Religion News Australia 2017 - 6 (Feb 5

Religion News Australia 2017 - 6 (Feb 5 - 12)

(12 February 17)
by Greg Spearritt

Religion News Australia

February 5 - 12, 2017

Religion news stories from Australia

(Research: Greg Spearritt)

abuse / international stories / islam / religion & society

ABUSE

New Norcia Benedictine community among worst child sex abuse perpetrators (ABC News)
Feb 6 - Western Australia’s Benedictine Community of New Norcia rated among the worst for historical child sex offenders according to figures released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Royal commission into sexual abuse: Who are the Brothers of St John of God? (ABC News)
Feb 6 - Forty per cent of the members of the Brothers of St John of God had allegations of child sexual abuse made against them from 1950 until 2010, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has revealed.

Child sex abuse royal commission: The night a group of Catholic schoolboys confronted evil (ABC News)
Feb 7 – (Opinion: Chris Uhlmann) About 20 boys crammed into the small hotel room in Wellington and the mood was sombre.

Child sex abuse royal commission: Data reveals extent of Catholic allegations (ABC News)
Feb 8 - The Australian Catholic Church has released "grim" data revealing 7 per cent of priests, working between 1950 and 2009, have been accused of child sex crimes.

Paedophile priest Raymond Cheek: Anglican Church ’surprised’ by two-year jail sentence (ABC News)
Feb 10 - The Anglican Church has expressed surprise after an 85-year-old former priest was sentenced to just two years in prison for sexually abusing five boys over a 30-year period in Western Australia’s south.

Challenge launched over judge’s decision to free ’Wiccan’ child sex offender (The Age, Melbourne)
Feb 10 - A challenge has been launched against a judge’s decision to free a "Wiccan" who whipped and raped teenagers – one of whom later killed herself – partly because if he reoffended, the suffering he caused would, the judge said, be "no greater than is generally experienced by adolescent female victims".

Catholic education system under a cloud after child sex abuse commission findings (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 11 - Mark Fabbro remembers most vividly the flowering callistemon and blue sky outside the window of the small room tucked behind the priest’s office.

INTERNATIONAL STORIES

Catholic Church

Vatican under pressure to speed up abuse investigations: Royal Commission (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 10 - A Vatican panel is dealing with a backlog of child sex abuse claims in the Catholic church internationally, taking up to three years to hand down findings about alleged perpetrators, a royal commission has heard.

14 odd facts about Vatican City (news.com.au)
Feb 11 - YOU’RE aware that Vatican City is home to the Pope and serves as the Roman Catholic Church’s HQ.

Religious Violence

Myanmar’s army may have killed ’thousands’ of Rohingya Muslims (ABC News)
Feb 9 - The Myanmar military may have killed "thousands" of Rohingya Muslims in a campaign of rape and destruction described as ethnic cleansing by the United Nations.

Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah Al-Ahmadzai jailed for 18 years for gay nightclub shooting (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 10 - If you ignored the prison greens, Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah Al-Ahmadzai might have seemed as if he was in a quiet study cubicle at a library as he was jailed for 18 years over a shooting at a gay nightclub in western Sydney.

’They were criminals’: an interview with a captured Islamic State fighter (Brisbane Times)
Feb 10 - Kirkuk, Iraq: Seated before us, occasionally quivering, a beanie pulled down over his nostrils, the prisoner looks nothing like the fearsome Islamic State fighters in the online videos.

Bomb-making materials found at Montpellier apartment, four held (news.com.au)
Feb 11 - FOUR people have been arrested in and around the southern French city of Montpellier on suspicion of planning an imminent terrorist attack in France, the interior ministry says.

ISLAM

Anti-Islam group Q Society dinner disrupted by protesters in Melbourne (ABC News)
Feb 10 - More than 100 protesters have disrupted a secretive fundraiser for the far-right group Q Society in Melbourne, where Liberal defector Cory Bernardi and Nationals MP George Christensen are speaking.

Inside the far-right Q Society’s explosive dinner, where Muslims are fair game (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 10 - "Let’s be honest, I can’t stand Muslims," said Larry Pickering, cartoonist and VIP guest at the Q Society fundraising dinner held in Sydney on Thursday night.

Also: Transcript: Ross Cameron’s full remarks at controversial Q Society dinner (Brisbane Times)
Feb 10 - On Thursday night, two Sydney Morning Herald reporters attended a fundraising dinner for far-right group The Q Society at North Ryde in Sydney’s north-west.

Also: Cameron defends anti-Islam dinner (The Australian)
Feb 10 - Former Liberal MP Ross Cameron defends his appearance at dinner slammed for offensive comments about gays and Muslims.

Also: Anti-Muslim talk ’depraved’ (The Australian)
Feb 11 - Cartoonist Larry Pickering, a speaker at a Q Society event, told an audience of 160 people he ’can’t stand Muslims’.

Sharrouf citizenship stripped (The Australian)
Feb 11 - The government has used anti-terrorism laws for the first time to strip IS terrorist Khaled Sharrouf of his citizenship.


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