Christians celebrate Holy Week
As Holy Week nears an end, Christians around the world are observing Good Friday, which recalls Jesus’ death by crucifixion.
Holy Week began with Palm Sunday, in commemoration of the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.
It continued with Holy Wednesday and then Maundy Thursday, when Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 inmates and a baby at Rome’s main prison in a pre-Easter ritual meant to show his willingness to serve.
On Good Friday in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, devotees had themselves nailed to wooden crosses to mimic the suffering of Jesus Christ. Church leaders have spoken against the annual practice mixing Catholic devotion with folk belief.
Standing under a red canopy on the warm evening, In Rome on Good Friday, the pope listened to prayers affirming the right of religious freedom.
Alabama frees man after nearly 30 years on death row
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A man who spent nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row walked free Friday hours after prosecutors acknowledged that the only evidence they had against him couldn’t prove he committed the crime.
Ray Hinton was 29 when he was arrested for two 1985 killings. Freed at age 58, with grey hair and a beard, he was embraced by his sobbing sisters, who said “thank you Jesus,” as they wrapped their arms around him outside the Jefferson County Jail.
Prosecutors said this week that new ballistics tests couldn’t match his mother’s gun to any of the six bullets found at the crime scenes.
“I shouldn’t have sat on death row for 30 years. All they had to do was test the gun,” Hinton said.
The state of Alabama offered no immediate apology.
Pope at procession decries ‘silence’ to current killings of Christians
ROME — Pope Francis, presiding at the traditional Good Friday Colosseum procession, decried what he called the “complicit silence” about the killing of Christians.
The evening, torch-lit ceremony at the ancient arena recalls the suffering and death of Jesus by crucifixion.
After listening silently, often with head bowed and eyes tightly shut, to reflections read aloud about Jesus’ suffering, Francis pressed what lately has been an urgent concern of his papacy — the present-day martyrdom of Christians in parts of the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.
“We see, even today, our brothers persecuted, beheaded and crucified, for their faith in you, in front of our eyes or often with our complicit silence,” he said, as he prayed.
A few hours earlier, Francis had condemned the deadly attack by Islamic militants targeting Christians at a Kenyan university. Earlier this year he denounced the murder in Libya of 21 Coptic Christians by Islamic State-affiliated militants, saying they were slain simply for being Christian. And he has lamented how Christians in parts of the Middle East have been forced to flee their ancient communities to escape persecution.
As Kenya mourns, survivors of campus attack give harrowing accounts of bloodshed
GARISSA, Kenya — The 20-year-old student called home from the university besieged by Islamic militants and frantically told her father, “There are gunshots everywhere! Tell Mum to pray for me — I don’t know if I will survive.”
The call by Elizabeth Namarome Musinai at dawn Thursday was one of several her family received as the attack and hostage drama unfolded at Garissa University College, where gunmen from the al-Shabab militant group killed 148 people.
Then, about 1 p.m., a man got on the line to demand that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta be contacted within two minutes and told to remove troops from neighboring Somalia, where they are fighting al-Shabab extremists.
He phoned back promptly. When told the president had not been contacted, he said, “I am going to kill your daughter.” Three gunshots followed, and he hung up. When Elizabeth’s father, Fred Kaskon Musinai, called the man back, he said he was told: “She is now with her God.”
Musinai said he is still hanging on to hope that Elizabeth somehow survived, although she is not on the list of wounded, which now numbers 104. He has traveled from his home in Kitale to Nairobi, where the dead are being brought to a morgue for families to identify and claim.
By wire sources