A righteous Path: Mass Exorcisms Performed in Ethiopia – in Pictures

British photographer Robert Waddingham journeyed to Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley to a church near Arba Minch where Orthodox priests regularly carry out mass exorcisms using holy water. Many of those attending the ceremony come to be blessed, but there are also those seeking cures for physical ailments. Please note some images contain nudity

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He Claims God Appeared in a Dream and Gave Him a Major Task

The Result Will Be a 140-Foot ‘Bulletproof’ Cross in the Middle of an Unlikely Place

Pakistani businessman Parvez Henry Gill says he was sleeping when God crashed into one of his dreams and gave him a job: find a way to protect Christians in Pakistan from violence and abuse. “I want you to do something different,” God told him. 

That was four years ago, and Gill, a lifelong devout Christian, struggled for months with how to respond. Eventually, after more restless nights and more prayers, he awoke one morning with his answer: He would build one of the world’s largest crosses in one of the world’s most unlikely places.

“I said, ‘I am going to build a big cross, higher than any in the world, in a Muslim country,’ ” said Gill, 58. “It will be a symbol of God, and everybody who sees this will be worry-free.”

Now, in this overwhelmingly Muslim country, in the heart of a city where Islamist extremists control pockets of some neighborhoods, the 14-story cross is nearly complete.

It is being built at the entrance to Karachi’s largest Christian cemetery, towering over thousands of tombstones that are often vandalized. Once his cross looms over such acts of disrespect, Gill said, he hopes it can convince the members of Pakistan’s persecuted Christian minority that someday their lives will get better.

“I want Christian people to see it and decide to stay here,” said Gill, who started the project about a year ago.

The cross, in southern Karachi, is 140 feet tall — higher than most office buildings in downtown Washington — and includes a 42-foot crosspiece. It isn’t the world’s tallest; that distinction is claimed by the Great Cross in St. Augustine, Fla., which is about 208 feet tall, although the Millennium Cross in Macedonia is said to tower 217 feet above ground. Crosses approaching 200 feet also have been constructed in Illinois, Louisiana and Texas.

But Gill says his cross at the Gora Qabristan Cemetery, which dates to the British colonial era, will be the largest in Asia.

The structure certainly will stand out in Pakistan, where Muslims account for more than 90 percent of the population. Christians make up just 1.5 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million people, according to the country’s last census. Christian leaders, who accuse the government of a deliberate undercount, say a more accurate figure is about 5.5 percent.

Whatever the number, Christians have been fleeing Pakistan in droves in recent years amid a wave of horrific attacks against them.

In 2013, more than 100 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar. In November, a mob burned alive a Christian couple in a brick oven after the two were wrongly accused of burning a Koran. In March, suicide bombers killed some 15 people at two church services in Lahore. Last month, also in Lahore, a 14-year-old Christian boy was attacked and set on fire, according to local media reports.

Christians are also often targets of Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy law. The law forbids insults of any form — even by “innuendo” — against the Muslim prophet Muhammad and makes the crime punishable by death.

The challenges facing Christians in Pakistan, many of whom live in slums and are relegated to working menial jobs, are particularly acute in rural areas. That has driven more of them to seek security and support in Karachi, said Bishop Sadiq Daniel, the leader of the Church of Pakistan in surrounding Sindh province. About 1 million of Karachi’s estimated 22 million inhabitants are Christian, the Protestant leader said.

But Gill said that “every few weeks” he hears from Christians who plan to move out of Karachi because of threats. The signs of that abuse are obvious at the cemetery.

Although thousands of headstones have been neatly aligned over the past 150 years, a settlement has encroached on the cemetery, covering dozens of graves. Its residents toss garbage into the graveyard, and crosses and statues are frequently desecrated.

“Look, someone just came and broke this statue of the Virgin Mary,” Gill said recently, as he bent over a shattered statue marking the grave of someone who died in 1959.

He said he hopes the cross encourages more Christians to remain in Pakistan, perhaps even achieving the same success that his family found.

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My Thought: I too had similar dreams sometime ago: I felt like I was called to put up the symbol of God’s sacrifice – The Holy Cross on top of the Entoto Mountains in Addis Abeba. What a great dream! A huge Cross could have a very positive impact on the daily life of Addiseans – it could also be the tallest Cross in the world. May The Lord help me to carry out this wonderful task!

– “Jesus saved me”: Teen dead for 20 minutes claims he saw Christ perform a miracle

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