Three Americans serving with New Tribes Mission (NTM) who were abducted January 31 from the Kuna Indian tribe village of Pucuro in Panama (CT, Mar. 8, 1993, p. 63) remain missing, with the missionary agency not knowing if they are still alive.
“We are overdue for positive proof they are alive,” says Dave Zelenek, spokesman for the Sanford, Florida-based NTM. The last sign was an April 8 audio recording of the men. Colombian guerrillas suspected of kidnapping the trio have demanded $5 million for their release, first from NTM, then from the wives, who returned to the United States in February.
“There isn’t that kind of money, and there won’t be,” Zelenek says. “They are a little slow to comprehend that we can’t pay it. To pay would place missions in jeopardy around the world.”
The men are being held in the dense, mountainous jungle along the Colombia-Panama border.
Kidnappers initially communicated via two-way radio, but since May, sporadic negotiations have involved Panamanian Indian couriers carrying messages into the jungle.
NEW ENCYCLICAL
Pope Fires Warning Shot
In an encyclical six years in the making, Pope John Paul II reaffirms moral truth and calls upon church leaders to resist the tide of relativism that has swept through the church in the nearly three decades since the Second Vatican Council.
The release of Veritatis Splendor in October is a shot across the bow of Catholic clergy and teachers who have challenged the Vatican’s authority on issues ranging from abortion to homosexual activity.
Though the encyclical had been expected to be a diatribe against homosexuality, abortion, and contraception, the final document contains little about such subjects, reserving most of its space and energy for an argument in favor of truth, against moral relativism, and for papal authority.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
Colleen Green has filed a $1 million negligence and fraud lawsuit against Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and the Christian College Coalition because she contracted a skin disease while on a two-week, school-sponsored service program in Costa Rica. Green alleges she developed cutaneous leishmaniasis last year when she was bitten by disease-carrying bugs in a Bribri Indian jungle village.
• The International Lutheran Council was formed in a September meeting in Antigua, Guatemala, by conservative leaders from 25 Lutheran bodies representing 18 countries. A guiding document devised by the organization says it will protect historic Lutheran confessions and a “high” view of Scripture from perceived assaults of liberalism. Denominational members, such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, will share information and study theological questions.
• Business is booming for those offering an electronic link to God. Bezek, Israel’s state-run telephone company, instituted a prayer line with a newspaper, the Jerusalem Christian Review (CT, Oct. 4, 1993, p. 62). In September, a second fax line was added (011-972-261-2222) for those wanting to leave notes at Jerusalem’s Western Wall but who are unable to make the trip there. The fax line has been averaging 70 messages daily. Messengers copy the faxes and leave them in crannies of the wall.
• Niall MacMenamin, a 23-year-old Irish Catholic missionary with Volunteer Missionary Movement, was shot to death August 24 in Entasekera, Kenya, while a thief who stole his mission motorcycle escaped.
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