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November 2009
“Given the seriousness of the climate crisis, the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is of the utmost importance and urgency: the planet has just experienced the 10 hottest years on record.”
Japanese weathermen predict that global warming will spawn ‘supertyphoons’ in the second half of this century that will hit coastal Japan, causing unprecedented damages. However, typhoons and tropical storms have already sown death and destruction in the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Vietnam.
Benedict XVI says that neither the poor nor future generations should pay the price for current waste of shared resources, and he urged governments to take responsibility for the environment. The Pope gave this exhortation in a video message taken from a general audience by which he addressed the U.N. summit on climate change. The meeting was a lead-up to this December’s event in Copenhagen.
Agriculture is in danger of being ignored in any final deal made would be made at the key climate talks in Copenhagen in December, says a top negotiator. Michael Zammit-Cutajar, who chairs the working group on financing for adaptation measures in developing countries, said agriculture was “flagged” in the working text but would probably not get more of a mention than that.
Christians are tempted to flee Lebanon as the country becomes increasingly “Islamized,” according to the founder of the Center for Arab Christian Research and Documentation (CEDRAC). One-third of the nation’s Christian population has left since the beginning of the 1975-90 civil war, and a recent surge in emigration means Christians now make up just 34% of Lebanon’s population, Father Samir Khalil, a Jesuit teacher at Beirut’s St. Joseph University’s CEDRAC department, told Vatican Radio.
In an era marked by “growing” conflicts in “our beloved land,” as in “many parts of the world,” today, more than ever, there is a need to promote the “powerful message of non-violence” or “ Ahimsa, as the Father of the nation called it.” These were the words of Msgr. Thomas Menamparampil, Archbishop of Guwahati, to mark the 140th year of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, which is also International Day of Non-violence.
“The priest and the pastoral ministry in the digital world: new media at the service of the Word” is the theme chosen by Benedict XVI for the 44th World Day for Social Communications (that will be celebrated on the Sunday before Pentecost, which in 2010 falls on May 16). Commenting on the theme chosen by the Pope, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications said “the main task of the priest is to proclaim the Word of God made flesh, man and history, thus becoming a sign of the communion that God makes with man. The effectiveness of this ministry then requires that the priest lives an intimate relationship with God, rooted in a deep love and deep knowledge of scripture, written ‘witness’ of the Word of God.”
A .45 caliber pistol is tucked into the waistband of a tricycle driver as he speeds along a desolate stretch of highway that cuts through a Muslim rebel stronghold in the southern Philippine town of Datu Piang in Mindanao. “I can get attacked by bandits, rebels or my enemies, and my gun spells the difference between life and death,” he explains.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children is booming in Southeast Asia, with governments failing to do enough to protect young people. “The recent economic downturn is set to drive more vulnerable children and young people to be exploited by the global sex trade,” said Carmen Madrinan, executive director of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT). “The indifference that sustains the criminality, greed and perverse demands of adults for sex with children and young people needs to end.”
There were heroes that sacrificed their own lives while saving the weak and helpless during the height of the devastating tropical storm that brought rampaging flood waters cascading through Manila, sweeping all before them. A construction worker, Muelmar Magallanes, 18, leapt again and again into the raging torrent and saved over 30 women and children until he was too exhausted to fight the current as he was saving a baby girl. He was swept away to his death. A judge, Ralph Lee, 49, of Quezon City took his jet ski and later with two rubber boats rescued over 100 people in danger of being drowned by the rising waters. Hundreds of ordinary people took great risks as they carried their neighbors to safety. Thousands spent days and nights on their rooftops terrified as the water kept rising.
The Arctic is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the results of the melting ice in the “Earth’s fridge” will be catastrophic to the planet. The data from this summer’s “defrosting” came just in time as a warning to the leaders
who will meet next December in Copenhagen to discuss an agreement to curb greenhouse gases. A debate that will affect all humanity.
Published in July, Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth), Benedict XVI’s first social encyclical, was widely acclaimed by its deep insight on a world affected by a global recession and still ruled by a soulless system that deprives millions from their fundamental rights. Four months have passed, and it is time for an accurate reflection over its obvious strengths and its not so obvious omissions. Because humankind is facing one of the most critical periods in history, marked not only by an almost unprecedented economic and financial crisis, but also by an ecological mayhem that can endanger the future of life on Earth.
In 1995, fifty-one of the largest one-hundred economies in the world were corporations. The combined sales of the top Japanese corporations alone were almost equivalent to the combined Gross Domestic Product of all South America.
Fr. Vincenzo Bordo, a missionary who manages a soup kitchen and three Family-Houses for boys in Seongnam (close to Seoul, South Korea’s capital), is quite happy with the kind of life he has been leading for twenty years. It is his daily routine that fills him with joy: to beg out of love; to bow in front of the poor; to extend a caress to the boys before sending them to bed; to praise the Lord before falling asleep. Amid the daily endeavors, these simple gestures give him serenity.
He thought that the impact of the bullets that reduced to shreds the right side of his body was the only one that he had to bear but, soon, Fr. Fulvio Cristoforetti was faced by another – an unexpected shock that changed his life, AIDS. This is the extraordinary adventure of a Comboni missionary in Uganda, Africa.
“You will find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden. Untie it…”
(Read Mark 11:1-11)
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