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MAY 11, 1957.
THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
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Sudan's Seizure Of Catholic Schools
Only Latest In A Long Series Of
Hows At Church In Moslem Lands
By John V. B. Lebkicber
(Foreign Edilor. N.C.W.C. News
Service)
The Sudanese gov ernment’s
seizure of Catholic mission
schools during April, over the
protests of that African nation’s
bishops was not an isolated event.
It was, in fact, only the latest
in a long series of blows aimed
within recent years by the Mos
lem-controlled Arab countries of
Africa and the middle East
against that area’s more than
six million Christians, about half
of whom are Catholics.
Similar blows against the
Church have already begun to
spread to non-Arab parts of the
Moslem world through the ef
forts' of Mohammedan religious
leaders, and there is danger that
they will spread still further.
The communists, meanwhile,
are taking full advantage of the
situation and doing all they can
to intensify Christian-Moslem an
tagonism wherever members of
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the two faiths live side by side.
During the past few years the
Church has been attacked again
and again in many Middle East
ern states. In these countries
Catholic bishops have been jailed
and Catholic priests ousted. In
flamed Moslem mobs have dam
aged and destroyed Catholic
schools or forced them to close.
The Catholic press has been sup
pressed. In some places Catholics
are finding it hard or impossible
to get jobs.
So far, in addition to Sudan,
Catholics have suffered most in
Egypt, whose government has
incited Moslem extremists to at
tack Christianity and the West.
In that country Catholic sthools
are now forced to provide facil
ities for teaching the Koran, Is
lam’s holy book, to their Moslem
pupils. Christians are ' facing
growing discrimination in both
government and private employ
ment. Friday, the Islamic holy
day, has been declared a legal
holiday, while Sunday has been
made a work day contrary to
long tradition.
The nation’s more than 200,000
Catholics have also been depriv
ed of the right, which had been
theirs for more than a thousand
years, of appealing to their own
courts to decide matters of per
sonal status, such as marriage
and inheritance.
Under the old system of per
sonal status courts, a moslem who
wanted to get a divorce would
have his case judged by a Mo
hammedan court according to the
extremely liberal Koranic law.
The case of a Catholic would be
brought before a Church court
applying canon law, which for
bids divorce. All such cases are
now to be tried before a civil
court, which according to the new
law will apply the law of the
religion to which the litigant be
longs. Christians fear, however,
that in practice Moslem law will
be applied to non-Moslems.
For his protests against the
abolition of personal status courts
the Egyptian government jailed .
Archbishop Elias Zoghby, Vicar
for Egypt of the Melchite Patri
arch of Antioch. Bishop Natal
Boucheix, Vicar Apostolate of
Heliopolis, was also arrested at
the same time.
Because he wrote an article
in the Cairo Catholic weekly,
Rayon d’Egypte, expressing the
fears of the Catholic commuinty
at these anti-Christian develop
ments, Father Robert Chidiac, S.
J., was expelled from the coun
try and succeeding issues of the
newspaper were confiscated by
the government.
The plight of Catholics in other
Middle East lands has not beert.
much better than in Egypt, in
Syria, where communist influence
has recently become alarmingly
strong, a Moslem mob set fire to
a Catholic school and completely
destroyed it.
The Knessett (Parliament )in
neighboring Israel has set up two
committees to investigate alleged
“abuses” in mission schools in
that non-Moslem nation. Pressure
has also been brought to bear on
Jewish parents not to send their
children to Catholic schools by
campaigns in a number of Isra
eli newspapers, which clairr^ that
material advantages are held out
as inducements to students who
become converts. The decision to
set up the investigating com
mittees was made at the insti
gation of Rabbi Ben Jaeaacov
of the Orthodox Jewish party.
Agudat Yisrael, who demanded
that parents of children registered
in mission schools be brought to
trial.
In Jordan, where civil war or
foreign conquest remains a dan
ger, Moslem students invaded a
Catholic school and forced it to
close down temporarily. Late last
year Jordan’s government ousted
(Continued on Page Fifteen)
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