| Far Right Seeks Gains in Vienna Poll Voters in the Austrian capital cast ballots in local elections that could bring gains for the far-right following a campaign laced with anti-Islamic rhetoric. online.wsj.com |
Chile's miners can thank God, but their leaders should show contrition | Hugh O'Shaughnessy Government officials and mine owners are using the 'spiritual fervour' of the rescue to hide their appalling safety recordPiety is part of daily life in Chile, as natural as the towering Andes mountains which cut the country off from the world along its eastern flank. The miners' reaction to their escape from the depths of the earth this week at Copiapó was no staged affair but merely what one would expect from tough Chilean workers doing a dangerous job in a dilapidated set of tunnels.Augusto Pinochet himself, at least in his early years, showed the piety he inherited from his devout mother Avelina, who was unlettered but had a ferociously strong will. When he damaged his knee in a road accident when he was six she vowed she would wear clothes coloured brown – the colour of the Virgin of Mount Carmel, patroness of Chile – for 15 years if he recovered and that he would do the same for 10 years, reduced to two years if he went into the army. And so it came about.In 1936 the young officer himself fixed an ex-voto plaque to the wall of a church in his native ValparaÃso in honour of the Virgin which bore the words.Thank you, mother mineSuccour me always,Ensign A PinochetThere was no indication that either the adolescent Pinochet or his mother were insincere or in bad faith in their devotions though in later years he defied the church and quietly blitzed it where he could when churchmen, as they often did, took issue with his policies as a dictator.Indeed in the first years of his tyranny his most fervent and dangerous critic was Chile's most outstanding catholic of the last century Cardinal Raúl Silva HenrÃquez, the pious, humbly born but extremely effective archbishop of Santiago. Silva did a great deal for Pinochet's victims, setting up a multifaith campaigns for human rights and promoting soup kitchens for those who had little to eat.At the same time, sadly, the Catholic church in Chile has suffered from senior clerics, including those appointed by the Vatican as its representatives in Chile. Chief among them was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an Italian who was appointed papal nuncio for a decade in 1978, five years after Pinochet's bloody coup.Seeking to smooth the feathers of the tender-minded dictator, Sodano saw that the great Silva was packed off by Rome as soon as he reached retiring age and had the much more dubious cardinal, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, in his place. Back in Rome where he rose to be a cardinal and the secretary of state – the prime minister of the Vatican – under pope John Paul II, Sodano had the gall to appeal to the Blair government and the Archbishop of Canterbury in November 1998 to release Pinochet from confinement at Virginia Water and allow him to return to Chile, thus letting him to escape justice before the Spanish courts.As in many other Latin American countries, the Jesuits are strong in Chile and their magazine, Mensaje, has under Pinochet and his successors been a beacon of decency in the highly unequal society that the dictator set up in 1973 and which his successor and fellow-rightwinger President Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire, has strengthened.It will come as no surprise to those who have had experience of the deep vein of arrogant smugness that sometime affects those at the top of Chilean society that Piñera's chaplain, Alfredo Cooper, declared during the rejoicings at Copiapó this week that Chile was gripped by spiritual fervour in the aftermath of the miners' rescue and he urged Britain to throw off its "perverse unbelief" and turn to God.That sounds more than a little rich from a man who presumably agrees with his master Piñera that it has been acceptable for mine owners such as those who own the San José mine to ignore safety regulations and put the lives of the 33 miners in the gravest jeopardy in the first place.If that is part of Chile's "spiritual fervour", count me out.ChileChristianityReligionCatholicismPope Benedict XVIHugh O'Shaughnessyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Military recruiters told to accept gay applicants By ANNE FLAHERTY 2010-10-19T17:08:45ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- A Pentagon spokeswoman says recruiters have been told that they must accept gay applicants, following a federal court decision striking down the ban on gays serving openly in the military.... hosted.ap.org |
U.N. Afghan Compound Attacked Taliban fighters dressed in police uniforms and women's clothing stormed a United Nations compound in western Afghanistan, killing three security guards but failing to kill or injure any aid workers while, in Kandahar, a New York Times photographer was seriously injured by a mine. online.wsj.com |
Catholics in Philippines Debate Contraception and Family Planning While Catholics and critics digest the Pope's most recent pronouncement on prophylactics, the Philippines is mired in debate about family planning, population and the place of the church in the 21st century feedproxy.google.com |