Lahore, Pakistan, Aug 16, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The “Pastoral Letter on Family Life” published by the Pakistani bishops conference will be presented by Mgr. Lawrence John Saldanha, Archbishop of Lahore, and Mgr. Anthony Lobo, Bishop of Islamabad – Rawalpindi, at the 8th Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) that opens today in Daejeon, South Korea. They will join the other 90 other Asian bishops to discuss “The Asian Family: towards a Culture of Life.”
“It is a great opportunity for bishops from across Asia to interact with one another. It is an experience that cannot but enrich and push us to work and cooperate more closely,” Mgr. Saldanha told AsiaNews yesterday evening.
“We shall submit to the FABC Assembly the ‘Pastoral Letter on Family Life’ we released back at Easter, and shall speak about the discriminatory laws Christians endure in Pakistan,” he said.
Discrimination against Christians in Pakistan is commonplace and the state’s ‘blasphemy laws’ do nothing to discourage it.