Almost 700 clergymen in the US state of Illinois have been accused of sexually abusing children, a far greater number than the Catholic Church had previously disclosed, dealing a new blow to the credibility of the church.

The state’s six Catholic dioceses had publicly identified 185 priests accused of sexually abusing children and had not released the names of at least 500 others, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Wednesday.

In a scathing statement, the attorney general’s office criticized the Church’s handling of the abuse allegations, saying in some cases the archdioceses did not investigate the allegations at all or did not notify law enforcement or child welfare agencies.

“The preliminary stages of this investigation have already demonstrated that the Catholic Church cannot police itself,” Madigan said.

The Illinois investigation was opened following the release of a probe by the attorney general of Pennsylvania that found over 300 Catholic priests in that state had sexually abused at least 1,000 children over a 70-year period, crimes that were systematically covered up by bishops.

The US Justice Department has opened an investigation into child sex abuse by hundreds of Catholic priests in the state of Pennsylvania. In October, the US Justice Department opened an investigation for the first time into clergy abuse.

In a letter released by the Vatican in August, Pope Francis condemned the US Catholic Church’s failure to bring to justice perpetrators of abuse. The Roman Catholic Church has been hit by numerous scandals in the past few years, involving allegations of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests to protect pedophiles and the reputation of the Church.

Approximately 6,900 US Roman Catholic priests were accused of sexual abuse with at least 16,900 young victims between 1950 and 2011, according to data from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Similar patterns of abuse have since emerged at dioceses around the globe, undermining the Church’s moral authority and depleting its finances as it paid out billions of dollars in settlements.

Cases of Catholic priests raping and molesting children, and of bishops covering up for them, have erupted on nearly every continent in recent years. Some theologians have argued that the church’s policy on celibacy fosters sexual dysfunction and abusive behavior among priests.

Source: Presstv

The widow of a missionary killed in Cameroon last month says she forgives her husband’s killer.

Charles Wesco died October 30 after he was shot in the head during fighting between armed separatists and soldiers in the West African nation.

The Mishawaka man was sitting with his wife in a car being driven by another missionary when he was shot.

The wife says she “has no bitterness in her soul against anyone.”

Hundreds of people filled a South Bend church Monday honoring the slain missionary.

Source: wsbt.com

The family of an American missionary who was shot and killed in front of his wife and son in Cameroon will travel back home to Indiana this week, a pastor told IndyStar on Thursday.

Charles Wesco, 44, was fatally wounded while sitting in a car in Bamenda, Cameroon on Tuesday, according to Dave Halyaman, an assistant pastor at Believers Baptist Church in Warsaw, Indiana. The church sent the Wescos to do missionary work in the African nation.

Wesco’s wife, Stephanie, and his second oldest son were in the car when he was struck in the head, Halyaman said.

The U.S. State Department confirmed to IndyStar on Tuesday that a U.S. citizen died in Bamenda, but didn’t provide the person’s identity or further details on the person’s death.

The town where the Wescos were staying is in the nation’s English-speaking area, where armed separatists have been fighting to create an independent state, the Associated Press reported.

Wesco’s wife and their eight children have left the area and as of Thursday morning were headed to the Cameroon capital of Yaoundé, Halyaman said. They plan to fly back to the U.S. on Saturday, he said. The family is from Mishawaka, a city in northern Indiana. They traveled to Cameroon almost two weeks ago , Halyaman said.

Halyaman said the Wescos were aware of the dangers in the region.

“They knew there was fighting,” he told IndyStar. “They didn’t go into it blind.”

Halyaman said the body of Charles Wesco is expected to be flown back to the U.S. by the end of this week for a funeral in Warsaw.

Wesco’s brother is Indiana House Rep. Timothy Wesco. Gov. Holcomb released a statement on Tuesday, saying he and his wife “are thinking of Rep. Tim Wesco and his family as they grieve the death of his brother Charles.”

Halyaman said the church mourns Wesco’s death, but said they believe “God is in perfect control.” He described Wesco as a business owner — he ran a piano tuning service — who “loved God and loved service.”

“He was smart,” Halyaman said, “and he had a good heart, too.”

Source: Indy Star

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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Church leaders in Cameroon have condemned the killing of an American missionary in the southwest of this West African nation, where the government is battling secessionist rebels.

Charles Trumann Wesco, 44, a clergyman from Indiana, died on Tuesday (Oct. 30), barely two weeks after arriving in the region, allegedly caught in crossfire between rebels and government soldiers near the town of Bamenda. He was being driven to a market by another missionary, together with his wife and a son, when two bullets struck the car’s windshield, badly injuring Wesco. He was rushed to a hospital in Bamenda but did not survive.

“We deplore the death of the missionary. It is unfortunate they fired the guns and he was killed. I don’t think he was a target,” the Rev. Edward Njini, a senior pastor at Nkwen Baptist Church in Bamenda, told Religion News Service.

The area where Wesco was traveling has seen unrest since late 2016, when an attempt by the government to enforce the use of French, the country’s official language, on the English-speaking southwest and northwest corners of Cameroon resulted in strikes and protests.

The protests gradually coalesced into a secessionist movement, with rebels in two provinces declaring independence on Oct. 1, 2017, calling their new state Ambazonia and organizing the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF). The government has responded by sending its armed forces to repress the rebellion.

Recently, the separatists started targeting local chiefs, accusing them of being collaborators with the government. Since July, seven chiefs have been abducted in the southwest and three in the northwest, according to news reports. At least 400 people have been killed and more than 200,000 displaced. More than 20,000 have fled to neighboring Nigeria as refugees.

“The area is unsafe for everyone,” Njini said. “There is an armed confrontation. There is a lot of hostility and everyone is exposed. People are being killed left and right.” Each side blamed the other for Wesco’s death. Joseph Beti Assamo, Cameroon’s defense minister, said Wesco had encountered rebels who were on their way to attack the university there. The rebels maintain that Wesco was killed by government bullets.

Two years ago, Wesco started fundraising in the United States with plans to move to Cameroon. That plan materialized this year, with the minister and his family arriving in Cameroon on Oct. 18 and settling in Bambili, a suburb on the outskirts of Bamenda.

“We’re shocked and grieving at what’s occurred. We’re trying to get over the shock of losing someone as wonderful as Charles was,” Dave Halyman, assistant pastor at the Believers Baptist Church in Warsaw, Ind., which sent the Wescos on their mission, told Voice of America. “While we don’t like this, we understand that God has a great purpose.”

Wesco and his wife, Stephanie, who is the daughter of the senior pastor at Believers Baptist, have eight children.

Source: Religion News Service

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

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Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com

While European bishops discuss how to bring young people back to the Church at the 2018 Synod of Bishops, one bishop from Cameroon said that he has the opposite problem.

“My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” said Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Mamfe said at a Vatican press conference Oct. 24. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours,” he added.

A study by Pew Research Center in August 2018 found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in Western Europe. Four out of five Christians in Cameroon said that they pray everyday.

“People ask me, ‘Why are your churches full?’” the Cameroonian bishop said. For Bishop Fuanya, it all comes down to family, community, and traditional values.

“Coming from Africa, the family is a very, very strong institution,” Fuanya said. “We come from a culture in which tradition normally is handed from one generation to the other.”

“Our traditional values still equate to the values of the Church, and so we hand over the tradition to our young people undiluted and uncontaminated,” he continued.

When asked about the potential inclusion of so-called “LGBT” language in the synod’s final document, the bishop reiterated that point.

“I wouldn’t vote for any article that has LGBT.” Fuanya said,  explained that “99.9 percent” of the young people in his diocese would “stand at my door and say, ‘What’s this?’”

“With matters of doctrine that the church teaches, it is not like in this synod we are trying to invent new teaching … Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life … we cannot be taking positions that contradict the Gospels,” he added.

On that point, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, told the press conference: “Quite honestly I don’t remember that we had discussed this issue in Germany so I can’t acknowledge that there is a specific conversation on this.”

“This is not a synod on sexuality. It is a synod on the young,” Marx added. Fuanya suggested that two of the key ways in which the faith and teaching of the Church is handed over to younger generations are through the family and community. In these, he said, the African Church was setting an example.

“Church as community. Church as family is very strong for us,” said the bishop. A strong sense of community in the Church is something “very important that Europe can learn from Africa,” Fuanya said.

In Africa, “there’s still a lot of things we do as community. That is the difference. What we are trying to do in these small Christian communities is to fight the increeping of individualism,” he added. There are significant demographic differences in family size in Europe and Africa.

A 2010 USAID report on the number of children desired by people in various parts of the world,  showed that the desired number of children is highest among people in western and middle Africa, ranging from 4.8 in Ghana to 9.1 in Niger and 9.2 in Chad, with an average of 6.1 children for the region.

In the European Union, 47 percent of households with any children only have one child, only thirteen percent have three or more children, according to 2017 data.

While the differences between Europe and Africa could provide helpful lessons, Fuanya noted that the synod was about seeking a universal perspective.

“It is not like Africa has come to help Europe solve their youth problem, it is the Church that has come together to see how to solve the problem of the youth,” Fuanya said.

“When we are looking at things in the synod, we are not solving problems of particular continents or particular local churches. We are looking at the Church from a global point of view.”

“We reflect on the empty churches, but at the same time we reflect on the poverty situation. We reflection on migration. We reflect on all those things that show the Church from a holistic point of view,” Fuanya said.

For Cardinal Marx, one global issue that needs to be addressed is the sexual abuse crisis. “The discussion on sexual abuses in the past few months … drew global attention. I believe it is an important global matter that needs to be discussed,” Marx said in German.

“It is the Church that needs to change … the youth have said this,” he continued. “We need to do this together in the theme of accompaniment.”

Source: Catholic News Agency

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Banking IBAN: GB51 BARC 2049 1103 9130 15

Swift BIC BARC GB22XX

SORT CODE 20-49-11, ACCOUNT NUMBER – 03913015 Barclay PLC, UK

The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.

Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com