by our Rome correspondent CHURCH authorities have removed the editor of a missionary magazine which alleged earlier this year that the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions was supporting a luxury holiday resort project in the heart of the threatened Amazon rainforest.
Mission Today (Missione Oggi) had claimed that the Institute ceded an agrarian training school for indigenous
Indians to the lay religious organisation Communion and Liberation, which intended to transform the site into a tourist complex.
Editor for the past year, Fr Pier Lupi, a 43-year-old former missionary in Bangaldesh, was told in a letter of the change in editorship and invited to remain on the editorial staff if he wished.
He resigned, along with the lay journalistic staff in protest, and now expects to be posted back to Bangladesh. Fr Lupi's predecessor was also "removed" from the magazine after ten years for his leftist political activities in Italy.
"I can't deny feeling bitter about this decision", Fr Lup said, adding that he believed the magazine had, however, managed to force a Communion and Liberation re-think on plans for an Amazon resort.
It is not known how church authorities will react to the protest resignations of the editorial staff.