As part of the books of wisdom, the Psalms communicate to the believer “knowing how to pray”.
“In the Psalms we find all human sentiments: the joys, the sorrows, the doubts, the hopes, the bitterness that colour our lives,” said the Pope.
God, he added, inspired the language of prayer in the books so that those who read them might learn how to praise, thank, implore, and invoke Him.
“In short, the Psalms are the word of God that we human beings use to speak with Him.”
The prayers in the Psalms arise out of lived experience, not abstract ideas, said the Pope. “To pray them it is enough for us to be what we are,” with all our problems and uncertainties.
Question of suffering
Pope Francis went on to explore how the Psalmist confronts the issue of suffering, saying it is accepted as part of life and thus transformed into a question.
“Until when?” he said, is the question that remains unanswered.
“Every suffering calls for liberation, every tear calls for consolation, every wound awaits healing, every slander a sentence of absolution.”
The Psalms, said the Pope, reminds us that life is not saved unless suffering is healed.
The person who prays, he added, knows that they are “are precious in the eyes of God, and so it makes sense to cry out.”
Prayer: a cry to God
The Psalms show us that crying out to God in prayer “is the way and beginning of salvation.”
Pope Francis said prayer turns pain into “a relationship: a cry for help waiting to intercept a listening ear.”
“All human pains for God are sacred,” he added. “Before God we are not strangers, or numbers. We are faces and hearts, known one by one, by name.”
God’s door always open
So, said Pope Francis, the believer finds an answer to suffering in the Psalms.
“He knows that even if all human doors were barred, God’s door is open. Even if the whole world had issued a verdict of condemnation, there is salvation in God.”
The Pope said the person who prays knows that problems are not always solved, but “if we are listened to, everything becomes more bearable.”
God cries with us
In conclusion, Pope Francis said prayer saves us from suffering in abandonment, because our prayers rise up to God who “cries for every son and daughter who suffers and dies.”
“If we maintain our relationship with Him,” he said, “life does not spare us suffering, but we open up to a great horizon of goodness and set out towards its fulfilment.”
Vatican News English Africa Service – Vatican City
“Recently there have been reports and videos documenting that members of the Nigerian police, in particular the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) operatives, have been involved in various acts of brutality and extortion against innocent citizens of this great country,” said Archbishop Alfred Adewale Martins, the Metropolitan of Lagos, in a statement sent to Agenzia Fides.
Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, has since announced the disbanding of the SARS, which was supposed to act against violent robbery but in the end became notorious for its impunity. There have been widespread demonstrations, led by young people and organised on social media, in major Nigerian cities but especially in Lagos and Abuja. The country’s President over the weekend caved-in to pressure from protesters and disbanded the infamous SARS unit. However, the country’s citizens want more. They want those who perpetrated the crimes to be punished and not just transferred to other police posts.
Justice must be seen to be done
“It is sad that a good fraction of persons who are constitutionally empowered to provide security and ensure peace have now turned against the people they are meant to protect,” said the Archbishop of Lagos. He added, “We have also received reports of how some SARS officials are accused of executing victims in an extrajudicial manner. The only way of assuaging the anger in the land now is to ensure that the guilty ones are brought to face the law and justice seen to have been done. Such heinous crimes must not be condoned or allowed to continue,” he said.
On Tuesday, Nigeria’s most senior police officer, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, announced the unconditional release of all protesters. The government hopes such concessions will make protesters end their demonstrations. There have also been reports of deaths because of the demonstrations. The actual number of fatalities has varied depending on the source. Some accounts speak of 10 persons killed.
SARS: torture and ill-treatment
For years Nigerians have complained about abuses at the hands of the SARS police unit. After violent protests, the Nigerian police chief ordered a restructuring of SARS, three years ago. An Amnesty International report published in June 2020, however, indicated that “torture and other ill-treatment” continued with impunity. In total, Amnesty International documented 82 cases of concern between January 2017 and May 2020.
“Unfortunately, we have been witnesses to the seeming inability of our police authorities to put an end to this outright siege on hapless Nigerians,” said Archbishop Martins, in his statement.
Restructure and restore police to its integrity
“We understand,” continues Archbishop Martins, “that there have been no less than four attempts by the topmost hierarchy of the Nigeria Police to call these special units to order without success. One wonders why this is the case. Inability to bring them under control gives room for people to insinuate that the top echelons are themselves compromised.”
The Archbishop has called on the country’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, the Commission of Police Services and the Inspector General of the Police “to commence a thorough and realistic review of the entire structure of the force in order to restore its integrity,” he said.
Observers say the government finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Throwing overboard thousands of notorious elements of the police could be a security risk to the county. Yet there is also fear that doing nothing will embolden protesters to escalate their demands and matters could then get out of control.
Amy Coney Barrett had a challenging day before Senate Democrats. She offended a great many people during her Supreme Court nomination hearing Tuesday when she used the term “sexual preference,” instead of “sexual orientation,” forcing a rare apology from a SCOTUS nominee later in the day.
Judge Barrett claimed she would never discriminated for any reason, which is provably false as she has already in her life outside the courts, but it was one set of questions from Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) that seemed to trip up Judge Barrett.
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“Can a hairdresser refuse to serve an interracial couple’s wedding, because they disapprove of interracial marriages?” Sen. Booker asked.
“Well, Loving v. Virginia follows directly from Brown, and it makes unconstitutional any attempt to prohibit or for forbid interracial marriage,” Barrett replied.
“Could they refuse to serve a black couple’s wedding?” Booker asked.
Judge Barrett offered a very strange response.
“Could a baker or a florist refuse to – Title VII prohibits any sort of discrimination on the basis of race by places of public accommodation,” Barrett said.
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But Sen. Booker didn’t ask about “a baker or a florist,” he asked about a hairdresser.
Coincidentally, the anti-LGBTQ hate group Judge Barrett has ties to has clients who are bakers and florists, and two of its top cases involve a baker and a florist. Not a hairdresser.
Booker continued, asking about an interfaith couple, and that’s when Barrett put the brakes on.
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“Well, Senator, I feel like you’re taking me down a road of hypotheticals that is going to get me into trouble here because as you know I can’t opine on how cases would be resolved, and I’ve said that whether they’re easy questions or hard questions. I can’t do that,” Barrett insisted.
“So I’m not the lawyer that you are,” Booker replied graciously. (He is in fact a highly-regarded attorney.) “But you seem to honor the precedents that are enough to protect discrimination against African Americans, interracial couples, but you stop on saying that unequivocally about people stopping on religious discrimination against a Muslim couple or interfaith wedding?”
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Raw Story is independent. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.
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The DoJ filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against 49-year-old Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former White House aide and close friend of first lady Melania Trump, claiming the contents of her recently published book broke a non-disclosure pact.
“The United States seeks to hold Ms. Wolkoff to her contractual and fiduciary obligations and to ensure that she is not unjustly enriched by her breach of the duties she freely assumed when she served as an adviser to the first lady,” read the DoJ complaint, as observed by Reuters.
The complaint seeks to have profits from the book – published six weeks ago – set aside in a government trust.
In the book, “Wolkoff reveals how her friend of 15 years spearheaded ‘Operation Block Ivanka’ to ensure the president’s eldest daughter didn’t hog the limelight at the inauguration,” reported The Daily Beast.
Marc Kasowitz, a longtime attorney for US President Donald Trump, previously issued a letter to Wolkoff and publisher Simon & Schuster, alleging that she had violated a confidentiality clause within a Gratuitous Services Agreement signed between Melania Trump and herself on August 22, 2017.
“The Services Agreement prohibits Ms. Wolkoff from, among other things, disclosing her work for FLOTUS and the White House Office of the First Lady, as well as any information furnished to [her] by the Government under this Agreement, information about the First Family, or any other information about which [she] may become aware during the course of her performance,” Kasowitz’s letter states, according to The Daily Beast.
The DoJ complaint issued on Tuesday also cited the August 2017 agreement, noting it applied to “nonpublic, privileged and/or confidential information” Wolkoff obtained during the time of her service.
“This was a contract with the United States and therefore enforceable by the United States,” DoJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Reuters.
“I did not break the NDA,” said Wolkoff during a September appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
“I’ve been working with First Amendment lawyers the entire time, pre-publishing lawyers, so this was handled extremely carefully,” she added.
The director of Brightburn is heading to Netflix for a…family movie?
Yep. David Yarovesky, who directed the nasty, James Gunn-produced, supervillain origin story Brightburn, is on board to direct Night Books, a film adaptation of author J.A. White’s children’s fantasy story about a young boy who is imprisoned by a witch. Horror legends Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are producing, while Krysten Ritter, Winslow Fegley, and Lidya Jewett are lined up to star. Get more Night Books movie details below.
Deadline reports that a Night Books movie will be the next project for Brightburn director David Yarovesky, whose previous credits also include the 2014 horror filmThe Hive. The film is based on White’s 2019 novel Nightbooks (the book title is only one word), which “follows Alex (Fegley), a boy obsessed with scary stories, who is imprisoned by an evil young witch (Ritter) in her contemporary New York City apartment. He meets Yasmin (Jewett), who is also trapped there, and learns he must tell a new scary story every night in order to stay alive.”
There must be something in the air, because this is the second project I’ve heard about over the past few weeks which involves the idea of characters telling scary stories to each other in high-stakes scenarios. (The other is an indie horror comedy called Scare Me, which is streaming right now on Shudder.)
Casting Krysten Ritter as an evil witch sounds pretty perfect to me, although since this movie is described as a “family pic,” she won’t be able to get totally unhinged as this character. (Still, maybe this will inspire someone else to cast her as a witch in a project where she can really let loose.) Lidya Jewett played young Nakia in Black Panther and has had roles in Hidden Figures, Good Girls, and Feel the Beat. And look out world, because the Fegley clan is coming in to take over Hollywood. Winslow Fegley, who is playing the lead role in Night Books, is the younger brother of Oakes Fegley, the kid at the center of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon remake and who’s about to go to war with his grandpa in the Robert De Niro comedy The War With Grandpa. It’s only a matter of time until there’s a Fegley in every major project coming down the pike, so it’s probably in your best interest to go ahead and swear your undying fealty to them now.
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Ductor, a Finnish-Swiss biotechnology company, will develop up to 200 new biogas and sustainable fertilizer projects in Europe and North America in the next three years. The company received a significant investment from BW Group, one of the world’s leading maritime groups in the tanker, gas, and offshore segments.
The new projects such as biogas plants will use agricultural or fish waste to create two separate products: renewable biogas and sustainable organic fertilizer. This circular economy model will help significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from both the energy and agriculture sectors. Building the new facilities will be a clear move towards making the EU’s economy more sustainable, as stated in the new European Green Deal, with the goal of turning the climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.
The new facilities will be built in Germany, Poland, France, Spain, Norway, and the United States, among others. They are planned to be in operation within a few years.
“As company owners we need to push and do our utmost to counter climate change. Ductor’s goal is to use the circular economy as a weapon in this fight and now, with the help of BW Group, we can speed up our operations,” Ari Mokko, founder and CEO of Ductor, says.
With their investment, BW Group will become a major shareholder in Ductor as well as a strategic partner. Andreas Beroutsos, a senior executive at BW and now a board member of Ductor, says, “BW Group has been focused on the energy transition for some time, with prior investments in batteries, renewables, water treatment, and other technologies to address global challenges. Ductor has a unique solution producing two valuable outputs from waste: biofuels and organic fertilizers. We are delighted to be partnering with Ari Mokko, Ductor’s visionary founder, his team and their existing investors to help Ductor grow and make a positive contribution to resolving some of today’s environmental, energy, land and food challenges.”
During the last year, Ductor opened its first operational sustainable fertilizer and biogas facility in Mexico and contracted for three new facilities in Poland. The company already has around 75 new projects under development in Europe and North America.
An urgent need for sustainable agriculture
The transition to sustainable agriculture is driven by new technologies, research and innovation. This “new agriculture” will not only slow down climate change but also provide sustainable economic rewards for farmers by creating new business opportunities with a circular economy. Ductor’s fermentation technology converts agricultural waste, such as chicken manure, into efficient organic fertilizer for large-scale farming and biogas in the form of biomethane to replace fossil fuel energy. Healthier soils and regenerative farming also contribute to less polluted waters.
“Ductor is committed to increasing agricultural biodiversity, enriching soils, improving watersheds, and enhancing ecosystem services. We need to capture carbon in soil and above-ground biomass, reversing current global trends of atmospheric accumulation. Our job is to help nature do its job better by transforming organic waste into carbon-negative fertilizers and renewable energy,” Mokko says.
Pottery tradition established in England a hundred years ago was inspired by the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humanity and sought to unite East and West.
LONDON — One hundred years ago, two potters—one English, the other Japanese—embarked upon a creative enterprise with the aim of uniting the art and traditions of East and West.
Bernard Leach was born in 1887 in Hong Kong and raised in Japan and Singapore. From his earliest years, he advocated the need for the East and West to meet and merge. His idealism and passionate concern for humanity, which found expression through his craft, were later strengthened and expanded as he embraced the Bahá’í Faith.
From its founding in 1920, the Leach Pottery, established by Leach with his friend Shoji Hamada in St. Ives, England, became one of the most significant and influential crafts workshops in the world. Its centenary is now being marked by a number of special exhibitions, including at the Crafts Study Centre—based at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham—and at the historic Whitechapel Gallery. At the Leach Pottery itself, a program of creative initiatives is also celebrating the anniversary.
“Leach would regard the pot as a kind of repository, not just of material but of ideas, of thoughts, of characteristics,” says Professor Simon Olding, Director of the Crafts Study Centre. “He deeply believed in the notion of hand, heart and head working together, and he could wed those to his own sense of spiritual and humanistic life.”
A synthesis of East and West
The young Leach studied drawing and printmaking in London, returning to Japan in 1908 with the intention of teaching etching. Some of his first works—showing his mastery of line drawing—are on display in Farnham, many of them from the collection of the late Alan Bell, a Bahá’í who worked for Leach in the 1970s. Bell’s archive, which was recently acquired by the Crafts Study Centre, includes many pieces that have never before been publicly displayed.
“The start of the exhibition relates his very earliest and unseen student drawings to his very early Japanese etchings,” says Prof. Olding. “It’s the first occasion where Leach is physically locating himself through that line in Japan, both in his self-portraits but also in his depiction of landscape. Japan is deeply set into his mind and his practice.”
In Japan, Leach became enthralled by the country’s ceramic traditions and devoted himself to learning the craft, evolving an approach that combined Eastern and old English techniques. Then, in 1920, he and Hamada accepted sponsorship to set up a pottery in St. Ives. But Cornwall’s lack of wood—essential for fueling the kilns—and its poor supply of local clay and natural materials for glazes, made it a less than promising environment for what they had set out to do. Persevering through many challenges and near-disasters, Leach and Hamada were convinced they were founding a new era for the artist-craftsman potter, reinstating the notion of truth to materials, and the beauty of simple design and subtle colors. Their belief in the synthesis of East and West was foundational to their approach.
“Leach introduced iconography from East Asian ceramics into his own work,” says Prof. Olding. “You can see that interplay between the UK and Japan both formally and informally.” Simple decorative motifs that Leach perfected for his pots included leaves, birds, and fish.
Belief and practice
The potter’s personal convictions were fortified by his discovery of the Bahá’í Faith—introduced to him by his friend, the American painter Mark Tobey—which Leach formally accepted in 1940. One of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings that particularly resonated with him was “…that the true worth of artists and craftsmen should be appreciated, for they advance the affairs of mankind.”
Leach had always believed that people using beautiful, handmade crafts could contribute significantly to the well-being of society. But, in time, he came to realize that attaining greater levels of unity was the only solution to meeting the larger challenges facing humanity. “I believe that Bahá’u’lláh was a Manifestation and that His work was to provide the spiritual foundation upon which the society of mankind could be established,” he wrote. His spiritual sensibilities were further stirred when in 1954 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The experience of praying in the Bahá’í Shrines reinforced his feeling that he should step up his efforts to contribute to greater unity between East and West.
“Art, as we endeavor towards perfection, is one with religion, and this fact is better recognized in the East,” Leach wrote towards the end of his long life. “Our dualism commenced when we separated intellect and intuition, the head from the heart, and man from God.”
The importance of training was also central to the Leach Pottery’s practice. Students and apprentices were taken on from the surrounding area and overseas, creating a uniquely international environment. Rigorous workshop discipline was seen as the essential foundation for students’ future success as potters, as apprentices were tasked with repeatedly producing more than 100 standard designs, ranging from egg cups to large cooking pots.
“Leach,” notes Prof. Olding, “did not, in essence, move away from what he regarded as these founding principles and pots. These apprentices then established their own potteries, working in that same sort of idiom, seeing the small scale studio pottery as the means by which they could lead a hard but fulfilling creative and emotional life.”
An enduring legacy
The tradition Leach established dominated Western pottery for much of the twentieth century, attracting countless admirers around the world. At the Whitechapel Gallery, the contemporary German artist Kai Althoff has selected 45 of Leach’s pieces from major collections, for which he has designed special vitrines.
“Althoff is drawn to Bernard Leach’s work and his approach to making objects,” says curator Emily Butler. “He’s very interested in this synthesis of beauty and utility, how art and objects can be lived with and can be useful. Through the exhibition’s title, Kai Althoff goes with Bernard Leach, he’s saying I’d like my philosophy of work to be like Bernard Leach’s.”
Hamada died in 1978 and Leach the following year, aged 92, but visitors still travel from all over the world to St. Ives to see where these two potters founded a way of working that built an enduring friendship and understanding between cultures. To mark its centenary, the Leach Pottery had planned a year-long program of activities, much of which they have been forced to postpone or modify because of the pandemic.
“Leach Pottery has always demonstrated resilience against an ever-changing backdrop,” says its present Director Libby Buckley, “and has stood and survived the test of time, continually innovating and responding to challenges. And, in the determined spirit of our founders, this is how we continue to operate unabated.”
“We are sure people will continue to celebrate with us, learning from, honoring, and continuing the legacies of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in fresh and exciting modern ways throughout this critical year for us, and well into the future.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (2nd R) and his wife Olena (1st R) welcome the visiting President of Poland Andrzej Duda (2nd L, front) and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda in front of the Mariyinsky Palace in Kiev, Ukraine, Oct. 12, 2020. Ukraine and Poland intend to cooperate to further deepen Ukraine’s relations with the European Union and boost bilateral economic cooperation, the two countries’ presidents said following their meeting in Kiev on Monday.
Kyiv, Ukraine | XINHUA | Ukraine and Poland intend to cooperate to further deepen Ukraine’s relations with the European Union and boost bilateral economic cooperation, the two countries’ presidents, Volodymyr Zelensky and Andrzej Duda, said following their meeting in Kiev on Monday.
According to a joint statement released on the website of the Ukrainian president’s office, Zelensky and Duda emphasized the importance of mutually beneficial economic cooperation to take full advantage of the Ukrainian and Polish markets’ opportunities in the context of a functioning deep and comprehensive free trade zone between the EU and Ukraine.
The presidents emphasized the need for further cooperation in the energy sector to strengthen energy security in the region and Europe as a whole.
The presidents also noted that the cooperation of Ukraine and Poland would strengthen the region’s role as an essential transport, transit, infrastructure, and investment center of the European continent.
Duda arrived in Kiev with an official visit on Sunday. On Tuesday Zelensky and Duda plan to attend Ukrainian-Polish economic forum in Odessa.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 951 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo)
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has an initiative to create policy changes that align with religious values. This applies to BYU students of all religions uniting when it comes to political action.
Josh Dickson, the national faith engagement director for the Biden campaign, said religion plays an essential role in the campaign because different faiths can make an impact on policy changes. Dickson explained the campaign’s common good policy agenda aligns with the values people of faith have.
Dickson was previously a recruitment director for Teach for America at BYU and worked for the Obama re-election campaign. In his current role, he leads and promotes functions including interfaith events, phone banking, voter education protection and “off the record” conversations to build relationships with various faiths.
One of his team’s main goals is to ensure that people of faith feel valued and important to the campaign, Dickson said. “We are building this broad, robust, diverse coalition that we think very much aligns with the common good values that the vice president and Sen. (Kamala) Harris are fighting for,” Dickson said.
One of the campaign’s main focuses is to ensure that people of faith are able to engage on the state level. Dickson said BYU students of all faiths can make an impact in local and national elections by connecting based on their shared values.
One of the main ways Biden and his national faith engagement team reach out to people in the religious community and make them feel valued is by hosting interfaith events where the campaign staff hears people of different faiths share experiences and discuss how to better the country’s moral system.
“They may be coming at those values from different perspectives, different faiths, from different traditions, from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. But when they can find those real points of unity, I think that’s where there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for doing great work together,” Dickson said.
Laith Habahbeh, a senior at BYU who is Muslim said he has seen common values between his faith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Islam is a very conservative religion and has something similar to the Word of Wisdom, Habahbeh said.
When Habahbeh was asked if religion has been a core focus in this year’s local and national elections, he said politicians utilize religion as a way to get ahead. “I feel like most political parties try to include religion as part of the process. This is just my personal opinion, but I don’t think it is genuine or out of actual honesty from the political candidates.”
Kayla Perry, a Baptist, is a junior neuroscience major. She said politics and religion are closely tied because people hold political views based on their beliefs. “I think religion plays a really big factor in politics because religion often goes hand in hand with policies. For example, whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, that’s strongly tied back to your religious background.”
BYU can see greater unity on racial, religious and political issues when people start listening to understand people with different viewpoints are saying, Perry said.
(RNS) — The State Department no longer is making publicly available a number of statistics about refugees admitted into the United States, including their religious affiliation.
A spokesperson for the department cited two main reasons for the changes, which took place Friday (Oct. 9): the development of a new information technology system, which won’t be completed until December 2021, and concerns about privacy.
The department eventually will produce more reports after the system is completed, but the spokesperson could not confirm whether they would include religion data. Meanwhile, the “interactive reporting feature” that contained religion-related data on refugees already has vanished.
“The interactive reporting feature will not return due to privacy concerns,” the spokesperson told Religion News Service. “The specific reports that will be available are yet to be confirmed but will take into account data protection and refugee privacy concerns.”
The shift has raised concerns from at least one of the faith-based organizations tasked with resettling refugees in the country. The data helped groups such as World Relief track whether the federal government is living up to its pledges to help those facing religious persecution.
“It certainly will make it more difficult to hold our government accountable to its commitments to protect those fleeing violations of their religious liberty globally,” said Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization and advocacy for World Relief and national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table.
Matthew Soerens. Courtesy photo
This image is available for web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.
Soerens also said he has never heard privacy concerns raised about the information previously shared by the State Department. All of that data, he said, was aggregated and anonymous.
World Relief, an evangelical Christian organization that works with the U.S. government to resettle refugees, relied on State Department data to document what it calls “the startling reduction in the resettlement of persecuted Christians and other religious minorities” in a report it issued last summer with Open Doors USA, Soerens said.
The data showed a precipitous drop in recent years in the number of Christian refugees admitted to the U.S. from the 50 countries at the top of Open Doors USA’s World Watch List. The annual list tracks the places where Christians face the worst persecution.
President Donald Trump promised in his first days in office to make helping persecuted Christians a priority for his administration.
But the last numbers made available by the State Department — which Soerens downloaded Friday before they disappeared from the department’s website — show the number of Christians admitted from those countries dropped 83.2% from fiscal years 2016 to 2020.
Just 2,811 Christian refugees were admitted to the U.S. from the countries on the World Watch List in fiscal 2020, which ended last month. By contrast, 16,714 Christians from those countries were admitted to the United States in fiscal 2016, former President Barack Obama’s last full year in office.
Overall, 8,720 Christian refugees were admitted to the U.S. this past year, nearly a 77% drop since 2016. At the same time, 2,600 Muslim refugees were admitted, more than a 93% drop since Obama’s last full year in office.
This year’s sharp decline in refugees is partially attributable to the ongoing pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, but the change predated the virus: Trump has repeatedly slashed total refugee admissions to historic lows each year he has been in office and this year he proposed only allowing a maximum 15,000 refugees into the U.S.
By comparison, Obama set that number at 110,000 his last year in office.
Soerens said the State Department now will only broadly release how many refugees have fled their countries based on “religious persecution.”
That includes those who qualify under the Lautenberg Program, which admits citizens of former Soviet-bloc countries who are members of certain religious minorities and have family in the U.S. They are not required to demonstrate the same individual fear of persecution other refugees do, he said.
The work of helping refugees find a home in America is largely done by faith-based organizations such as World Relief.
Of the nine groups authorized by the U.S. government to resettle refugees, six claim a religious affiliation. Others include Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
