Legion of Angels News Archive

SYDNEY (AFP) – The Australian government may compensate as many as 191 people for wrongfully holding them in immigration detention centres, a parliamentary hearing was told Tuesday.

A government ombudsman last year reported that 247 Australian citizens, permanent residents and legal visa holders were incorrectly detained by the Immigration Department between 1993 and 2007.

The inquiry was sparked by the illegal detention of mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau for more than 10 months in 2004 and 2005 and the wrongful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez Solon to the Philippines.

The chief lawyer for the department, Robyn Bicket, said Tuesday the department had now reviewed all the cases.

“Currently we are at 191 cases (where) we believe there is risk of legal liability for compensation and 56 cases where we believe there is no compensatable risk involved,” she told a Senate estimates hearing.

Bicket said that the department had offered compensation in 40 cases and settlements had been reached in 17 instances.

Australia’s previous conservative government adopted a tough policy towards asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, making immigration detention mandatory even for children. That policy has since been scrapped.

Source — Yahoo!

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI departs Saturday on a 10-day trip to Australia, the longest pilgrimage of his papacy and a test of the 81-year-old pontiff’s stamina.

Tens of thousands of young pilgrims are awaiting him.

Although aides say the pope is in fine health, the Vatican appeared to be taking no chances to ensure Benedict is fit for the church’s World Youth Day festival.

With little advance notice, it canceled Benedict’s weekly public audience this past Wednesday as well as most other meetings to give him as much rest as possible.

It even put on hold a much-awaited audience with Ingrid Betancourt, who was recently freed after more than six years as a hostage in the Colombian jungles and expressed a desire to see the pope.

Upon the pope’s arrival in Sydney after more than 20 hours of flying — interrupted only by a 90-minute refueling stop — he will spend three days resting in a Roman Catholic study center in Kenthurst, in the countryside outside Sydney.

“He is not expected to leave the center,” during that time said his spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

Benedict will be attending World Youth Day, an event generally held every two years, which attracts hundreds of thousands of young Catholics. It was begun by Pope John Paul II, who considered it essential for the pope to deliver his message to young people.

After he succeeded John Paul three years ago, Benedict said he doubted he would make many long trips. But invitations keep coming in from world leaders and officials of his global 1-billion member flock.

The Vatican generally does not give out information about the pope’s health, citing his privacy. Except for a light chronic cough, though, the pope appears healthy and has never skipped a planned event for health reasons.

Benedict himself has said that being pope is “really tiring” and, in an interview with German television in 2006, said he does not feel strong enough to take many long trips.

He visited Brazil last year, made a pilgrimage to the United States in April and will travel to France in September.

“Those who live in Rome, in Italy or in Europe maybe can’t appreciate the value of papal trips,” Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire in an interview published Thursday.

From elsewhere, he said, “only the rich can afford to come to Rome. So I say, only slightly joking, that papal trips are a kind of preferential option for the poor.”

In fact, Benedict will be greeted at Sydney Harbor on Thursday by a group of Aborigines and other young people from the Pacific Basin and deliver what is expected to be an important address. In 2001, John Paul issued a formal apology to the indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands for injustices perpetrated by Catholic missionaries.

Australia’s senior Catholic leader, Cardinal George Pell, has also said that Benedict will likely express regret during the trip for sexual abuse committed by clergy — as he did during his U.S. trip.

Lombardi, Benedict’s spokesman, said it is possible that he will.

Support groups for victims of church abuse — whose numbers are not known but who activists say are in the thousands — have demanded that Benedict make a full apology.

Pell himself has been accused of badly handling a sexual abuse claim and this week agreed to reopen investigations into the 25-year-old case.

World Youth Day will culminate July 20 with an open-air Mass expected to draw some 250,000 pilgrims.

The papal visit is Australia’s biggest public event since the 2000 Olympics.

Despite the pilgrims’ excitement, the festival has attracted a fair amount of controversy. The NoToPope Coalition, made up of gay rights, student and atheist groups, is planning a July 19 march to protest what it calls the pope’s homophobic and antiquated ideas. The Church forbids the use of condoms and other forms of artificial birth control and the coalition planned to distribute condoms to young pilgrims in response.

A new law that gives authorities the power to order anyone to stop behavior considered “annoying” toward the pilgrims has been assailed as a form of censorship. Anyone who does not comply with the regulations could face a fine of 5,500 Australian dollars (US$5,300). Police and the New South Wales state government say they are a necessary security measure, but libertarians and rights activists disagree.

Source — International Herald Tribune

THIS month is Pope Benedict XVI’s biggest chance yet to salvage the damaged reputation of the Roman Catholic Church around the world.

From July 15-20 he will be in Australia to host the largest gathering of young people that Australia has ever seen, with almost 200,000 pilgrims registered so far, a crowd even bigger than that attracted by the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

And even though half of those pilgrims are from Australia, according to the WYD08 official website, the eyes of the world will be upon him, for this is the largest youth event of any kind in the world.

Already the celebrations bear the hallmarks of a circus, with side-shows and merchandise as elaborate as at any big sporting event. Pilgrims will be able to buy olive-wood items from Bethlehem (but no fragments of the True Crib - sorry!) and hand-sculpted candles, and there will be 2000 members of the clergy to add even more colour-and-movement to the event.

Add 3000 members of the media and you have all the ingredients for a pop-star event. Last week Target stores launched an Australia-wide exclusive WYD08 clothing range, and McDonald’s is one of the chief sponsors. So some businesses will make a killing.

It’s not just for Roman Catholics, of course, for concerts will feature artists such as Guy Sebastian, a born-again evangelical, Damien Leith and Tap Dogs, none of whom in the past has held many banners for the One True Faith, as far as I’m aware. Nor has the Djilpin Arts Aboriginal Corporation, which will present a pre-Christian corroboree.

So it’s going to be one enormous party.

But what’s it really all about? Is it just another form of the old Billy Graham Crusades of the 1950s, where the participants find themselves in an emotionally charged atmosphere which will assume, in Benedict XVI’s own words, a cultic character (where), “in the ecstasy of having all their defences torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe”?

These words were spoken as a condemnation of the rock culture, but is there a danger that the WYD08 celebration will have exactly the same effect?

And what will the thousands of young people get, apart from the pizzazz? As Jesus said once to the crowds who had flocked to see John the Baptist, “What did you come out to see?

A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings houses”. (Matthew 11)

They’re certainly not going to see much of His Holiness who, as I read the schedule, will make only two public appearances, both in the Popemobile, one on July 17 where he’ll do a kind of royal tour around Sydney’s more exciting landmarks, and another on the day of the final Mass, where he will do a circuit of Centennial Park.

Then the parties (and the spiritual exercises, we hope), will continue.

But how many of these thousands of young people will read the full text (all 4000 words of it) of Benedict’s message to his dear young friends, which they can find on the official website?

And how many of the celebratory events will feature women in leading roles?

There’s at least one seminar called Pro-Woman, Pro-Life: A New Approach to Forming a Culture of Life.

But this doesn’t mean that women will soon be seen in the ranks of the clergy, nor that there will be a change of heart about attitudes to homosexuals, or feature pro-choice options regarding fertility.

How many radical nuns and gay men will meet the Pope? And even though the Pope will meet members of all faiths, I’m willing to bet that the two Australian Anglican women bishops won’t be among them.

The WYD08 bash is going to be the church’s biggest party, and even though it may not be altogether to Benedict’s liking, for so far he has shown no inclination to follow his predecessor in the line of jet-setting and tarmac-kissing, he’s expected to play along.

And while the theme of the conference is to meet and experience the love of God, there will be many Roman Catholics, now adults, who are still wondering why this has never been their experience in the church.

The recent case of Anthony Jones and the abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of a Sydney priest, only serves to highlight this.

So, too, does the church’s handling of Jones’s complaints.

Will the Pope use this opportunity to apologise to the thousands of Australians who have been sexually abused by clergy over the years, and whose lives have in many cases been ruined, not to mention what it has done to their faith?

The Church has much work to do to bring these people back, and the irony of this world youth festival will not be lost on them.

It’s Benedict XVI’s big chance, so let’s hope he doesn’t blow it.

Source — Courier Mail

Rumours were swirling late last week that Australia’s strict games classification regime had struck its highest-profile victim for 2008, with Fallout 3 apparently being refused a rating. It seems the rumours were true, with confirmation coming tonight that Bethesda’s upcoming postapocalyptic action RPG has indeed been banned for sale in Australia.

The most recent update for the Web site of Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) shows that Fallout 3 has been refused classification. Unlike films or DVDs, the highest rating allowable for a game in Australia is MA 15+, which means any title that has content deemed unsuitable for a 15-year-old is illegal to sell or promote in this country.

While the OFLC website has no details on why Fallout 3 was banned, a user in GameSpot’s PC forum last week suggested it could be due to the use of the drug morphine within the game. Australia’s game classification rules state that titles that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults” will be refused classification.

Fallout 3 is the third game in 2008 to be banned in Australia. Dark Sector was originally refused classification, although an edited version has recently been resubmitted and passed with an MA 15+ rating. Last week, Shellshock 2 was banned due to graphic violent content.

Source — Gamespot

(CNN) – An Alabama man whose wife died during a honeymoon scuba diving trip off the coast of Australia almost five years ago has been charged in her death.

An Australian coroner ruled Friday that there was enough evidence to put Gabe Watson on trial for the death of Tina Watson, who was 26 when she drowned in October 2003 while diving around a historic shipwreck in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Watson, 31, told police that his new bride appeared to panic 45 feet underwater and that he “looked into her eyes and saw her eyes were wide open, but there was no response,” Townsville Coroner David Glascow said in his inquest findings.

Glascow, however, cited what he said were inconsistencies in Watson’s statements to investigators. The coroner said he was “unable to conclude that Tina’s death was an accidental drowning.”

The couple married just 11 days earlier in Birmingham, Alabama. They left their home in Hoover, Alabama, for their Australian honeymoon two days later, the coroner said.

As possible evidence for the husband’s motive, Glascow pointed to a statement by the woman’s father that Watson asked her to maximize her life insurance and make him the beneficiary shortly before the wedding.

The insurance company confirmed that Gabe Watson inquired about her life insurance policy after her death, the coroner said.

The coroner noted that Watson, through his lawyers, contended that police had made a judgment that he killed his wife before they began their investigation and that they tailored their investigation to fit their theory.

Glascow said he saw no evidence of police rushing to judgment.

“It appears certain that at some point in time, investigators considered some of Gabe’s explanations lacked credibility, and it further appears to me that investigators gave Gabe the opportunity to clarify matters which may have caused concern,” the coroner said.

The husband was an experienced diver, and his new wife was considered a novice, the coroner said.

They were diving on the Yongala shipwreck about 42 miles off the coast of Townsville in the state of Queensland, Australia.

Source — CNN