Rome, 29 November (ENI)--Pope Benedict XVI has responded to a letter sent to him and other Christian leaders by 138 Muslim scholars, by inviting a group of its signatories to meet him and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The response came in a letter from the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, president of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman and a prime mover of the Muslim letter.

"The Pope ... wishes to express his deep appreciation for this gesture, for the positive spirit which inspired the text and for the call for a common commitment to promoting peace in the world," Bertone wrote in the letter released on 29 November. The Muslim document made public on 11 October was addressed to world Christian leaders. It compared passages in the Quran and the Bible, and identified the principles of accepting only one god and living in peace with one's neighbours as common ground between the two religions.

In the Vatican's response, Bertone stated, "Without ignoring or downplaying our differences as Christians and Muslims, we can and therefore should look to what unites us: namely, belief in the one God, the provident Creator and universal Judge who at the end of time will deal with each person according to his or her actions. We are all called to commit ourselves totally to him and to obey his sacred will." The Catholic News Service reported on 29 November that Aref Ali Nayed, a signatory to the Muslim letter, said he had no doubt the papal invitation would be accepted.

"There is a theological and moral principle in Islam that according to the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, when you are invited to something you should go," Nayed said. "It should not be a photo opportunity, but a real discussion with the Pope and our scholars," he said. "The scholars that signed the letter are theologians and jurists; they see the Pope not just as the leader of 1 billion Catholics, but as a scholar in his own right."

The letter from the 138 Muslim scholars marked the first anniversary of another open letter from Islamic academics to Pope Benedict. That missive was issued after the pontiff made a speech in Germany in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who had linked Islam and violence. [407 words]

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New Delhi, 29 November (ENI)--In an unprecedented protest, more than 30 bishops joined scores of priests, nuns and church activists in a sit-in near the Indian parliament in New Delhi to demand an end to the decades-old discrimination against Christian Dalits. "We want the government to end this discrimination," demanded Church of South India Bishop Jeypaul David, president of the National Council of Churches in India, addressing the sit-in on 29 November.

Thirty bishops from NCCI churches, which groups 29 Orthodox and Protestant denominations, joined six Roman Catholics bishops in the protest to reiterate their demand for justice for Christian Dalits. Ongoing discrimination against Christian Dalits, Bishop David stated, is "a violation of fundamental rights and human dignity". Philip Jhadav, coordinator of the national affairs desk of the NCCI, told Ecumenical News International, "I think it is the first time in Indian history that we had so many bishops together participating in a protest demonstration."

Dalit, meaning trampled upon in Sanskrit, refers to low castes treated as untouchables under a system in India which enjoins them to carry out degrading and dehumanising jobs such as scavenging, even although the constitution outlaws it. The government introduced a system of affirmative action in 1950 allowing for 15 percent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs, as well as free education for Dalits. These benefits were initially confined to Hindu Dalits, but later extended to Sikh and Buddhist Dalits. Christian Dalits who account for two thirds of India's 26 million Christians are, however, denied these rights.

Catholic Archbishop Malayappan Chinnappa of Madras and Mylapore, and chairperson of the Dalit Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, told the gathering that caste discrimination is a form of terrorism against Dalits. Kim Gangte, a woman activist from the Seventh-day Adventist Church and a former member of the Indian parliament, said there was no justification to continue the discrimination against Christian Dalits.

"This is nothing but denial of the freedom of religion for Dalits," noted Gangte, speaking in the presence of Catholic nuns holding placards saying "stop oppressing Dalit Christians". During the sit-in, Catholics priests clad in cassocks performed traditional dances to drum-beating by Dalits from southern Tamil Nadu. [375 words]

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Katmandu, 22 November (ENI)--When Raju Lama embraced Christianity at the age of 16, his Buddhist parents were furious and virtually expelled him from the family home near the Nepalese capital of Katmandu. Undeterred, Lama, who became a Christian in 1989, began trying to persuade his parents to do the same. Ten years later that persistence paid off, and his parents converted to Christianity, followed by his sisters and brother.

"I am happy I could persuade my family members to become Christians," said Lama, who is now the president of the United Christian Youth Fellowship in Katmandu valley. Lama spoke to Ecumenical News International on 12 November during an assembly of his youth network that took place during the Hindu Diwali holidays at the independent Anugraha Vijay (Grace Victory) Church at Kapan Bekha in Katmandu.

"It is the youth who are at the centre of the growth of the church here (in Nepal)," Lama told ENI. Before 1991, the number of Christians in this Hindu-dominated country was estimated to be around 50 000. Then, a new constitution was adopted following pro-democracy protests that led to a limited multiparty democracy under the monarchy.

The new constitution retained an existing ban on conversions but also eased some of the restrictions on religious freedom. Consequently, police and State officials stopped prosecuting Christians who engaged in evangelising. This led to sudden spurt in the growth of Christians in Nepal, and it is estimated that there are now more than 800 000 Christians in 6000 independent church congregations among the country's population of 29 million people.

Rajkumar Shrestha, a Hindu who had migrated to Katmandu from his native village of Sindu Palchok in search of employment, became a Christian four years ago after he came into contact with church workers. "My family members scolded me when I told this news to them," Shrestha told ENI during the youth meeting. Yet, Shrestha was also successful in winning his family over and in persuading them to accept the Christian faith.

Of the 70 participants at the youth assembly, only eight were born into Christian families, while the rest are recent converts. Robin Baidhya, a Hindu who embraced Christianity in 1995, pointed out that Nepali youth who are "disenchanted" with the current socio-political situation in Nepal, are looking "at Christianity with new hope for a change in life". Baidhya explained that church congregations are providing young people with regular training in music, sports and personality development. This, he said, is attracting young Nepalese to Christianity.

Lying at foot of the Himalayas and sandwiched between India and China, Nepal is one of the poorest nations in Asia, and has sparse civic and educational facilities. "Youth are providing a vital link in a flourishing of Christianity," said Pastor Simon Gurung, president of the National Christian Council of Nepal, to which the youth are affiliated.

However, Gurung noted that the churches are 'handicapped' because scattered and tiny congregations mostly engage in evangelisation work and do not have institutions to provide employment for the young people. "Unless we begin developing social service centres, their enthusiasm could fade away in the long run," cautioned Gurung, who had been imprisoned twice for preaching Christianity before the curbs on freedom of religion were eased in 1991. [555 words]

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Manila, 20 November (ENI)--Asia and Africa may become the centre of gravity for 21st century Christianity, says World Council of Churches general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia, who has challenged Philippine church leaders to prepare for this shift. "Christianity is declining in Europe but growing in Asia and Africa," Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, told bishops and other church leaders on 19 November in Manila. He said this situation raised at least two questions: "What kind of Christianity can we have in the future?" and, "Will the churches from Asia and Africa re-evangelise Europe?"

The WCC leader said that church buildings in Europe were being sold to Muslims, who were converting them into mosques, and to business people, who were transforming the churches into hotels, restaurants and other commercial centres. On the other hand, Filipino churches had begun to spread their reach overseas as they sought to minister to legions of Filipinos seeking overseas jobs, said the WCC general secretzry.

Kobia and a WCC team are on an 18-21 November visit to this predominantly Roman Catholic Southeast Asian nation of 86 million people. The WCC groups 347 churches, principally from Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox traditions. He was speaking to the leaders of the member churches of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, which groups mainly Protestant and Anglican denominations.

During the meeting, the Rev. Joel del Rosario of the Episcopal Church of the Philippines reported how his denomination is working with Catholic priests to help address the concerns of overseas Filipino workers. "One big challenge is to help ensure that the earnings of overseas Filipino workers are not fleeced by commercial and government banks. So, we are contemplating establishing an international bank for overseas workers," said Del Rosario.

"At the same time, we have to address the continuing concern for the spirituality of our overseas workers," he added, citing the psychological effects of separation, with which, he said, both the worker and his or her family have to live. There are reportedly about 10 million overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Europe, the United States, Canada and other places around the world, not including undocumented migrants. This makes Filipinos the third largest group of migrant workers worldwide, after Indians and Indonesians.

Other NCCP members, such as the United Methodist Church in the Philippines, the Salvation Army, and the Philippine Independent Church, have also begun responding to the needs of overseas migrant workers. "The ministry to migrant workers is really a big challenge because we lack priests, especially trained clergy, to minister to our migrant workers," said Bishop Godofredo David of the Philippine Independent Church.

While NCCP members are expanding their reach overseas, churches that do not belong to the council are reported to be more advanced in extending their churches abroad. Pentecostal and charismatic fellowships have been sending Filipino missionaries overseas to places such as the United States and Europe since the 1990s, Pastor Octavio Muncada of the Good News Fellowship told Ecumenical News International. [513 words]

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Kolar Gold Fields, India, 13 November (ENI)--Some people estimate that Christians make up more than one third of the 300 000 people in the now-closed mining area of the Kolar Gold Fields in India's southern Karnataka state. Others suggest that with Evangelical groups flourishing in the area, following the closure of the government-owned mine in 2001, the proportion of Christians could be as high as 50 percent.

Still, according to government documents, Christians account for less than 10 percent of the population of the region. "Here, many are Hindus in government records but Christians in faith," says church worker Vasanti Selvaraj, explaining the discrepancy between the government statistics and what many people believe is the actual number of Christians in the region.

The reason for the different figures, says Selvaraj, is based on the fact that the majority of the region's population are Dalits, low castes treated as untouchables under India's caste system. Today's gold field Dalits are the descendants of those the British brought to the rocky terrain in the 1880s. Stone crushing was considered an ignoble profession by the upper castes, who were reluctant to work as miners, so lower castes were shipped in.

After India's independence from Britain in 1947, the Indian government reserved 15 per cent of government jobs and places in the universities for Dalits in an effort to reduce caste discrimination. These reserved places were initially confined to Hindu Dalits but later extended to Sikh and Buddhist Dalits as well.

But if these Dalits convert to Christianity or Islam they lose the protection of the jobs reserved for them by law, and often find themselves more discriminated against than before. "It is certainly ideal to declare that one is a Christian but the consequences will be very harsh for the people here," S. Edwin, a retired school principal and member of the Church of South India, told Ecumenical News International.

The children of Christian Dalits do not receive the free government scholarships to which other Dalit students are entitled. Nor are Christian Dalits eligible for the reserved quota in educational institutions and government jobs. As a result, many Dalits remain officially Hindu while also worshipping as Christians.

"This is the only way for the people here to enjoy the reservation benefits," said church worker Selvaraj, who, like many people in the region, uses a Hindu rather than a traditional Christian name. In many places, people celebrate Hindu festivals as well as Christian feasts, and almost every mining hamlet has a Hindu temple and a Christian church, often side by side.

Such "dual faith" is symbolised by a display at a tailoring shop in Champion Reef, which has the second deepest mine in the world. Here, a statue of Jesus Christ has been placed among a host of Hindu deities. [478 words]

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Kolar Gold Fields, India, 2 November (ENI)--Twelve year old Sunil Kumar lost his father Sridhar after a mining accident in 2000 when he was aged five, and he could not enrol at school. While his mother Sabita was alive, she could not afford to buy books or a school uniform as she had three younger siblings to look after. Such was Sabita Kumar's distress that she committed suicide two years ago, leaving her four children with no parents.

Fortunately for Sunil Kumar, though, the evangelical group Operation Mobilization started the Good Shepherd School in 2002 at Coromondel in the vicinity of the Kolar Gold Fields in southern Karnataka state giving all four children the chance of an education. "Many of the children here were not going to school here until this school was opened," Vanaja Andrew, headmistress of the school, told Ecumenical News International.

The school has 310 students and provides free education to the children of miners and dependant families and means that hardly a child in the neighbourhood is now sitting idly at home. It was the closure in 2001 of the government-owned Bharat Gold Mines, that prompted Operation Mobilization to open the school, Kumar Swamy, the organization's director for south India, told ENI.

The closure of the mines created havoc at the Kolar Gold Fields where the Bharat mining company was based, about 100 kilometres south of Bangalore city. More than 30 000 people were thrown out of work in the remote region where 10 times that number of people were dependent on the economy revolving around the gold mine. Swamy noted that most people in the mining region are Dalits, or people deemed to be from low castes treated as untouchables, who had been brought to work in the mines under British rule.

"If they are educated in a local language, they will have no future as Kolar Gold Fields has no job opportunities at all for them," Swamy pointed out. "English medium [education] will boost the ambition of the Dalit children and give them the confidence to go and work in the cities like Bangalore."

Most of the mining families now survive on the earnings of young people educated in the area who work in Bangalore while continuing to live in the dingy cubicles in the gold fields built by the British for the miners a century ago. Nearly 10 000 people from the gold fields commute daily to Bangalore by train to work as office assistants and in other jobs. They spend more than five hours travelling each way in jam-packed passenger trains. The school charges a nominal monthly fee of 25 Indian rupees (60 US cents), but from those who can afford it. The school provides books and uniforms free to the children, who come to the school neatly dressed.

Teachers say the school's operation has been facilitated by generous support from church partners such as the Baptist Mission Hills congregation in Denver in the US state of Colarado where church members have sponsored many of the poorer children at the Good Shepherd school. Twelve members of the sponsoring church team spent four days with the students and laid the foundation stone on 15 October for a proper school building as the classes are have been held in two rented houses, or in the open air.

Operation Mobilization India is the largest section of the London, England-based group. It has more than 2400 staff in India including 900 independent pastors attached to the mission organization. [596 words]

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