Browse past isues
Help the mission
Support the mission
Get in touch
The present crisis in the country is a call for the Church to introspect and repent, said Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore (photo at right). In a pastoral letter, Archbishop Moras, who is also the president of the Karnataka Regional Catholic Bishops’ Council, urged people to join hands to dialogue and work towards making India and the Church free of corruption.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the historic meeting that took place in Assisi (Italy) on 27 October 1986 (see picture), a day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world will take place this month. Pope Benedict XVI invited fellow Christians from different denominations, representatives of the world’s religious traditions and, in some sense, all men and women of goodwill, to join once again a pilgrimage to the home of Saint Francis.
Fifty years after the adoption of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 12 million people remain without citizenship, most of them living in Asia, according to the UN refugee agency.
One of the fruits of extensive work on dialogue, carried out by Christians and Muslims, and motivated by goodwill, is the Muslim-Christian Center near the Great Mosque of Quiapo in Manila, one of the commercial districts of the capital. It was opened during the holy month of Ramadan 2011. Called the Golden Mosque, because of its towering golden dome, it is the main center of Islamic activities in Manila and is a benchmark for all Muslim Filipinos coming from the south, where there is a substantial minority of 6 million Muslims. Quiapo is also the district where the famous Church of the Black Nazarene (due to its black statue of Jesus) is situated, and the destination of pilgrimages from all over the country. The initiative to establish a center for dialogue became successful, thanks to the efforts of Fr. Clemente Ignacio, parish priest of Quiapo, the Catholic missionaries and other Muslim leaders who have made the Quiapo area a place of dialogue and cooperation between Muslims and Christians.
Default, insolvency, fiscal irresponsibility, debt crisis and similar terms form part of the vocabulary used to describe countries in the developing South in the 1980s and 1990s. A decade later, the world seems to have turned upside down. The “irresponsible debtors” are now in the industrialized North, and the countries of South America, victims of the “lost decade” of the 1980s and the subsequent financial crises, are now working hard to protect themselves against contagion from the crisis in the United States and Europe. A meeting of economy ministers in Lima (Peru) and another scheduled for Buenos Aires (Argentina), where the ministers will be joined by central bank presidents, are being held to discuss the coordination of policies among the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to deal with the knock-on effects of the crisis still lingering in the developed world.
More than two years after Sri Lanka’s decades-long conflict officially ended, the whereabouts of 630 children are unknown, according to a government database. Most went missing during the final phase of the war that ended on 18 May 2009, when government forces declared victory over the now defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who had been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland since 1983. According to reports cited by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 64% of those missing were recruited by the LTTE while 30% were last seen behind government lines.
Myanmar’s catechists, who number around 2,000, are playing a vital role in the Church’s work by ministering in remote areas that priests cannot easily reach. Performing baptisms, leading funerals and preparing couples for matrimony are their main pastoral duties.
The food crisis in the Horn of Africa (in the East coast of the continent) is likely to continue for most of 2011 and famine is expected to spread to the whole of southern Somalia. “The current food security emergency across the region is expected to persist at least for the coming months,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a new regional overview.
Archaeologists are asserting that they have uncovered the tomb of the Apostle Philip. The discovery took place in Pamukkale, former Hierapolis, in Western Anatolia, Turkey, the city where Philip died, after having preached in Greece and in Asia Minor.
Spanish Jesuit Father Luís Ruiz Suarez, who dedicated his entire life to needy people in Macau and mainland China, died on July 27 at the age of 97. Father Ruiz was a giant because of his enormous heart. His missionary work in China began in 1941. It was interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War, and resumed after the war ended in 1945. When the Communists took control of China in 1949, he was imprisoned briefly and expelled from the country.
