Vietnam’s communist regime has released an evangelical pastor arrested four years ago accused of helping people escape abroad illegally, said Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a worldwide rights group working for persecuted Christians.

Pastor A Dao, leader of the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ, was released one year before he completed his five-year jail term. He was arrested in 2016 after he attended a conference on religious freedom and spoke about the difficulties his church faced from the state, said the US-centered rights group in a release on Oct. 5.

“Vietnamese authorities sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment for allegedly helping individuals to escape abroad illegally,” ADF said.

The authorities tortured Pastor A Dao after he refused to admit to the charges against him, the group said. They also interrogated members of his church and told them to cease all contact with “foreign reactionaries,” it said.

A group of consultant doctors have said they are “gravely concerned” about the proposals to empower doctors to euthanise terminally ill patients.

The threats of the proposed bill to healthcare in Ireland, to the true meaning of the doctor-patient relationship, and to the future of what we know compassionate and supportive specialist palliative care to be are many, they say.

“We worry about the impact on people who already struggle to have their voices heard in our society – older adults, the disabled, those with mental illness and others.

“We fear that the most vulnerable are those who may be made to feel a burden to their families and come under pressure to end their lives prematurely,” the doctors argue.

“Our experiences tell us that many in our society don’t really know what dying is like, or how rare it is that severe pain cannot be controlled.

“Most people do not know that the easing of physical, psychological or spiritual distress and addressing people’s fears, hopes, sadness and loss can transform the experiences of living, dying and bereavement for individual patients and their families.

One of Belgium’s most prominent trial lawyers has been found guilty by a court in Ghent of libel of the head of a religious order during the trial of three doctors involved in a case of euthanasia. The case involved a woman who was euthanised on the grounds of ‘psychological suffering’.

Walter Van Steenbrugge was representing the doctor accused of improperly administering euthanasia. He petitioned the court for René Stockman, head of the Catholic Brothers of Charity, to be called as a witness.

Now a court in Ghent has upheld Brother Stockman’s complaint, which carries a possible penalty of one year in prison.

Christian leaders have urged the government in India’s Chhattisgarh state to act against those who attacked 16 Christian families and destroyed their houses for refusing to abandon their faith.

Even after a week, state police have not registered Christians’ complaint against the tribal group that attacked them on Sept. 22 and 23, said Pastor Moses Logan.

“Police refused to register a first information report and are forcing the persecuted to compromise with the perpetrators of the crime,” Pastor Logan told UCA News on Oct. 2.

A crowd of people opposed to indigenous people following Christianity vandalized 16 houses of tribal Christians in three villages — Kakrabeda, Singanpur and Tiliyabeda — in the state’s Bastar region.

“They also assaulted women and children, so many ran into the forest to save their lives,” the pastor said.

A Dutch doctor who once supported euthanasia in the Netherlands has called on Ireland to not legislate for assisted suicide. A bill to permit the practice is currently before the Dail.

Theo Boer is Professor of Health Care Ethics at Groningen Theological University. After its legalisation in 2002, he worked for the Dutch authorities, reviewing euthanasia cases between 2005 and 2014.

Writing yesterday in the Sunday Independent, he noted that despite safeguards, numbers dramatically increased from 2,000 in its first year to 6,300 in 2019. In some urban districts, between 12pc and 14pc of all deaths are due to “assisted dying”. The total numbers are expected to double again in the near future.

He also said that initially, the law applied almost exclusively to terminally ill, mentally competent adults. Now it has extended to those with chronic conditions, disabled people, those with psychiatric problems, and incompetent adults with an advance directive.

He said expansion is under debate for euthanasia in young children and for elderly persons without a medical diagnosis.

He also predicted that legal limits could be subject to a challenge in the courts. In Quebec, the Superior Court last year ruled that the stipulation of a terminal illness in Canadian law is discriminatory and thus unconstitutional.

“Why euthanasia only for terminally ill patients, who already have access to an ever-widening array of palliative care, whereas chronic patients may suffer more intensely and for much longer?”

He also said the paradox of legalising assisted dying is that while it is welcomed by some, it becomes an invitation to despair for many others.

Since 2002, suicide rates have actually gone up by 15% in the Netherlands, while they have decreased by 10% in neighbouring Germany.

He writes that the Netherlands must act as an alarm to what can happen.

“I once believed it was possible to regulate and restrict killing to terminally ill, mentally competent adults with less than six months to live. I believed we could regulate suicide and curtail those all-too-familiar cases where someone ends their own life. I was wrong.”

“When even the most well-regulated and monitored system worldwide can’t guarantee that assisted dying remains a last resort, why would Ireland be more successful?”

A national court in France has ruled that a man who fathered a child with his wife six years ago cannot now be listed as the child’s mother.

The French news agency RFI reported that “Claire,” the biological father had children in 2000 and 2004 with his wife. Then in 2011, Claire was registered as a female.

“Three years later, while she still had male reproductive organs, the couple had a third child, a girl,” the report said.

But the highest court in France, the Court of Cassation in Paris, concluded “two maternal filiations cannot be established with regard to the same child, outside of adoption.”

Leaders of gay rights groups said the ruling is a setback for their movement. But another lawyer, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, explained that to decide any other way would be to “to transform that child’s personal history into fiction, in the name of adult desire.”

In a similar case in England earlier this year a court ruled a woman who lives as a man cannot be recorded as the father of her child’s birth certificate, but for a different reason: those who give birth are mothers, the court ruling said.

The National Women’s Council of Ireland says it is a “mistake” for the HSE to replace the word “woman” with “anyone with a cervix” in its national cervical screening advice.

The NWCI hopes to meet the HSE and Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) to discuss the words to be used in official publications. The HSE had changed the wording to try to be more gender-neutral but is now reviewing the material.

The phrase is included in a leaflet, also published online, that outlines who should get an HPV cervical screening test. “Anyone with a cervix who is aged between 25 and 65 should get an HPV cervical screening test when it is due,” it states.

In its literature on prostate cancer, the HSE did not replace the word “man” with “anyone with a prostate”.

There was a furore in the Dáil last night as the debate on assisted suicide excluded almost all voices opposed to the measure.

In an apparent departure from the established norm, all speaking slots were filled before the bill reached the floor of the chamber, with deputies in favour of change having taken them all.

Meath West TD, Peadar Toibin called the situation unprecedented.

Ten minutes from the end, he called a point of order and appealed for more time, noting the irony of the one-sided debate: “I welcome that all the speakers so far have said we need a proper discussion about this very serious issue. It would be a shame to go through the Second Stage debate without anybody with an opposing view on the Bill getting a chance to speak, and with all the views exactly the same”.

Deputy Mattie McGrath also protested, calling the debate “shambolic” and questioned the distribution of speaking slots.

The Chair refused the request to extend the 75 minute debate by 20 minutes to allow more contributions. However, 4 minutes were afforded to Louth TD Peter Fitzpatrick to make the case against assisted suicide.

The Irish Catholic Bishops have called for a culture of life in this year’s Day for Life celebration.

Taking place this Sunday, the annual event is dedicated to raising awareness about the meaning and value of human life at every stage, and in every condition.

In their Day for Life pastoral message, the bishops grieve the loss of life due to abortion and seek a change of hearts and minds about the innate dignity of the child in the womb and the care of women for whom pregnancy presents particular challenges.

Bishop Kevin Doran, Chair of the Bishops’ Council for Life said, “In 2019 there were 6,666 abortions in the Republic of Ireland and in the vast majority of cases, no reason was either asked or given. The tragedy of this is not just the loss of so many young lives, but the grief that so many women suffer in silence and the extent to which society itself loses its fruitfulness.”

Two healthcare facilities founded as Catholic ministries took legal steps yesterday to close down.

The Health Service Executive is to assume responsibility for disability and mental health services run by the St John of God charity, due to an “intolerable” financial deficit facing the organisation.

The charity is funded by the HSE to provide services to 8,000 children and adults on behalf of the State.

Nonetheless, it has been grappling with a mounting financial deficit in recent years, citing underfunding from the HSE.

On Wednesday the organisation decided to cease running the majority of its healthcare services, due to the funding crisis, and would transfer responsibility to the HSE over a 12-month period.

Meanwhile, The High Court has made orders formally winding up the operator of a south Dublin care facility, which caters for vulnerable adults, and a nursing home.

The company sought to wind up the facility, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity order of nuns, because it would be unable to meet redundancy payments of €950,000 arising from the liquidation.

The firm also cited regulatory difficulties, concerns over future funding from the HSE and an inability to comply with HIQA recommendations to modernise its facilities as reasons why it should be wound up.