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Sudan has instructed christian schools to open on Sundays, reports the BBC, quoting Radio Dabanga.
Radio Dabanga reports that the instruction comes from the country's ministry of education.
Christians would have to take Friday and Saturday as as weekend instead of Saturday and Sunday as is the case with most parts of the world.
Sudan is a dominantly Muslim country.
This move is an attempt to make Christians dance to the rhythm of Muslims.
While Christians consider Sunday as a holy day (when God rested after fishing his job of creating the world), Muslims have Friday as their sacred day.
In most countries in the world, Friday is not considered a day of rest. Muslims are therefore forced to battle with prayers and their jobs.
Sudan split in 2011 after serious unrest. The Muslim-dominated north retains the name Sudan while the Christian-majority south takes the new name South Sudan.
South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, is currently in a civil war.
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- Rita Akana
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Catholic Christians in the Bertoua archdiocese are promising to rain down fire and brimstone via a general strike action announced for the 30th of July 2017. They say their anger can only be fuelled down if the archbishop, Joseph ATANGA is transferred from the east region. In a joint memorandum signed by some church associations, leaders and different groups, the Christians claim the archbishop, Joseph ATANGA has failed in his major duty as the main spiritual leader of the region.
They complain mr ATANGA is at the centre of a huge financial mismanagement and treats his subordinate prelates with so much contempt. Other sources told Cameroon Concord that the man of God is also involved in many sexual abuses. After all, he is said to be at the forefront of the promotion of homosexuality amongst priests. Recently, he is also accused of having covered up a network of paedophile priests in the Roman Catholic church in Cameroon as he refused to hand them over to judicial authorities for the law to take its full course.
The Christians who can not longer bear his actions have resolved to go on a massive strike come July 30th if he is not transferred from the east region. In their memorandum, they have copied the apostolic nuncio to Cameroon, the president of the episcopal conference, the east regional governor and many other local administrative authorities of the region.
This other scandal plaguing the catholic church is coming at a time when the corpse of the bishop of Bafia, Jean Marie Benoit Balla who died mysteriously is still in the mortuary pending burial due to misunderstanding between the church and the state over the cause of the bishop's demise.
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In a communiqué signed on 17 July 2017 by Archbishop Samuel Kleda, the President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, it was revealed that the dead body of the Bafia Bishop had been presented to the authorities of the Catholic Church at the General hospital in Yaounde.
“Today the 17th of July 2017, We, His Excellency Samuel Kleda Archbishop of Douala and President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (CENC), His Excellency Jean Mbarga the Archbishop of Yaounde, His Excellency Kome Abraham the Bishop of Bafang and the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Bafia, proceeded for the identification of the corpse of Bishop Jean Marie Benoit Bala, at the Yaounde General hospital.
His remains were brought to our disposal, so that we could start organising the funeral which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday 02 and Thursday 03 August 2017 at Bafia according to a program which will still be communicated to the public.
Afterwards, the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon will now forward a case against X for the assassination of His Lordship Jean Marie Benoit Bala.
This document will be sent to a college of lawyers who will represent us henceforth in the search for the truth.
Let us stay united in this pain as we pray for the eternal repose of the soul of Bishop Benoit.” That is the content of the Communiqué that His Excellency Samuel Kleda signed.
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A 56-year-old United States-based Nigerian pastor has been jailed 15 years for raping two teenage girls who were part of his congregation.
Aside serving jail time, Reuben Chizor, of the Hope Restoration Ministries Worldwide Inc. Will also have 10 years of post release supervision.
According to the District Attorney of Queens County, Richard A. Brown, Chizor raped both girls in the basement of his church which also served as his residence.
‘‘The sexual abuse began with the 14-year-old victim in July 2011 and continued with one or both of the girls through May of 2013,’‘ a statement from the Attorney’s office read.
He raped the 14-year-old on July 27, 2011 before doing same to her 12-year-old sister on August 22 later that year. The girls finally confided in each other over the rape in 2015 following which police was notified.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant took advantage of his position as a man of the cloth and the trust placed in him by his followers to satisfy his depraved desires.
‘‘Through manipulation and conniving control, he sexually abused his two young victims for nearly two years. What the defendant forced his victims to endure was horrendous and as punishment he now will be spending a lengthy term behind bars.”
After a week-long trial in June this year, a jury found Chizor guilty of one count each of first- and second-degree rape and first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
In April this year, another Nigerian pastor wanted for alleged sexual assault and human trafficking of young women from his church was arrested by South African police when he arrived in the country.
The 58-year-old Durban televangelist Pastor Timothy Omotoso of the Jesus Dominion International was picked up by armed policemen at the Port Elizabeth Airport toilet minutes after his plane landed from Durban.
Africannews
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Catholic bishops in Cameroon have reasserted that Bishop Jean Marie Benoit Bala was 'murdered'.
This message is contained in a communiqué signed on Monday 10 July by the president of the National Episcopal Conference.
On behalf of the bishops, Samuel Kleda claims that the bishops noted traces of violence on the corpse they saw and identified at the river and mortuary as that of late Bala.
This, they say, is why they declared on June 13 that the bishop had been"brutally murdered".
They further revealed that the authorities of the Catholic church has not yet received the corpse of the late servant of God as stated on July 4 in a press release about the report of the preliminary inquiries into the incident.
This statement contradicts recent report into the death altogether.
Investigators had said on July 4 that drowning was the most probable cause of the death. There was no trace of violence on the corpse, they had said.
What's happening?
This controversy puts two strong sides at odds.
Bishops are men of God, hence should 'tell the truth '.
Investigators are 'trained individuals whose impartiality and integrity should distinguish them from other people in society.'
So who is lying, and why?
Bishop Bala went missing at the beginning of last month. About three days later, he was found dead in a river.
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The President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NEC) Mgr. Samuel Kléda, says the Bishops of Cameroon still stand on their position that Mgr. Jean Marie Benoit Bala was brutally murdered.
Kleda was speaking in Yaounde, during a press conference to welcome members of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa (ACERAC) in Yaoundé.
The Bishops of Cameroons re-echoed their stand on the Death of the Bishop of Bafia, Mgr Bala, barely four days after the Government of Cameroon, through the Attorney General of the Yaounde Appeal Court, Jean Fils Ntamack, on July 4, issued an official statement, contradicting NEC’s June 13 pronouncement that Mgr. Bala was brutally murdered.
The Yaounde Appeal Court Attorney General’s statement was based on an undisclosed autopsy report, conducted on the remains of the fallen Bishop by experts from Europe.
In his July 4 press release, Jean Fils Ntamack, had stated that “After initial examination by two teams of local medical doctors on June 2 and 22, 2017, the decision was taken to resort to international expertise through INTERPOL.
The forensic medical doctors sent by INTERPOL for that purpose, namely Professor Michael Tsokos, Director of the Berlin Institute of Forensic Medicine in Germany, and Doctor Mark Mulder, Coordinator of the Disaster Victim Identification Unit of INTERPOL, arrived Cameroon on June 29, 2017.
After close examination, they noted the absence of any traces of violence on the body of the deceased and concluded, in this light, that drowning was the most probable cause of the Bishop’s death.”
Though Ntamack said investigations to ascertain the circumstances under which the Prelate died are still on-going, his said the remains have been handed over to the National Episcopal Council for burial.
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- Rita Akana
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