Category: World Touch

Catholic Community Grows In Hope

The feast of Pentecost, 23 May 2010, “was a special feast for the mission,” says Fr. Daniele Giolitti. Six local women were received into the Church with the administration of the Sacraments. “Since we arrived in Mongolia in 2003, these are practically the first visible fruits of our presence as evangelizers in this part of the world.” “We wish to offer thanks to the Lord” – the missionary continues – “for these six new sisters in Christ who have made such a radical decision, if we think of the context in which they are prepared to live the Christian message which is so new for the people here.” The baptized are: Battogoo (Lucia), the youngest (23); Perlimaa (Rita) and Diimaa (Elisabetta), two sisters belonging to a large family; Narantuya (Caterina) and Otgonbayr (Maddalena), married with children; and Deejit (Anna). Explains Fr. Giolitti: “We accompanied them along a two-year path as they discovered the faith and then prepared them to receive the Sacraments. In these two years, they shared with us some aspects of daily family life, poverty and hardship.” On 19 September 2006, a small group of missionary priests and missionary Sisters of the Consolata Order took up residence in Arvaiheer after a long and arduous process which began officially in the summer of 2005, to obtain the necessary recognition in a region where the Catholic Church had never been present. At last, at the beginning of 2007, the local government granted the missionaries a permit for religious activity in the region of Uvurkhangai. This was the start of the new mission which has just borne its first fruits. The Catholic community in Mongolia has a bishop and three parishes with almost 200 Mongolian born Catholics; a good number of catechumens preparing to be received into the Church; many groups for apostolate; well-frequented pastoral structures, including a number of kindergartens, a polytechnic school, homes for street children, for the disabled, for unmarried mothers. Missionary activity is entrusted to some 50 missionaries and Religious.

www.fides.org

Religious Freedom, The Path To Peace

Anything which is opposed to the dignity of the human person is opposed to the search for the truth, and can never be regarded as religious freedom, the message says. And continues: “Today, there are many areas of the world in which forms of restrictions and limitations to religious freedom persist, both where communities of believers are a minority, and where communities of believers are not a minority, and where more sophisticated forms of discrimination and marginalization exist, on the cultural level and in the spheres of public, civil and political participation.” In his address to the Assembly of the United Nations on 18 April 2008, Benedict XVI stated: “It is inconceivable that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves – their faith – in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one’s rights. The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature.”

www.fides.org

Climate Change And Extreme Weather

Further east, 127 people died and almost 2,000 were reported missing on August 8 after mudslides in north-western China. At least one village in Gansu province was buried entirely in mud forcing 45,000 people to evacuate. One half of Zhouqu County was submerged by flood waters which forced 50,000 to flee their homes. The flood waters swept away cars, trucks and even houses. According to figures issued by the Chinese government, the number of people who have died in flooding in the first seven months of 2010 stood at more than 2,000. The number of people forced out of their homes by the recent flooding has reached 12 million. Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic have also been hit by extreme weather events. On August 7, 2010, torrential rain caused rivers to burst their banks in south western Poland, submerging towns and causing at least 3 fatalities. Further east in Russia, the problem is not excessive rain or floods, but the opposite, a prolonged heatwave with temperatures at record levels of 38 degrees Celsius. These have led to numerous forest and peat fires right across the country. A government minister, Sergei Shoigi, told the media that there were more than 550 fires, covering 17,000 hectares, burning across Russia. As a consequence, Moscow and its many landmarks, such as the Kremlin, have been shrouded in a toxic smog for weeks. Further south, there are fears that the fires could release radioactive nuclides from the land contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. We can include in the list the severe drought which is causing hunger and malnutrition in the eastern Sahel in West Africa. It is estimated that 10 million people are affected in four different countries. In Niger, the worst affected area, it is estimated that 7.1 million people are hungry and facing a bleak future as livestock have been lost and food prices are soaring. This catastrophe has received very little coverage in western media. In Latin America, in April 2010, heavy rains in the state of Rio de Janeiro caused floods and mudslides leading to the death of at least 212 people. In June, Brazil experienced severe floods once again, this time in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco in the north eastern part of Brazil. At least 1,000 people died or were reported missing. Another spectacular event happened on August 5, 2010, when a section of the Petermann Glacier on the north western coast of Greenland, measuring 97 square miles, broke off. While there is nothing new in icebergs ‘calving’ this is the largest break off since 1962. Robert Bindschadler, a senior research scientist at MASA Goddard Space Flight Center, points out that changes in calving will happen as climate changes because the environment is changing.” Peter Scott, who is head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, has been sifting through the data on the extreme weather events during the past few months in Asia and Russia. He writes that, “evidence, including in India and

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC

Nobel Upsets Chinese Diplomacy

A 54-year-old scholar and writer, Liu is a thorny reminder for the Chinese communist party of its tarnished and unredeemed past. In 1989, he was one of the protesters who staged a hunger strike in the ceremonial heart of Beijing, Tiananmen, attempting to avert a violent end to the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. Liu is also a symbol of China’s still flickering democratic movement which, after years of suppression, continues to hold out hope that those universal values will prevail over the country’s authoritarian system. In 2008, just months after Beijing staged a dazzling Olympic Games, he was the leading figure among hundreds of liberal intellectuals who published an online manifesto calling for sweeping political reforms. Released on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘Charter 08’ delivered an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s efforts to assert its own values and for it to argue that Chinese people prefer affluence to freedom. China faced a choice, the manifesto argued, of maintaining its authoritarian system or “recognizing universal values, joining the mainstream of civilization and setting up a democracy.” Liu was detained immediately, and after being held in custody for a year, jailed for 11 years for “inciting subversion of state power.” Some 12,000 people have put their signatures to the petition since. Beijing reacted with fury to the prize announcement. A statement on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website called the award a “desecration” of the Peace Prize and a choice that goes against the aims of the award. It called Liu a “criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law.” In the weeks before the award was known, Chinese diplomats had been issuing warnings about diplomatic trouble if the Prize went to Liu. In the day of the announcement, a statement warned the choice of Liu as winner will hurt China’s relations with Norway, the country where the Nobel committee is based. Inside the country, there has been a total news blackout on the fact that the prestigious award has been given, for the first time, to a Chinese citizen. Liu’s choice is particularly hurtful to Beijing because China has a “Nobel Prize” syndrome, always sulking that its illustrious civilization and rising stature on the global scene have not been properly recognized. “Every year around this time there is so much speculation whether China will be finally recognized with a Nobel Prize,” said Zhao Hongli, a Beijing intellectual who took part in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and remembers Liu from those days. “The news will quickly filter through and I hope there will be a revival of the Tiananmen legacy.” Beijing’s fury at Liu’s choice mirrors the time in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Nobel Peace Prize went to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama won the Prize for his peaceful pursuit of genuine autonomy for Tibet, sparking accusations by China that the West supports what Beijing calls his “separatist cause.” He

www.ipsnews.net / Antoaneta Becker

Ecumenism Of Holiness

The founder, then aged 90, died after being attacked with a knife by a woman said by police to be mentally disturbed during evening prayers on 16 August 2005 at Taizé, near Macon in Burgundy. In the early years of the Second World War, Schütz, a Swiss Protestant, had arrived in the village of Taizé on 20 August 1940 with the idea of founding an ecumenical monastic community. “With him and the brothers who shared his vision and his tension, Taizé has become a true centre, a focal point and a place of gathering; a place of deepening in prayer, of listening and humility,” said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I, a spiritual leader in Eastern Orthodoxy. From the 1960s onwards, thousands of young people, initially from Europe and then from further afield, made their way to Taizé to experience its ecumenical spirituality. The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, described the community, “as a model for attending to the spiritual and physical needs of the whole people of God and, in particular, the needs of young people.” After Schütz’s death, Brother Alois, a German Catholic, became Prior of the community. “Today, at Taizé, a hundred Brothers, Catholics and Protestants, live together. And the community is often visited by young believers from the Orthodox churches,” stated Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church. “The thousands of young people who visit Taizé and take part in the meetings organized each year by the community in various European countries show convincingly that the Gospel message of God’s love can still find a living echo in people’s hearts today,” he said. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, described Schütz as, “one of the few figures who truly changed the climate of a religious culture, not by the exercise either of force or of cheap popularity, but by a lifelong practice of Christ-like authority.” During his life, Schütz also became close to the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly before his death, Schütz attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome, where he received the Catholic Eucharist from the hands of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI.

www.ekklesia.co.uk (Stephen Brown)

New Saint Champions Women And The Youth

In the Philippines alone, where Blessed Candida’s congregation, the Hijas de Jesus, first arrived in 1932, there are over 10,000 students currently enrolled in nine schools and almost 6,000 children and youth benefiting from catechetical instruction outside the school. All over the world, innumerable individuals and communities likewise benefit from the congregation’s apostolic and pastoral work in 17 countries, mostly in Asia, Latin America and Africa where the need is greatest. “We dedicate ourselves to education in its multiple forms,” says Sr. Emelinda “Lynn” Falsis, FI, directress and principal of Manresa School in Parañaque. “Education is our means of proclaiming to all the Good News, moved by the desire to help people as Jesus did. Mother Foundress’ spirit can be felt in the instructional methods and activities that are always in light of the school’s vision-mission, which is seeing to it that the gospel values are integrated, deepened and lived by the students in their daily life experiences.” One of the most shining examples of God’s astonishing work in her life is in how Blessed Candida was able to establish a congregation of Christian educators when she herself was practically illiterate. She was first known to the world as Juana Josefa Cipitria y Bariola, born in the Basque province of Guipuzoa, Spain, on May 31, 1845. To help support her impoverished family, the young Juanita left home at the age of 17 to work as a domestic helper for a wealthy family in Burgos. Despite her humble stature, Juanita displayed extraordinary piety and compassion for those even more destitute than herself. On April 2, 1869, while praying in the chapel of Rosarillo, she received an inspired message from the Blessed Virgin to found a religious order of women to be known as the “Hijas de Jesus.” Her spiritual director, a Jesuit named Fr. Miguel Herranz, immediately confirmed her vision, having received a similar message himself. Through his patient mentoring, Juanita learned to read, write and speak Castilian at the age of 24, hurriedly preparing her for her imminent role as foundress of a teaching congregation. The Hijas de Jesus embodied Mother Candida’s vision of using education for uplifting those who were poor and powerless. She was a pioneer of social justice and women’s rights in 19th century Spain, opening schools for girls of all social backgrounds at a time when over 80% of the female population could barely read or write. Mother Candida died in Salamanca, Spain, on August 9, 1912. At the moment of death, she declared: “In my 40 years of religious life, I could not recall a single moment that did not belong to God alone.” Beatified on May 12, 1996, no less than Pope John Paul II described Blessed Candida as a “visionary” who was “blessed with a prophetic view of the modern world.” And explained: “Her deep experience of God’s love for each of His creatures led her to respond with generosity and dedication. She concretely expressed her love of others by founding the congregation

Angela Blardony Ureta / Journalist

Non-Catholics Influenced Council’s Liberalization

Melissa Wilde, an associate professor of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, led a team of researchers that investigated data from the Vatican Secret Archive to determine the critical factors influencing how bishops voted at the Second Vatican Council, a university statement announces. Their findings are outlined in “Religious Economy or Organizational Field? Predicting Bishops’ Votes at the Second Vatican Council,” published in the August issue of American Sociological Review. The researchers found that the relationship between the Church and state, as well as changes in the institution’s situation in relation to other institutions, particularly a loss of dominance and the presence of and relationship with other religious institutions, were crucial factors in predicting whether religious leaders would be open to change and also what kinds of change they would prioritize. They concluded that, in places where the Catholic Church enjoyed a stable monopoly as the state church, religious leaders were almost impervious to outside influence and opposed to most kinds of change. In areas in which Catholicism was not the established faith but where the religious field was stable, however, leaders of other religious institutions were a crucial source of influence on bishops who attended and voted at Vatican II. The article also explores factors that predicted bishops’ votes on two of the most contentious issues dividing the Roman Catholic Church during Vatican II from 1962-1965: the validity of a document titled “On the Sources of Revelation,” which upholds the inerrancy of the Bible, and the importance of the Virgin Mary. “This is the first attempt to subject any Council votes to rigorous quantitative analysis,” said lead author Wilde, who studies the processes and factors that direct religious change. “It was exciting being the first person to gain access to these votes on an event as important as the Council.”

www.upenn.edu/pennnews

Old Mobile Phones Provide Gold For Africa

Since September 2009, the umbrella group of Catholic environmental organizations has collected discarded cell phones through over 1,500 parishes nationwide. According to the organization, 100 old mobile phones contain about 3.75 grams of gold electronic parts. Under their one-year campaign, all 6.5 tons or 60-70 thousand units of phones were collected. The organization then learned that coltan, a rare metal also found in mobile phones, is mostly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country witnessing a war between the government and the rebels over the acquisition of coltan mines. They decided to donate the first fund to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring Congo. Peter Kwon Chang-sik, coordinator of the organization, said 80% of coltan deposits are in the Congo area. Increasing coltan mining are destroying tropical forest areas and also the world’s last natural habitat for gorillas. To aggravate the situation, over 3 million people are displaced because of the war. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are six Korean nuns from the Sisters of Christian Doctrine Congregation helping local children by using the donated funds. Kwon added that although mobile phones contain harmful metals such as lead, arsenic and cadmium, which destroy nature if buried or burned, they also have other valuable metals like silver and copper. For that, an old cell phone could be worth between 1,300-1,600 won (around US$1-1.5), he said.

www.ucanews.com / Stephen Hong

Church’s Missionary Role Is To Reveal Jesus

Reflecting on the Day’s theme, “The building of ecclesial communion is the key to mission,” the Pope recalls the words of the Gospel of John “We want to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21), the claim that some Greek pilgrims who had gone to Jerusalem for Easter, made of the apostle Philip. “It resonates in our hearts,” writes Benedict XVI, and “reminds us of the commitment and the task assigned to the whole of the evangelical Church, ‘missionary by its nature’ (Ad Gentes, 2),” and invites us to become leaders of the newness of life, made of authentic relationships, in communities founded on the Gospel. In a multiethnic society that increasingly experiments with forms of loneliness and worrying indifference, Christians must learn to offer signs of hope and universal brotherhood, cultivating the great ideals that transform history and, without unnecessary fear or false hopes, undertake to make the planet home for all peoples.” Like the Greek pilgrims of two thousand years ago, the men of our time, perhaps unconsciously, are asking believers not only to ‘talk’ of Jesus, but to ‘show’ Jesus, make the Face of the Redeemer shine in all four corners of the earth before the generations of the new millennium, and especially before young people from every continent, privileged recipients and subjects of the Gospel. They need to feel that Christians bear the word of Christ because He is the Truth, because they have found in Him the way, the truth for their lives.” But the missionary mandate, continues the Pope, cannot be realized without “a deep personal, community and pastoral conversion. Indeed, awareness of the call to preach the Gospel not only encourages every individual believer, but all diocesan and parish communities to a complete renovation and to open more and more to missionary cooperation among Churches, to promote the proclamation of the Gospel in the heart of every person, every people, culture, race, nationality, in every corner.” Ecclesial communion is therefore “constantly looking” for those dedicated to the mission “so that the phenomenon of interculturation can be integrated into a model of unity, in which the Gospel is the leaven of liberty and progress, the source of brotherhood, humility and peace (cf. Ad Gentes, 8).

Christians Are The “Most Persecuted”

Their report coincided with a conference at the European Parliament on the “Persecution of Christians” organized by COMECE and Polish and Italian MEPs. The MEPs said that religious freedom must be incorporated into the European External Policies of the EU, by adding to Agreements with Third Countries a binding clause on the respect of freedom of religion, the COMECE report adds. Speakers included Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk (Iraq), Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio (Sudan), and Professor TM Joseph, principal at Newman College in India, whose right hand was cut off in a brutal attack after he set an exam question that allegedly defamed Islam. The bishops said in their report: “It is important to recall that at least 75% of all religious persecution in the world is directed against Christians. The number of the Christian faithful discriminated against, oppressed or persecuted in this regard amounts to approximately 100 million people. ”They added that tackling this persecution would help stem the “demographic hemorrhage” of religious minorities fleeing to the West.

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