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“Each community is “mature” when it professes faith, celebrates it with joy during the liturgy, lives charity, proclaims the Word of God endlessly, leaves one’s own to take it to the “peripheries,” especially to those who have not yet had the opportunity to know Christ,” Francis says in his message for the 87th World Mission Day which will be celebrated next October 20, just after the end of the Year of Faith.
Unemployment, poverty and political marginalization are contributing to the Islamic radicalization of Kenya’s youth, a situation, experts say, that must be addressed through economic empowerment and inclusive policies.
Shakti Samuha, a group of former Nepali sex slaves that frees Asian women and girls from human trafficking in India and China, is among the five recipients of the ‘Ramon Magsaysay Award’ for 2013. Viewed as Asia’s Nobel Prize, the award recognizes people and organizations that have distinguished themselves for changing their societies for the better. The Filipino government, which established the award in 1958, announced.
The true extent of female genital mutilation or cutting is huge, a report from UNICEF last July revealed. It says that a total of 125 million women and girls are now living with the consequences of FGM – and yet the report suggests that the practice continues only because of social convention, while most women and men wish it would end.
On papal trips, what one usually gets are pieces of a pope’s vision, meaning speeches targeted for special groups or occasions that beckon one emphasis or another. Every now and then, however, a pope has a chance to lay out his views in a programmatic fashion, and brought one of those rare moments in a speech Francis delivered to Brazil’s bishops. Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the Pope’s speech was the longest of Francis’ papacy so far and, if not its most important, certainly “very significant.” Five ideas loomed over the rest:
Cardinal Oswald Gracias underlined the positive impact of Pope Francis in India and Asia during an interview, in Rome, with Gerard O’Conell from the Vatican Insider/La Stampa. When asked about the 100 first days of the pontificate, he was rather enthusiastic about its effect on India: “Very, very positive! Very positive, in the sense that here’s a country with a lot of poverty also while there’s been great progress, and he’s struck a cord immediately with his consistent concern for the poor, the marginalized, and also telling the Church to be for the poor. India’s Catholics have been very impressed as well as the general populace who are not Catholic. He’s getting lots of publicity, everything he says is covered by the secular press, and his pictures appear very often in our papers.”
Last fall, Dwain Adkins was about to be released from prison after serving a six-year sentence for aggravated assault. He had no family to return to on the outside and had not been accepted into a halfway house. “My biggest fear was being homeless,” he said. “It was hard for me to fathom that. It tore me up.” Finally, one week before his release, Adkins got word from Dismas House in Nashville that he would have a place to stay. “Dismas gives guys like me an opportunity, and for that I’m grateful,” he told the Tennessee Register, newspaper of the Nashville diocese.
The Vatican communiqué issued after the meeting between Pope Francis and the President of El Salvador, Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena, expressly mentions the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. If any further confirmation was needed about the speeding up – since the arrival of the new Pope – of the beatification cause for the prelate who was gunned down by death squads in 1980, that arrived promptly. And not just in the form of a statement by some influential figure or other, but with a phrase written in black and white on a high-level, official document, like those which are published after visits by heads of state to the Vatican.
The plan had begun on Jan 23, starting at Bang Kwang central prison near Bangkok, with 563 inmates seeing their shackles unlocked and removed for the last time. At the end of May, some gathered for a ceremony, led by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, to officially kick off the policy, kick off the chains, and put the shackle era to an end for good.
Solalinde received his award as Mexico comes to a crossroad. Pena took office amid protests just 10 days earlier, but public opinion polls show a sense of optimism among Mexicans – something expressed every six years with the transition of power: that the new president can keep his promises to calm violence in the country, combat poverty and corruption and pull Mexico out of an economic malaise. But Pena’s party, which ruled for most of the last century and retook power after 12 years in opposition, has a checkered reputation for human rights and sour relations with the Catholic Church. Pena, who called Solalinde “a good Samaritan,” said the priest’s call for a more just Mexico and leaders closer to the people “are aligned with this government’s project for the country.” That Solalinde would win such an award – a medal and recognition – surprised a few. He surged into the public spotlight over the past five years for his defiance of corrupt local officials in Oaxaca State – who, he says, belonged to Pena’s own party – and unwillingness to be cowed by organized crimes, which threatened his Brothers of the Road’s shelter for migrants. He left the shelter and Mexico during the spring of 2012 because of threats against him. The National Human Rights Commission, which sponsored the prize, reported more than 11,300 migrant kidnappings – often at the hands of organized criminal groups and abetted by crooked police and public officials – over a six-month period in 2010. Solalinde said, last November, that the Peña administration has reached out to those – including Catholic priests and religious – protecting undocumented migrants, but expressed reservations at the time. Political observers say publicly awarding the prize to Solalinde sets a new tone for the incoming presidential administration, which already has signed a comprehensive cooperation pact with the country’s three main parties to achieve structural reforms in the areas of education, economy and energy. “It’s a gesture of political communication,” said Aldo Munoz Armenta, political science professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State. “The message is trying to convince those who are incredulous, in political terms, that the situation toward those seeking social justice has changed.”
