Salvadoran Bishop Medardo Gómez dies, aged 79

TRIBUTES have been paid to Bishop Medardo Gómez, the first bishop of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church, who has died, aged 79. Bishop Gómez, who retired after almost 40 years in January, was committed to speaking out for justice in his native land, and was kidnapped and tortured alongside other human-rights defenders, narrowly escaping the death squads active during the civil war of 1979 to 1992. In 1988, Sojourners reported that he had helped to co-ordinate the repatriation of 4500 Salvadorans from the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras. The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, described Gómez as “a servant of Christ whose life bore witness to the gospel’s call for justice, peace, and compassion”.

ICE swoop on Turkish student condemned

THE detention of a graduate student from Turkey, Rümeysa Öztürk, while pursuing a doctorate at Tufts University on a student visa, has been condemned by the Bishop of Massachusetts, the Rt Revd Julia Whitworth, the Episcopal News Service reports. Ms Öztürk was taken into custody on 25 March while walking along a street, by officials from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her visa was revoked, and she was taken to a detention facility in Louisiana. The Department of Homeland Security said that she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans”. Last year, she wrote an essay critical of the bombing of Gaza. “I reject the actions of the executive branch of our federal government in its targeting of international students for their exercise of free speech and dissent, cornerstones of our U.S. Constitution and American values,” Bishop Whitworth said in a statement.

Syrian Cabinet includes Roman Catholic woman

A ROMAN CATHOLIC, Hind Kabawat, has been appointed Syria’s Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, the only woman in the Cabinet of the Interim President, Ahmad al-Sharaa, Vatican News reports. Canadian-Syrian, she is the only Christian, the Deutsche Welle website reports, and her appointment has been criticised by hard-line Islamists who accuse her of having supported LGBTQ rights, and refer to a rainbow overlaid on a Facebook profile photo in 2015. The Cabinet, tasked with drafting the new constitution and organising the country’s first post-war elections, is composed primarily of Sunni Arabs, but also includes Alawite, Druze, and Kurdish members.

AlamyUS soldiers pray at a mass in Vilnius Cathedral on Sunday, after four of their colleagues on exercises in eastern Lithuania went missing last week. On Tuesday, it was confirmed that their bodies had been found, after their armed vehicle was dragged from a peat bog