JAKARTA, Dec 24 (AFP) - Jakarta's Roman Catholic Cathedral Thursday scrapped its midnight Christmas Mass because of security fears after a recent rash of violence targetting Indonesia's minority Christian population, an official at the embassy of the Holy See said.
"There is still a 7:30 pm Mass tonight ... but with the recent political situation there are many who would be afraid to leave home at so late at night," the official told AFP.
She added that the traditional early morning Christmas morning Mass would be held as usual.
"There will be no midnight mass this year, the latest will start at 8:00 pm and last until about 10:00 pm," an official at the St. Kristoforus Catholic church in Jelambar, a predominantly ethnic Chinese residential area in West Jakarta, told AFP.
He declined to give a reason, but when asked whether the decision not to hold the midnight mass which the church held last year had something to do with security, he replied: "Yes."
Some churchgoers said their churches too, including Protestant ones, would hold Christmas Eve services earlier in the evening because of the same concerns.
Many churches were hiring security guards as a precaution, they said.
On November 22 at least 13 Christians were killed by mobs of Moslem youths who attacked and burned a church and a gambling hall following unfounded rumors that a mosque had been burned.
The rioting spread and 21 other churches and church schools in the capital were burned or damaged. The November 22 incident was followed by sporadic attacks in outer provinces on both mosques and churches despite a plea by President B.J. Habibie to respect "all houses of worship."
Minority ethnic Chinese and Christians have often been the target of violence during times of political or economic crisis in Indonesia.
Indonesia is the world's largest Moslem-populated nation with over 90 percent of its 202 million people following Islam.
The chairman of the Christian Protestant's Indonesian Church Community (PGI), Sularso Sopater, was quoted by the Jakarta Post Thursday as saying a recent congress of the Council of World Churches in Harare rated Indonesia among the worst in the world in terms of intolerance and persecution.
The PGI said 516 churches have been attacked in Indonesia in the past 32 years, 415 of them in the past two years.
"The last figure includes 45 churches damaged during the 180 days of President B.J. Habibie's term over the past sevent months," said Karel Phil Erari of the PGI research and development division.
In the latest incident against churches, mobs attacked three churches and a Roman catholic school in Bekasi some 18 kilometres (12 miles) east of here last weekend.