Black township priest expelled
Another priest has been forced to leave South Africa. Fr Dick O'Riordan, who has been working in the black township of Guguletu, near Cape Town, has been refused a permanent residence permit and will have to leave the country by next Friday. During the last year he was fined and given a suspended prison sentence for "producing, distributing and possessing banned pamphlets," and fined again for attending a memorial service for those killed in the Nyanga Township riots.
Blasphemy law debate in House of Lords
It ',hops are expected to play a leading role in the forthcoming debate in the House of Lords over the blasphemy law. A Bill to abolish the law has been introduced by Lord Willis and is due to come up for second reading on February 23.
The present law has been used only once in the last 70 years. Thai was last July when the magazine Gay News was fined 11,000 and Denis Lemon, its editor. given a suspended prison sentence of nine months and fined 1500.
Spanish missionary joins guerrillas
A Spanish missionary working in Nicaragua has joined a guerrilla movement which aims to overthrow the "corruption and merciless repression" of the government led by General Somoza.
Fr Gaspar Garcia-Laviana, a naturalised Nicaraguan, claimed that the war waged by the guerrillas represented a "fight against a state of things which is hateful to the Lord our God."