidence from more than 20 Crown witnesses, it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on the word of the complainant alone.”

Pell is incarcerated at the Melbourne Assessment Prison while he awaits the results of a sentencing hearing, which will be announced March 13.

In December, a district judge overturned the May 22 conviction of Archbishop Philip Wilson for failing to report allegations of child sexual abuse disclosed to him in the 1970s, saying there was reasonable doubt a crime had been committed.

The judge, Roy Ellis, said acceptance of the accuser “as an honest witness does not automatically mean I would be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he complained to Philip Wilson in 1976 that James Fletcher had indecently assaulted him.”

The news of Pell’s conviction has met with varied reactions. While many figures in Australian media have applauded Pell’s conviction, some Australians have called it into question, prompting considerable debate across the country.

Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, suggested that the justice process was tainted by media and police forces that had worked “to blacken the name” of Pell “before he went to trial.”

“This is not a story about whether a jury got it right or wrong, or about whether justice is seen to prevail,” Craven said in a Feb. 27 opinion piece in The Australian. “It’s a story about whether a jury was ever given a fair chance to make a decision, and whether our justice system can be heard above a media mob.”

Pell was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Ballarat in 1966. He was consecrated a bishop in 1987, and appointed auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, becoming ordinary of the see in 1996. Pell was then Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014, when he was made prefect of the newly-created Secretariat for the Economy. He served on Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals from 2013 to 2018. Pell ceased to be prefect of the economy secretariat Feb. 24.

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CNA Staff, Jan 6, 2021 / 03:52 pm (CNA).- Police in Hong Kong arrested more than 50 people Wednesday for apparent violations of a China-imposed “national security law”— the latest in a series of crackdowns that have seen several prominent pro-democracy Catholics arrested and charged on the island.

Among those arrested Jan. 6 are a number of politicians and organizers who took part in unofficial “primaries” to choose opposition candidates for the next elections in Hong Kong. The territory was slated to hold parliamentary elections during September 2020, but officials postponed them, citing dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman told the BBC that the arrests were necessary to stop “external forces and individuals [colluding] to undermine China’s stability and security.”

Several of those arrested this week were opposition candidates hoping to win election to the territory’s parliament, or Legislative Council. The unofficial primaries were held during July 2020 with some 600,000 Hong Kongers participating.

The UK-based group Hong Kong Watch called the arrests a “purge of pretty much the entire pro-democracy camp.” Half the seats on the Legislative Council are already controlled by those with vested interests in the Chinese Communist Party, the group reported.

Also arrested was an American citizen, lawyer John Clancey, the first known foreigner to be arrested under the national security law, UCA News reported. Clancey was the treasurer for the organization that coordinated the democratic primaries, HKW reported.

Benny Tai, a Christian pro-democracy organizer who also helped with primaries, also faced arrest. Police also reportedly raided the home of Joshua Wong, a student activist who was previously arrested and has already been charged.

Hong Kong’s National Security Law went into effect July 1, 2020, imposed directly by Beijing. It has been criticized as being overly broad on its definitions of terrorism, sedition, and foriegn collusion.

Under the law, a person who is convicted of the aforementioned crimes will receive a minimum of 10 years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence.

American politicians including the prospective secretary of state under the incoming Biden administration have condemned the police’s actions. The US Consulate in Hong Kong would not comment on the arrests, according to CNN.

Hong Kong is a “special administrative region” of China, meaning it has its own government but remains under Chinese control. It was a British colony until 1997, when it was returned to China under a “one country, two systems” principle, which allowed for its own legislature and economic system.

Hong Kong’s openness to the outside world, and transparency in business and banking regulation, in contrast to mainland China, has made it a center of global business, banking, and finance.

Millions of citizens of Hong Kong, including many Catholics, have in recent years participated in large-scale pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which came to a head during summer 2019.

At that time, the protestors successfully rebuffed the Hong Kong legislature’s efforts last year to pass a bill that would have allowed mainland China to extradite alleged criminals from Hong Kong.

However, with the passage of the new security laws, the Chinese government seized more power to suppress the protests in Hong Kong, which it sees as a direct challenge to its power.

Similar security rules have been proposed before; in 2003, the communist government attempted to use Hong Kong’s own legislative and executive councils to pass the anti-sedition measures, but massive protests led lawmakers to abandon the proposal.

Cardinal John Tong Hon, apostolic administrator of Hong Kong, previously downplayed religious freedom concerns about the law.

In June 2020, Cardinal Tong told a diocesan publication that he “personally believe that the National Security Law will have no effect on religious freedom, because Article 32 of the Basic Law guarantees that we have freedom of religion, and we can also openly preach and hold religious ceremonies, and participate in religious activities.”

In recent months, the Diocese of Hong Kong has issued directives to Catholic schools on “fostering the correct values on national identity” and respecting Chinese national symbols including the flag and national anthem. It has also blocked a Catholic pro-democracy ad campaign and prayer that was set to run in local newspapers.

The last large crackdown in Hong Kong occurred in August 2020, when several prominent democracy activists were arrested and charged, including Agnes Chow, a 23-year-old Catholic democracy activist. Chow has been outspoken in her support for civil rights in the former British colony.

In November, three of the pro-democracy activists, including Joshua Wong and Chow, pled guilty on charges related to their roles in an “illegal assembly” in 2019. The next month, they were each sentenced to months in prison, with the possibility that they will face further charges.

Also among those arrested in August was Jimmy Lai, a Catholic media executive who has supported the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement for the past 30 years. A band of nearly 200 police officers arrested Lai Aug. 10, along with at least nine others connected to Apple Daily, the newspaper Lai founded in 1995.

Following those arrests, Cardinal Tong wrote to local clergy, warning them against mentioning politics in their homilies, according to Apple Daily.

Lai was free on bail for a time, but in early December was charged with foreign collusion. If convicted, he could receive a life sentence. Lai was also charged in early December 2020 with breaching the terms of a lease for his company, Next Digital Media.

After another brief period out on bail, Lai was ordered back to jail on Dec. 31, where he is set to remain until a hearing in February. His trial is expected to begin in April.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, has warned that Lai’s arrest shows a rise in “political intimidation” against journalists in Hong Kong, part of a systematic erosion of basic freedoms, including religious freedom, by the Chinese government in recent months.

Zen has been an outspoken critic of the Holy See’s accord with the Chinese government, first agreed in 2018 and recently renewed for another two years. Zen has explained to CNA that, in past decades, the Church has had a key role to play in promoting the values of human dignity and freedom in Hong Kong – a role that is now being steadily eroded.

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