The Protestant Church in China has printed 2 crore Bibles. It was the Amity Printing Company that began the printing in 1987. In 1995 the company printed one million and in 1997, 1.7 crore Bibles in China. Freedom of religion is slightly better there now.
 
 

The Jordan government has decided to have the place where Jesus received Baptism from John the Baptist, renovated and to make it one of the country’s superb pilgrimage centres. The plan is to remove the land mines from the shores of the Jordan and to plant a national garden in that place. Till the peace treaty was signed in 1994, the Jordan river bank was a war zone. The river bank in the hands of the Israelites is still under the control of the army. Only thrice during the year do pilgrims have access here.
 
 

A group of Catholic scholars have chosen Martin Luther as the most influential non-catholic, the world has seen from the time Christianity began. Luther, who initiated Protestantism, was chosen unanimously. The scholars opined that Luther, even when he began the reformation, he wished to remain a Catholic. A great thinker of the middle ages, a veteran interpreter of the Bible, a reformer who questioned the evils in the Church, a guide who gave importance to the Gospel in the life of faith - all these were the considerations that influenced the choice of Luther by the scholars of the Catholic theology colleges in America. Besides Luther, the medical missionary Albert Schweitzer, Deitrich Bonhoffeur, Emmanuel Kant, Frederick Schler Mahar and Rev Billy Graham have been included in this group.
 
 

Though 84 of the 139 attacks that took place in 1998, were on Christians, accounts show there is a great rush for seats in Catholic Management schools there. In Agwa where the school was destroyed on Christmas night, for 60 seats there are more than 400 applications-so said Sr Carmel De borjug, Principal and Superior. Only 100 of the 800 students are Christians here.
 
 

War, hatred, suffering are all the result of man’s sin and God should not be blamed for them said Pope John Paul II to the youth who visited him. When adversity overtakes us, we have the tendency to ask, "Where is God’s love?" But God has given perfect freedom to man to take decisions. If people decide to harm one another and to go to war, suffering is inevitable. God should not be blamed for it.

Sin is not a hazy hypothesis. We can very well assess its final result. Quarrels arise from evil. It is because men do not live according to God’s plan. The Pope reminded that the means of conquering evil was to grow in love of God the Father.