Churches in Saudi Arabia?!

The Vatican is holding talks with Saudi Arabia on building the first church in the kingdom, where some 1.5m Christians are not allowed to worship publicly. Archbishop Paul-Mounged el-Hachem, one of Pope Benedict XVI's most senior Middle East representatives, said the discussions had begun a few weeks ago. But the archbishop cautioned that the Vatican could not predict the outcome. The discussions come in the wake of King Abdullah's historic meeting with the Pope at the Vatican last November. A Catholic-Muslim Forum was also set up by the Pope two weeks ago to repair relations between the two faiths after the crisis caused by a speech he gave in Germany in 2006, in which he appeared to associate Islam with violence.
'Reciprocity'
The disclosure of talks between the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, which do not have diplomatic ties, came soon after the first Roman Catholic church in the Qatari capital, Doha, was opened in a service attended by 15,000 people. Archbishop Hachem, the Apostolic Nuncio to Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Bahrain and the UAE, who attended the inauguration, said he hoped there would soon be a similar church for the many Christians in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

"Discussions are under way to allow the construction of churches in the kingdom," he said.
Although he made clear the outcome was uncertain, the archbishop added that a church in Saudi Arabia would be an important sign of "reciprocity" between Muslims and Christians. The Vatican has noted that Muslims are free to worship openly in Europe and demands religious freedom as a condition for the opening of diplomatic relations. About a million Catholics, many of them migrant workers from the Philippines, live in Saudi Arabia. They are allowed to worship in private, mostly in people's homes, but worship in public places and outward signs of faith, such as crucifixes, are forbidden. The last Christian priest was expelled from the kingdom in 1985.
Christians complain that rules are not clear and that the Saudi religious authorities, who enforce the kingdom's conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism, sometimes crack down on legitimate congregations. The authorities cite a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad that only Islam can be practised in the Arabian Peninsula. A spokesman for Pope Benedict, Father Federico Lombardi, said: "If we manage to obtain authorisation for the construction of the first church, it will be an outcome of historic dimensions."

The last churches allowed in Saudi Arabia

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G.K Chesterton

If Christianity should happen to be true -- that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe -- then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. [All] things not only may have something to do with the Christian God, but must have something to do with Him if He lives and reigns.

Chairman Mao Dies - 9th September 1976

Mao Zedong, Chinese revolutionary and statesman, dies at the age of 83. In 1934, during his long civil war with the Nationalists, he broke through enemy lines and led his followers on the Long March to northern China. There, he built up his Red Army and fought against the Japanese invaders. In 1945, civil war resumed, and in 1949 the Nationalists were defeated and Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. As leader of Communist China, Chairman Mao launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, programs that reformed the Chinese economy and society at the cost of millions of lives. Nevertheless, he maintained fanatical followers all across China and remains one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's leader.

Today
Top government officials no longer recite the Marxist saw that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” In a speech at a religious affairs conference last December, President Jiang Zemin said religion “may outlast the party and the state,” a stunning acknowledgement from a man supposedly committed to wiping out religion.

Christianity’s growth has been rapid all over China, however, from the richer east coast to the central plains to the rust belt in Manchuria. In Heilongjiang, in the far northeast, for example, there were 5,000 registered Protestant worshipers in the early 1980s. Today there are 1.3 million, according to a government-authorized pastor in that province.