Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
13 November 2007
Asmara — The Eritrean government has thrown the Catholic Church into tension by expelling 13 missionaries in unclear circumstances.
Reliable sources have confirmed to CISA that the missionaries, including a Kenyan, were given 14 days to leave the country, beginning November 6.
The expulsion, our sources say, is part of a wider plot by the Maoist dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki to destroy the Catholic Church in the Horn of Africa nation.
The missionary news agency MISNA reports that the expulsion order was issued to four Comboni fathers (2 Mexicans, a Filipino and a Kenyan), 2 Comboni sisters, 2 Pavonian fathers, 2 Filipino Pius Teachers, 2 nuns of an unspecified congregation and a lay missionary.
The lay missionary, an Italian national, was a volunteer working as secretary for the Bishop of Barentu, south-west of Eritrea. Two of the 13 missionaries, a Comboni father and sister, are already outside of Eritrea, but for personal reasons, according to MISNA.
The reasons for the expulsion remain unclear. But sources told MISNA that two years ago the government gave notice to some missionary institutes to prepare local personnel ahead of a planned exit of foreigners from the nation.
Eritrea has one of the worst records of religious freedom violations in the world. More than 90 percent of its people belong to four recognized religions: Orthodox, Catholicism, Lutheran and Islam. Members of unrecognized churches are often detained and tortured.
The annual International Religious Freedom Report issued by the United States of America this September says religious freedom worsened in 2006. The government severely restricted the freedom of religion for groups that it had not registered and infringed upon the independence of some registered groups.
Following a 2002 decree that religious groups must register, the government closed all religious facilities not belonging to the country's four principal faith groups. It continued to harass, arrest, and detain members of independent evangelical groups and sought greater control over the approved religious groups.
The government also meddled with the Eritrean Orthodox Church by supplanting the patriarch in favour of its own candidate. It failed to register four religious groups that had applied in 2002, and it restricted religious meetings and arrested individuals during religious ceremonies, gatherings, and prayer meetings.
According to media reports, many hundreds of religious detainees continue to be held without due process in harsh conditions that include extreme temperature fluctuations with limited or no access to family.
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Dear Editor,
Sending foreign Catholic church missionaries to Eritrea to serve the same God that the Eritreans have been worshiping for centuries before the Catholic church came to being is an insult to Eritreans. Instead of relaying on the imperialistic power hungry manipulation of self serving false prophets and Messiahs of European and other foreign "missionaries" of the Catholic church, one only needs to refer to the "Erythrean (Eritrean) Sea" of the Old Testament of the Bible, to find out that Eritreans have been Christians before the Romans waged crusade to force the Europeans to convert them to Christianity, establishing the Catholic Church. In any case, while the Catholic church refuses to accept and approve Eritrean catholic missionaries to serve in foreign countries nor allowing Eritreans to serve their own humanitarian and religious missions in their own native territory based Eritrean Catholic churches, as the Vatican II convention upholds, the Romans controlled and monopolized Catholic church is hypocritically shedding self-serving crocodile tears for the "Gospel" and desperately seeking to hold on to long dead colonization and manipulation.
Dear Editor, As a Catholic and a former altar boy, raised strictly in a devoted Catholic family with convictions to uphold the covenant of the Catholic religion and Church rules and regulations, just like millions of Eritreans, I consider my self and many Eritreans being able and capable to carry on all Church missions and services in Eritrean native traditional format and formation, with out having to succumb to the approval seal of "foreign catholic missionaries". Therefore, I hereby request that the Catholic Church accept and respect the Eritrean people's free will, religious commitment and native missionary services, with out waging it's imperialistic manipulation and demeanoring political propaganda against Eritrea and the Eritrean people.
Sincerely, Thank you, Gerrie Lijam, San Jose, Ca. USA