VATICAN CITY (RNS) Under new rules announced recently, the Vatican will more closely oversee the operations of Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of 162 national Catholic charities. The decision comes after the Vatican last year vetoed the re-election of the organization’s then-secretary general, Lesley-Anne Knight, complaining of a lack of coordination with Vatican officials.

The new rules issued by the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, will require all Caritas Internationalis officials make a formal promise of fidelity to church teachings and leaders.

The organization is now under the supervision of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”, which oversees the Catholic Church’s charitable activities, while the pope is given the right to appoint three of its board members. Bishop Bernard Hebda of Gaylord, Mich., has been chosen as one of the Vatican-appointed board members.

From now on, all Caritas Internationalis statements – particularly “any text with doctrinal or moral content or orientations” – and activities will have to be authorized in advance by the Vatican, except in case of “grave humanitarian emergencies.”

“Cor Unum” will also appoint an ecclesiastical assistant tasked with promoting the “Catholic identity” of Caritas Internationalis, and the Vatican’s Secretariat of State will closely supervise the confederation’s contacts with foreign governments.

The new rules will not directly affect Catholic Relief Services, the official aid agency of the U.S. Catholic bishops. But Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the pontifical council, explained in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, that bishops could be “inspired” by the new rules to revise the statutes of national Catholic charities.

The Vatican move is part of a more general drive to promote Catholic identity in Catholic aid operations at all levels. Critics have complained that Catholic charities operate often like secular nongovernmental organizations and partner with groups that sometimes don’t share Catholic values, including the church’s opposition to birth control.

In a message addressed to the confederation’s general assembly last May, Pope Benedict XVI warned that without an explicit reference to God, aid work risked “falling prey to harmful ideologies.” He also warned that, as Caritas Internationalis shared the church’s mission, the Holy See was entitled to exercise oversight of its operations.

According to Caritas Internationalis secretary general, Michel Roy, the new rules should be seen as a step to “integrate” the organization’s operations within the Holy See and will reinforce Catholic advocacy on behalf of the poor, “because we will be able to speak in the name of the Church.”

LEM/AMB END SPECIALE

(RNS) Despite emotional protests and fierce lobbying from gay rights groups, United Methodists voted on Thursday to maintain their denomination’s stance that the practice of homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Two “agree to disagree” proposals were soundly defeated during separate votes by the nearly 1,000 delegates gathered for the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Tampa, Fla.

One proposal would have replaced the “incompatible” phrase in the Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s laws and doctrines. Both proposals sought to soften the disputed doctrine by adding more ambiguous statements about homosexuality.

Gay rights advocates in the UMC viewed the compromise proposals as the best chance to advance their cause at this year’s General Conference, which convenes every four years. On Friday, delegates are expected to debate the church’s bans on noncelibate gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

With nearly 8 million members in the U.S., the UMC remains the country’s largest mainline Protestant denomination. But United Methodism is shrinking in the U.S. and growing in Africa and Asia, shifting the balance of power to overseas conservatives. Nearly 40 percent of the delegates gathered in Tampa live outside the U.S.

Thursday’s debate put the denomination’s wide diversity on display – as gays and lesbians pleaded for recognition of their “sacred worth” and an African delegate, speaking through an interpreter, compared homosexuality to bestiality.

The proposals defeated on Thursday would have acknowledged that diversity, but, some conservatives argued, at the cost of muddying traditional doctrines.

One proposal would have changed the Book of Discipline to say that gays and lesbians are “people of sacred worth” and that church members differ about “whether homosexual practices (are) contrary to the will of God.”

The “incompatible” phrase would have remained, but the Rev. Adam Hamilton, a pastor in Leawood, Kansas, argued that his proposal would “acknowledge our disagreement on a huge issue that is separating churches in North America today.”

That proposal was defeated by a tally of 54 – 46 percent.

“I see no reason why we should state (in the Book of Discipline) that we disagree,” said the Rev. Maxie Dunnam, former president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. “We disagree on almost every issue we consider.”

The delegates defeated another compromise proposal by an even wider margin: 61 to 39 percent. The resolution would have acknowledged a “limited understanding” of human sexuality and called on the church to “refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons and practices until the Spirit leads us to new insight.”

The Rev. Steve Wendy of Texas argued that the compromise would cause confusion and lead the church to “stumble in our witness.”

“If you look at our largest congregations, and crunch the numbers, they are all reaching young adults successfully,” Wendy said. “And, overwhelmingly, they teach and proclaim God’s truth without compromise.”

But Jennifer Ihlo, a lay delegate from the Baltimore/Washington Conference, argued in favor of the compromise. “I want to be clear that this is not an abstract issue. This is about people who are being harmed by the church and by the use of the `incompatibility’ language,” Ihlo said.

“I am a lesbian and a child of God and I strongly urge the body to support this compromise language so that gay youth … will recognize that the church loves them and God loves them and the violence and pain and suicide will stop.”

After the proposals were defeated on Thursday, gay rights activists flooded the assembly floor and disrupted the session by singing the hymn “What Does the Lord Require of You?”

Indiana Bishop Michael Coyner, chair of the morning session, told the protesters, “I think you’re actually hurting your point.” When the protesters refused to stop singing, Coyner closed the session, sent the delegates to an early lunch and threatened to bar protesters from the convention hall in the afternoon.

Church leaders and the protesters later worked out a compromise, according to United Methodist News Service. On Thursday afternoon, the delegates shifted their attention to clergy pension plans, leaving key votes on gay clergy and same-sex marriage to Friday, the last day of General Conference.

Mitt Romney may or may not become the first Mormon to move into the White House next year, but a new study shows that Mormonism is moving into more parts of the country than any other religious group, making it the fastest-growing faith in more than half of U.S. states.

Michael Patrick and Eduardo Martins, both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, observe Temple Square from an observation deck in Salt Lake City/Photo by Jerilee Bennett

The 2012 Religious Congregations and Membership Study, released Tuesday, shows that the mainline Protestants and Catholics who dominated the 20th century are literally losing ground to the rapid rise of Mormons and, increasingly, Muslims.

The study is conducted once every 10 years and can track Americans’ religious affiliation down to the county level, from the largest (Los Angeles County, where Mormons grew 55 percent while Catholics shrank by 7 percent) to the smallest (Loving County, Texas, which is home to 80 people and one nondenominational evangelical church).

Romney’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 2 million new adherents and new congregations in 295 counties where they didn’t exist a decade ago, making them the fastest-growing group in the U.S. Mormons were the fastest-growing group in 26 states, expanding beyond their historic home in Utah to the heart of the Bible Belt and as far away as Maine.

Muslims came in second, with growth of 1 million adherents in 197 new counties, to a total of about 2.6 million. Overall, non-Christian groups grew by 32 percent over the past decade.

“Mosques have multiplied at a growth rate of about 50 percent,” said Dale Jones, a researcher with the Church of the Nazarene who worked on the study as part of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

“They have more religious centers, and simply moving into the suburbs puts you closer to where a lot of your folks are living.” While other studies tally total membership, beliefs or worship attendance, the RCMS study counts the actual number of people who are affiliated with U.S. congregations — or, as Jones put it, the people who are “involved enough to the point where they know to count you.”

The study found that while upwards of 80 percent of Americans claim to be Christians, only about 49 percent are affiliated with a local congregation. And that, Jones said, should concern church leaders. “In some ways, our chickens have come home to roost,” Jones said.

“Churches have talked about needing to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – what you hear is, ‘I need a relationship, I need to be born again,’ but not, ‘I need to be involved in a congregation.’ Guess what? That’s where we are.”

Overall, the survey identified nearly 350,000 religious congregations in the United States, from Albanian Orthodox to Zoroastrian.

Those churches, temples and mosques are the spiritual home for 150.6 million Americans, and researchers say they were able to capture 90 percent of all U.S. congregations.

Like most surveys, the RCMS study relies mainly on self-reported data from churches and denominations.

Some, including several historically black churches, failed to submit information on new numbers. Researchers were able to reach only one-third of U.S. mosques and had to estimate the rest.

The survey did not track growing numbers of secular or religiously unaffiliated Americans – estimated at about 16 percent of the country, according to other studies – because they do not belong to a local congregation. Jan Shipps, a respected non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism who’s now retired from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said Mormons’ “astonishing” spread into new counties is likely due to church leaders’ decision to split large wards (congregations) into separate smaller wards on opposite sides of a county line.

“The way they organize themselves makes for more congregations,” she said. “They don’t have big huge congregations like the independent churches.”

The study also tracked the growth of nondenominational and independent evangelical churches, which combined represent the nation’s third-largest Christian group, at about 12.2 million adherents across 35,000 congregations.

Catholics, while losing about 5 percent of adherents in the past years, nonetheless remain the nation’s largest religious group, at about 59 million.

The Southern Baptist Convention came in second, at 19.8 million, but its 50,816 congregations made it the group with the most churches. The rapid growth among American Muslims likely has several explanations, researchers said: growth in the suburbs, an increased willingness by U.S. Muslims to stand and be counted, and more mosques being built to serve more worshippers.

Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, saw growth explode by a whopping 473 percent in and around Orlando’s Orange County, according to the RCMS study, and he thinks the growth is actually double the 10,000 new Muslims reported by the study.

He said Muslim growth has been fueled by a wave of post-9/11 converts, American-born children of immigrants having kids of their own, and jobs in the booming medical industry.

In central Florida, he said, Muslims are just following everyone else in search of “better weather, cheaper prices, cheaper homes.” “I doubt in the next decade we will grow as much,” he said

. “It’s like a new product when it’s first introduced, there’s lots of interest. But now we’re more of a known quantity and we’re not going to be opening as many new mosques as we were in the last decade.”

Find out how your county’s religious makeup has changed in the past 10 years here.

Map of Predominant Religious Groups Courtesy of 2012 US Religion Census

Map of Evangelicals (Blue) vs Mainline Protestants (Yellow) Courtesy of 2012 US Religion Census

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Under new rules announced on Wednesday, the Vatican will more closely oversee the operations of Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of 162 national Catholic charities. The decision comes after the Vatican last year vetoed the re-election of the organization’s then-secretary general, Lesley-Anne Knight, complaining of a lack of coordination with Vatican officials.

The new rules issued by the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, will require all Caritas Internationalis officials make a formal promise of fidelity to church teachings and leaders.

The organization is now under the supervision of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”, which oversees the Catholic Church’s charitable activities, while the pope is given the right to appoint three of its board members. Bishop Bernard Hebda of Gaylord, Mich., has been chosen as one of the Vatican-appointed board members.

From now on, all Caritas Internationalis statements – particularly “any text with doctrinal or moral content or orientations” – and activities will have to be authorized in advance by the Vatican, except in case of “grave humanitarian emergencies.”

“Cor Unum” will also appoint an ecclesiastical assistant tasked with promoting the “Catholic identity” of Caritas Internationalis, and the Vatican’s Secretariat of State will closely supervise the confederation’s contacts with foreign governments.

The new rules will not directly affect Catholic Relief Services, the official aid agency of the U.S. Catholic bishops. But Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the pontifical council, explained in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, that bishops could be “inspired” by the new rules to revise the statutes of national Catholic charities.

The Vatican move is part of a more general drive to promote Catholic identity in Catholic aid operations at all levels. Critics have complained that Catholic charities operate often like secular nongovernmental organizations and partner with groups that sometimes don’t share Catholic values, including the church’s opposition to birth control.

In a message addressed to the confederation’s general assembly last May, Pope Benedict XVI warned that without an explicit reference to God, aid work risked “falling prey to harmful ideologies.” He also warned that, as Caritas Internationalis shared the church’s mission, the Holy See was entitled to exercise oversight of its operations.

According to Caritas Internationalis secretary general, Michel Roy, the new rules should be seen as a step to “integrate” the organization’s operations within the Holy See and will reinforce Catholic advocacy on behalf of the poor, “because we will be able to speak in the name of the Church.”

NAIROBI, Kenya, April 30 (CDN) — A grenade explosion yesterday killed a 27-year-old university student at a church in Nairobi and injured 16 people, sources said.

Kelvin Walumba was killed after a man pretending to be a worshipper at God’s House of Miracles International Church in the Ngara area of Nairobi threw three grenades as the service was concluding; only one of the grenades exploded.

A security guard said the assailant, who after running out into the street fired three pistol shots into the air, appeared to be of Somali origin.

Islamic extremists from al Shabaab rebels in Somalia have embarked on a series of attacks in Kenya after the Kenyan military invaded Somali territory last fall in an attempt to quell al Shabaab violence at Kenyan tourist destinations.

Speculation that the attack stemmed from a land dispute appeared to be untrue, as the dispute with the church was resolved in court last year, a church leader told Compass.

Another church security guard said that the assailant who arrived at the service was easily noticed because he sat in an area usually reserved for the church music team.

“As the worship was going on, he looked uncomfortable and always looked down,” said the guard, whose name was withheld for security reasons. “He threw three hand grenades and only one exploded. He took off, and he fired in the air three gunshots.”

Church leaders said four members of the church are in critical condition: Leonida Mbogo, Julia Mumbi, Ezekiel Muthini and Shalom Koronge. Mbogo sustained serious injuries to her leg, which was broken.

Joshua Mulinge, the senior pastor of the 500-member church, which has four pastors, was traveling in Zambia at the time of the blast. The preacher for the day was pastor Josephine Mwangale, who sustained slight injuries.

A Sunday school teacher said one of her students, a boy identified only as Jessy, was receiving hospital treatment for injuries and is in stable condition.

A choir member from the church today told Compass said she had just come back to the site to see the aftermath of the attack.

“Last night I did not sleep,” she said.

Commissioner of Police Eric Kiraithe reportedly said that some worshippers tried to pursue the assailant but he managed to get away. Kalonzo Musyoka, the vice president of Kenya, reportedly condemned the attack, saying worship places must be respected and that such an action was unacceptable. He termed it an act of terrorism.

The director of the Criminal Investigations Department, Ndegwa Muhoro, reportedly said that investigations had begun.

The explosion comes a week after the U.S. Embassy in Kenya issued a possible terror attack warning. It also comes less than a month after similar explosion took place in Mtwapa, claiming one life and injuring more than 30.

(RNS) Evangelicals prefer Narnia, Catholics have a wanderlust for Wonderland, and mainline Protestants are split between hitching a ride to Hogwarts, Narnia or Neverland.

Ben Barnes, center, plays Prince Caspian in "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.'' From left, Georgie Henley, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell and Skandar Keynes play the four Pevensie children, who return to Narnia after 1,300 years. Photo courtesy Murray Close/Disney Enterprises and Walden Media.

Those are the results from a unique poll by the television show “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair magazine. The survey asked 1,000 Americans what fantasy land they’d most like to visit (Washington, D.C., excluded).

Evangelicals showed a clear preference for Narnia, the fantastical world of talking beasts entered through a enchanted wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ series “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

Lewis, an Anglican, topped the list for 28 percent of evangelicals. Both his fiction — commonly interpreted as Christian allegories — and also his nonfiction have become touchstones in contemporary evangelicalism.

Just 8 percent of evangelicals said they would like to visit Hogwarts, the school of witchcraft and wizardry from the Harry Potter series.

Alice’s Wonderland was many Catholics’ cup of tea, with 21 percent saying they’d like to take a trip down the rabbit hole. Peter Pan’s Neverland (18 percent), Hogwarts (18 percent) and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth (16 percent) weren’t far behind.

Mainline Protestants were similarly split between Neverland (19 percent), Narnia (18 percent) and Hogwarts (18 percent).

Among those listed as “other” religions, Hogwarts was the clear favorite (31 percent). And Middle Earth led the way for those who professed no religious affiliation (23 percent).

The survey, conducted in late 2010 and recently highlighted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, includes a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

(RNS) Opposition to gay marriage is significantly lower in 2012 compared to the previous two presidential campaigns, a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows.

For the first time, the level of strong support for gay marriage is equal to the level of strong opposition, researchers report. In the April 4-15 survey, 22 percent of Americans say they strongly favor permitting legal marriage for gays and lesbians; an identical percentage said they strongly oppose it.

In 2008, strong opposition was twice as high as support — 30 percent vs. 14 percent.

In 2004, when a host of anti-gay marriage ballot measures helped propel social conservatives to the polls, opposition was more than three times higher than support, 36 percent to 11 percent.

In comparison to the changes in views on gay marriage, not much has changed concerning support for legal abortion. In 2009, less than 50 percent of Americans favored legal abortion but that support rebounded to more than half of the U.S. population and has generally fit trends dating to 1995.

This time around, as in recent election cycles, voters say social issues — such as gay marriage and abortion — are not as important as the economy and jobs. While more than 80 percent of Americans cite the economy and jobs as top voting issues, far fewer rated abortion (39 percent) and gay marriage (28 percent) as very important.

The survey on gay marriage was based on interviews with 1,514 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

ISTANBUL, April 27 (CDN) — A judge in Upper Egypt has upheld a six-year prison sentence for a Coptic Christian wrongly convicted of “blasphemy” against Islam and inciting sectarian strife, his lawyer said.

The judge in Assuit on April 5 refused to strike down a Feb. 29 sentence delivered to Makarem Diab, 49, of the town of Abnoub in Assuit Province. The charges stem from an argument that Diab had in February with Abd Al Hameed, a fellow employee at Deer Al Gabrawy Prep School.

From the start, the charges against Diab were inflated, according to his lawyer, Ahmed Sayed Gebaly.

“I know Makarem well, because we grew up together, and I know he wouldn’t do that,” said Gebaly, a Muslim. “To be honest, he didn’t do anything wrong. If he did, I will have told him.”

Gebaly said he was surprised by how far Al Hameed took the accusations. “The whole thing was just an ordinary discussion,” he said.

Al Hameed told Diab, an administration worker, that Jesus had sex with at least 10 women who were “Mehram” or forbidden to Him under Islamic law (though Islam appeared more than six centuries after Jesus), according to Gebaly. Mehram status refers to forbidden marriage or sexual relations, such as those between immediate family members.
Diab countered Al Hameed’s claims – for which there is no historical record – by stating that Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, had more than four wives – a view commonly held by Islamic scholars, though disputes arise over whether he had more than four wives over the course of his life or at one time.

For reasons that are not publicly known, Al Hameed waited for 11 days to report his allegations against Diab to a misdemeanor court. Police arrested Diab and held him for four days before he was presented to a judge. On Feb. 29, in a 10-minute court hearing with no defense attorney present, the judge sentenced Diab to six years in prison for “insulting the prophet” and “provoking students.”

Diab received an appeal hearing on March 16, but Al Hameed instigated a massive riot by a large throng of Muslim attorneys outside the courthouse, according to Gebaly. The lawyers became so enraged that they burst into the courtroom during the hearing and assaulted Diab’s attorneys. They also blocked access to the courtroom.
The judge upheld the six-year sentence but immediately scheduled an appeal hearing. Gebaly said the judge upheld the sentence out of fear.

Gebaly was outside the courthouse getting legal papers for the case when the attack happened.

“Soon after that, I was called by these [Diab’s] lawyers, and they told me that they were beaten up inside the court and in front of the judge, so I went back to sort out the problem, and I was shocked when the judge kept the six-year sentence,” he said.

Most of the lawyers defending Diab were Muslims, he added.

Gebaly went to the next hearing on April 5; once again, the judge’s ruling surprised him.

“We were expecting that he would be released with no charges, but the law was used in the wrong way, and now we are trying to appeal again, if his appeal gets accepted,” Gebaly said.

Diab remained in Assuit General Prison awaiting appeal. Gebaly said that he is being treated as well as one can be while in prison.

The action against Diab is yet another example of how members of the Muslim majority in Egypt are increasingly using religious-based laws to persecute Christians or even Muslims who don’t conform to a strict interpretation to Sunni Islam.

On April 4, a judge sentenced Gamal Abdou Massoud, 17, a Coptic Christian, to three years in prison for allegedly insulting Islam. Massoud denied the charges, but the court claimed that he posted cartoons on his Facebook account that mocked the Islamic religion and Muhammad. The court also claimed that he distributed the pictures to other students. His lawyers plan to appeal the sentence.

On March 3, a Cairo court dismissed a case against Naguib Sawaris, a Copt and telecommunications tycoon, who was accused of insulting Islam for placing a cartoon of Minnie Mouse in a veil on his Facebook site as a satirical comment on what Egypt would look like if Islamists gained political power in the country.

On Tuesday (April 24), a Cairo court upheld a conviction against actor Adel Imam for blaspheming Islam but later in the week struck down a separate conviction of the same charge. Imam, arguably the best-known actor in the Arabic-speaking world, ran afoul of a lawyer with connections to the Salafi movement for his satirical roles about extremism.

The sentence carries three months in jail and a fine or 1,000 Egyptian pounds (US$165). Imam’s lawyers plan to appeal the decision.

Separatist Islamist rebels released a Swiss Christian woman kidnapped by a private militia on April 15 amid political turmoil in Timbuktu, Mali, according to a Swiss foreign ministry statement.

Armed members of the militant Islamic group Ansar Dine handed Beatrice Stockly to Swiss diplomats on Tuesday (April 24), Reuters reported.

Before rebels captured Timbuktu on April 1, most Westerners had reportedly left due to fears of being kidnapped and passed on to Al-Qaeda cells. The terrorist group’s North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has been holding Westerners for millions of dollars in ransom payments from previous kidnappings in recent years.

Stockly, a Christian social worker in her 40s, had refused to leave Timbuktu, 705 kilometers (439 miles) northeast of the capital, when it fell to Tuareg rebels and Islamist extremists. She was in good health “considering the circumstances,” according to the Swiss foreign ministry statement.

The Tuareg are a nomadic Berber people and are the main indigenous inhabitants of interior Sahara in northern Africa.

Ansar Dine militants took custody of Stockly after a shootout with an unidentified private militia that had seized her and wanted to sell her to AQIM. Ansar Dine, which has imposed sharia (Islamic law) in areas under its control in the north, then handed Stockly to the Swiss government without demanding a ransom, according to Agence France-Presse. Stockly is reportedly safe in Burkina Faso.

Following an army coup on March 22 and political chaos that ensued, Tuareg separatists and Islamist rebels captured the country’s vast desert north, calling it the Republic of Azawad. The devastation amid the conflict has driven nearly 260,000 Malians living in the northern regions of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu to seek safety in the south and surrounding countries, according to sources.

The International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands in an online statement on Tuesday (April 24), said it may launch investigations into crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Mali, including killings, abductions, rapes and conscription of children.

Among those who fled the north are hundreds of Christians, most of whom have found shelter in the capital, Bamako, in southern Mali. Local sources estimate about 300 Christians have fled to Bamako. Local churches are working together to care for them, but an area Christian told Compass by phone that the Christians had to leave their homes and properties and are “empty-handed.”

“There have been difficulties for Christians in the north,” said the source, a Malian. “All of them have left that region for the south. By the grace of God, there were no deaths. Everyone is safe. But it is difficult for those who left their homes. They have many needs. We don’t know if the situation will continue, but we are hoping for the re-establishment of peace.”

The Christian said he had not heard of any Christian being beheaded.

The source requested anonymity, pointing out that various extremist Islamic groups are active in the area and surrounding countries. He said that revealing his name would lead to harassment of churches with which he is affiliated, especially at a time when the government’s power is substantially weakened.

He asked for prayer for all displaced Malians and for peace in the north.

“We don’t want violence,” he said. “We want a spirit of well-being between all the people groups of Mali… [pray] that a government will be put in place and take things in their hands in good governance.”

On Wednesday, leaders appointed after the military junta agreed to stand down finally formed a transitional government that includes three army representatives, according to Al Jazeera. One of the new government’s greatest challenges will be to resolve the crisis in the north.

(RNS) For two years of her life, Louise Allison says she looked and felt like trash. She was a straggly-haired teenager sold for sex on Dallas streets. Her traffickers often drugged her and dumped her in a park to await customers.

Storm Ervin (below) places her handprint on the canvas freedom banner at the Freedom Movement booth on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is part of a nationwide effort on university campuses to end human trafficking.

Allison is one of millions of people who have been trafficked—or sold into slavery—for underage sex or forced labor. Now she directs Partners Against Trafficking Humans, a Little Rock, Ark.-based Christian nonprofit that provides safe housing for human trafficking survivors.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a Little Rock audience earlier this week (April 25, 2012) that the Justice Department would have zero tolerance for forced labor and underage prostitution—problems that plague the United States as well as developing nations.

The cause of human trafficking has gained traction within the faith community, especially among college students who are working across faith lines toward a goal of eradicating the bonds that enslave an estimated 27 million people.

Across the United States, dozens of colleges and high schools planned spring or fall events to bring attention to the problem of human trafficking.

Many of these events, including a Freedom Movement Week held April 23-27, were inspired by Passion 2012 earlier this year. Passion 2012, a 42,000-student worship conference in Atlanta last January, centered on human trafficking and raised more than $3.3 million from the mostly student attendees to support nonprofits that fight human trafficking.

Claude d’Estree, who directs the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Denver, has watched a growing number of faith-based groups take up this issue since he began human trafficking work in 1998. D’Estree noted the importance of religious leaders in U.S. fights over slavery 150 years ago.

“It’s not surprising to me that religious groups got involved again,” d’Estree said.

Texas A&M junior John Amini, 21, prayed about how to spend Spring semester at Texas A&M while attending the Passion 2012 conference. After hearing speakers on human trafficking, he decided to unite college campuses in a national battle against it.

Amini and friends soon had more than 30 U.S. college campus partners. In addition to the five universities participating in Freedom Movement Week this month (April 2012), other schools are creating programs for fall and raising money.

At Texas A&M, students created an anti-slavery benefit album with sales benefiting anti-trafficking nonprofits Tiny Hands International and Unlikely Heroes. Amini said the Texas A&M chapter hopes to raise $25,000, with about $6,000 raised so far.

Amini said that although Freedom Movement is driven by Christian values, non-Christians are welcome. On other campuses, Jewish and Muslim student-centered groups are joining the fight against human trafficking.

Sophomore Jane Carter (right) paints Zane Vandnais’ (left) hand green for the hand-printing event at the Freedom Movement booth in Lowry Mall on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is an organization on campuses across the U.S. that raises awareness to prevent human trafficking.

Seattle-based Robert Beiser, who directs social justice programs at the University of Washington Hillel, said Jewish students identify with the retelling of the Biblical story of Moses leading slaves out of Egypt by groups fighting human trafficking.

“Students were really getting energized about the idea that they could use our cultural identity as Jews and Passover as a starting point to work on this issue,” Beiser said. University of Washington students helped launch the national Freedom Shabbat in collaboration with Not for Sale, a nonprofit group.

Students reached out through social media and other means to get more than 100 synagogues and other Jewish communities active in Freedom Shabbat, usually held around Passover.  The group also works to encourage grocery stores to carry fair-trade gelt—the chocolate coins given during Hanukkah—in order to guarantee that no slaves helped produce the cocoa.

Not for Sale working most closely with the Jewish community is looking for Muslim leaders to build a Freedom Salat movement for Muslim students and groups.

Kevin Austin, who manages Not for Sale’s faith outreach, said seven Muslim communities have pledged to participate once Freedom Salat is fully launched.

Trafficking Graphic2