{"id":2562,"date":"2011-03-05T14:23:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T14:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/03\/pakistani-churches-mourn-assas.php"},"modified":"2011-03-05T14:23:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T14:23:01","slug":"pakistani-churches-mourn-assas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/pakistani-churches-mourn-assas","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani Churches Mourn Assassinated Christian minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BANGALORE, India (RNS\/ENInews) Christian schools across Pakistan shut down on Thursday (March 3) for a three-day protest of the assassination of the country&#8217;s Minister for Religious Minorities.<br \/>\nThe call for the action came at an ecumenical meeting chaired by Archbishop Lawrence Saldana, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan.<br \/>\nChurch leaders said if Pakistan becomes a &#8220;killing field&#8221; of people &#8220;who exercise their freedom of conscience and expression,&#8221; then &#8220;criminals trying to take charge of the country&#8221; will be emboldened.<br \/>\nThe church leaders also declared Sunday a day of prayer and fasting to mark the murder on Wednesday of Shahbaz Bhatti, the government&#8217;s sole Christian minister.<br \/>\nA critic of Pakistan&#8217;s blasphemy law, which makes criticism of the Prophet Muhammad a capital crime in the Muslim-majority nation, Bhatti last November initiated a clemency petition for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman currently in prison on blasphemy charges.<br \/>\n&#8220;My life is under threat. I am getting threat calls regularly,&#8221; Bhatti told ENInews in an interview last November. In January, another high-ranking government official, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, was killed after he criticized the blasphemy law.<br \/>\nSaldana told ENInews, &#8220;We salute the courage of Shahbaz who knowingly put his life in danger by speaking up boldly against the blasphemy law. We decided to close all the institutions to honor his sacrifice.&#8221;<br \/>\nVictor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Pakistan, told ENInews that &#8220;words cannot describe our feelings. We are stunned.&#8221;<br \/>\n<strong>&#8211; ANTO AKKARA<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BANGALORE, India (RNS\/ENInews) Christian schools across Pakistan shut down on Thursday (March 3) for a three-day protest of the assassination of the country&#8217;s Minister for Religious Minorities. The call for the action came at an ecumenical meeting chaired by Archbishop Lawrence Saldana, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan. Church leaders said if Pakistan&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pakistani Churches Mourn Assassinated Christian minister<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/pakistani-churches-mourn-assas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pakistani Churches Mourn Assassinated Christian minister\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BANGALORE, India (RNS\/ENInews) Christian schools across Pakistan shut down on Thursday (March 3) for a three-day protest of the assassination of the country&#8217;s Minister for Religious Minorities. The call for the action came at an ecumenical meeting chaired by Archbishop Lawrence Saldana, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan. Church leaders said if Pakistan&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/pakistani-churches-mourn-assas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-05T14:23:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pakistani Churches Mourn Assassinated Christian minister","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/pakistani-churches-mourn-assas","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pakistani Churches Mourn Assassinated Christian minister","og_description":"BANGALORE, India (RNS\/ENInews) Christian schools across Pakistan shut down on Thursday (March 3) for a three-day protest of the assassination of the country&#8217;s Minister for Religious Minorities. 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