Turkey: “commitments for christian minorities” The Catholic Church in Turkey accepts the sentence of the High Court of Ankara, which rejected the petition submitted by the Judiciary to ban the AKP, but now it says it is waiting to see how the party (which is ruling the country) will manage to fulfil its “commitments and promises”. “It seems to me – says to SIR mgr. Luigi Padovese, apostolic vicar of Anatolia and president of the Turkish Bishops Conference – that the sentence maintains the balances that have got stronger over the last few years. After all, it would have been difficult to ban a party that earned 47% of votes. One should think the banning of such a party would have had negative repercussions. As far as I know, the markets and the European Union too reacted positively to the news, and this is evidence of the confidence given to this political movement abroad. Now we will have to see whether this party will manage to fulfil all the promises that it made and the commitments it undertook. I am speaking in particular of the commitments it took towards the religious minorities. Let’s see if things will improve now”. For mgr. Padovese, the battle the Turkish episcopacy (along with the German episcopacy and the Holy See) is fighting to ask that, in the year that celebrates the two-thousandth anniversary of Saint Paul’s birth, the Church of Tarsus (the city in which the Apostle of the People was born) go back to the Christian cult, is “a symbol of the way the central authorities will behave towards Christians”. “It has been asked on several occasions by the Bishops Conference – explains to SIR mgr. Padovese – that the Church of Tarsus, that has now been converted into a museum, should be granted to all the pilgrims who will go to Tarsus. We have been made several promises and reassurances but so far we have only been granted to put a cross inside that building-cum-museum and not to have the entrance ticket paid for, but only by the groups who book their visit beforehand. Honestly, that seems to be quite little, compared with what we had been told beforehand by several local and national authorities”. Then, with reference to the sentence passed by the High Court of Ankara, mgr. Padovese adds: “If there is democratic progress about Islam in Turkey and then the possibility to express one’s faith publicly, even by wearing the headscarf, I think for the same reason the same rights should also apply to the religious minorities. Then let them recognize we are there, and let them also recognize there are thousands of tourists who come to Turkey and have the legitimate desire to pray in a church, not in a museum”. Luxembourg: rise in crop-derived fuels, the Church too says “no”The Catholic Church of Luxembourg joined the campaign supported by another 18 organisations of the “Agrokraftstoffe” (“crop-derived fuels”) platform to protest against the use of crops in order to produce energy. The campaign consists in a letter of protest that was sent a few days ago to the Government of Luxembourg to express disapproval for the EU Commission’s proposal to rise the amount of crop-derived fuels by 10% before 2020 to cater to the energy requirements of the transport industry. This measure, write the organisations, “will destroy food security for millions of people, without doing anything to protect climate. This goal cannot be achieved on sustainable conditions”. This 10% goal cannot be achieved by European agriculture, which does not have the required tillable land.”A large part of crop-derived fuels – goes on the notice from the Church of Luxembourg – is imported from threshold countries and developing countries. Our rising demand will affect the global markets so that more and more of the most profitable areas will be tilled, regardless of the amount of land that should be set aside to grow crops”. “This will result – reads the document – in the plunder of the land, serious breaches of human rights and inhumane working conditions as well as in the destruction of the rainforests. Those who think there are crop-derived fuels that do not cause hunger are mistaken!”. “Even the reduction in harmful emissions due to the use of crop-derived fuels is questionable: producing them already involves the destruction of natural ecosystems, the emission of greenhouse gases in dramatic proportions and the destruction of the variety of the species”, warn the organisations, that close the letter by asking Parliament and the Government of Luxembourg to do all they can to abolish this 10% target once and for all. Portugal: the threshold of poverty In a Note, the President of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (Cnjp) Manuela Silva, expressed her appreciation for the resolution, unanimously approved by the Portuguese Parliament, which defines poverty a violation of human rights. “Portugal has good reason to be proud”, Manuela Silva wrote. “This is the rightfully-earned consensus to the various parties’ sensitivity to the Petition submitted by the Cnjp to the Republic’s Assembly on October 17, 2007 signed by 123 thousand people and by numerous organizations”, she remarked. By adopting some of the document’s proposals, “the resolution establishes the official poverty threshold, according to national income levels and our country’s average living conditions, which will be used to determine social benefits; it creates a mechanism whereby public policies are viewed in the context of their repercussion on the uprooting of poverty; it establishes an annual assessment of the country’s social conditions on the basis of the overall state of poverty and the progress made in this field”, pointed out Manuela Silva. While envisaging the difficult and complex practical implementation of government and local authorities’ provisions, Manuela Silva reiterated that the Cnjp will be responsibly present and will give its contribution to this challenge launched to civil society.
