Christians announce special global prayer for Nepal
(April 08, 2010) Christian leaders in Nepal have called for a special period of
prayers, as the country gears itself to promulgate a new constitution and guarantee
the rights of religious minorities. Several Protestant pastors recently announced
40 days of global prayer for Nepal to be held April 14-May 23. The project is to pray
for the country’s national constitution to be drafted by late May. Flyers from a group
calling itself the Christian Advisory Committee for the New Constitution, have also
been distributed, asking people to gather in Kathmandu’s open-air auditorium at noon
on April 20. The leaflets ask people to urge all 25 political parties that form the
national parliament to guarantee a secular Nepal, that citizens are allowed to practice
any religion freely and that human rights are upheld. Father Silas Bogati, director
of Caritas Nepal, told UCA News on April 5 that he had attended a “high-level meeting”
of Christian pastors. He said “There is now a strong feeling that we should try to
have Christian representatives in the new national parliament, and there should be
a well represented Christian forum to put forward to the government problems facing
Christians,” About 80 percent of Nepal´s 28.5 million people are Hindus. Buddhists
form the next largest religious community. According to the Nepal Catholic Directory
2008-09, there are a total of 1.5 million Christians, 7,500 of them Catholics. Nepal’s
lawmakers have until May 28 to complete a new constitution after parliament in 2006
approved measures that converted Nepal, until then the world’s only Hindu nation,
into a secular state.