On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany died. She starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of Würzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished on the contrary, Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Würzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch burnings). This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80] (107)
Akha Village Harvest Accounts from local residents claim that the American Baptist Paul Lewis sterilized more than 20,000 Akha Hill Tribe women in Burma's Eastern Shan State alone. This was done secretly, and blood was stolen from these women for resale, taken during the sterilization procedure. More than 3,000 of the women died. [25] (108)
In Akha traditional culture, five people serve as the government in one village. This multiperson leadership system in villages was eliminated and replaced by single pastors who rule the villages with an iron fist, allowing no dissent or return to the traditional ways. These changes have sewn havoc amongst the locals. (108)
Akha Traditional Ladies "There would be no traditional practices, songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at Christmas. The woman who practices the traditional knowledge and medicine for the village was stopped. She was told that it was evil and that she could no longer treat people's illnesses. In the name of their religious beliefs, and quite in contradiction with the spirit of those beliefs, the missionaries are eradicating Akha culture in village after village. [26] (108)
In 1987, a defrocked priest named Fidel who labored among Mayan refugees, and who was eventually killed by a landowner's gunman in Chiapas, Mexico, told me that, like him, I would one day have to choose between Christ and the church; and that in that choice, whenever I was confused, I should simply go to the poorest child and ask her what I should do.(115).
December 20, 1995: Another eyewitness to murders in United Church Indian schools goes public: Archie Frank from Ahousaht describes Rev. Alfred Caldwell beating a child, Albert Gray, to death. The RCMP refuses to investigate either incident.(115)
Rwanda Genocide - Have you seen the Rwanda movie? Do you know that a substantial number of priests, nuns and even Bishops were indicted and a great many were convicted (by war crimes tribunals) for being directly responsible for the senseless slaughter of thousands of innocent Tutsis? Many clergy turned over those who had taken shelter in their churches to the machetes of the Hutu militia. The hatred and division between the Hutus and Tutsis was propagated by the missionaries as favorable for their objectives of conversion to Christianity. (46)
One priest even burned down his own church to kill hundreds of Tutsis who had taken sanctuary there. Two priests were sentenced to death in 1998 for their roles in this genocide and two Benedictine nuns who supplied gasoline for the burning of Tutsi civilians sheltered in their church fled to Belgium where they were later convicted of complicity to murder. (46)
Rwanda children wounded" Sister Maria Kisito, who received 12 years, and her Mother Superior, Sister Gertrude, who received 15 years, were convicted of aiding in the slaughter of some 7,000 people who sought refuge at their convent in southern Rwanda. Prosecutors argued that they called in Hutu militiamen to drive people out of the convent knowing they would be killed, and later provided gasoline that militiamen used to set fire to a garage in which about 500 Tutsis had taken refuge." (Washington Post, June 9, 2001)[6] (109)