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Tourism, by “bringing us closer to creation in its variety and wealth, can be an occasion to promote and increase the religious experience.” The Catholic Church, in the year the United Nations dedicated to biodiversity, is urging everyone to pay closer attention to humankind’s responsibility towards nature, even when people seek rest and leisure.
Fr. Sebastiano D’Ambra, PIME, the founder of the Silsilah Dialogue Movement, was honored on July 22, 2010 by the Ateneo de Manila University with the Bukas Palad Award. The awarding ceremony was held at the Erwin Shaw Theater on the Loyola Heights campus of the university. Other awardees at this year’s ceremony were Monsignor José C. Bernardo, Jr., also for the Bukas Palad Award; Federico Aguilar Alcuaz for the Gawad Tanglaw ng Lahi; and Dr. Alfredo R. A. Bengzon for Lux-in-Domino Award.
The first Christian radio station from the Holy Land will soon be on air, with the aim of becoming a bridge between people of different faiths in that region. Father Raed Abu Sahlieh, a parish priest in a small Christian community of Palestine, expressed the hope that the radio station will be “a bridge between different churches and religions.”
The blasphemy law and Islamic extremism “are obscure evils of Pakistan’s society;” “they disrupt stability, harmony and legality,” Muhammad Aslam Khaki, a Muslim jurist and lawyer, commented the day after the murder of the Emmanuel brothers in Faisalabad. Totally committed to defending human rights in Pakistan and eradicating religious extremism, he is presently defending persons, some of them Christians, charged with breaking the blasphemy law. Although because of this he is subject to “pressure and threats,” the lawyer is determined in his commitment to promote legality.
Hundreds of children, victims of years of war in northern Uganda, are denied urgent assistance because of lack of funds and adequate medical service, according to the Northern Uganda Transitional Justice Working Group.
Hope, joy and optimism is growing in Mongolia’s small Catholic community, in particular, because of a brand new community formed by six newly-baptized women in Arvaiheer, main town of the southern Mongolian Uvurhangai region, thanks to the missionary endeavors of the community of Consolata Missionaries.
“Religious freedom, the path to peace” is the theme chosen by Pope Benedict XVI for the celebration of the 2011 World Day of Peace.
A $7.3 billion pledge, including $5 billion from the Group of Eight countries, is not enough to stop millions of needless deaths among pregnant women and young children and is not enough for the G-8 leaders to say they’ve lived up to their responsibilities, representatives of Catholic aid groups said. “We’re disappointed with the G-8 leaders,” said Michael Casey, Executive Director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, after the Group meeting in Huntsville, Ontario. “It’s kind of a failure,” said Alexis Anagnan of the French Catholic aid agency, World Solidarity.
Despite the cold winter in the Northern hemisphere, the global temperature this year reached its warmest on record. This is based on a twelve-month-rolling average, according to Dr. James Hansen, the top American climate scientist who works at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In an article published on the NASA website in June 2010, Hansen and his three co-authors claim that the mean surface temperature in the year through April 2010 was 0.65 degrees Celsius warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980. NASA scientists came to this conclusion after reviewing data from 6,300 monitoring stations around the world. Hansen is adamant that this data demonstrates that climate change is taking place.
The fervor of millions of fans around the world, glued to their television screens as they followed the World Cup was matched by a concern that the event would propitiate an increase in human trafficking. Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban in South Africa, said that there were signs that organized crime rings were smuggling people to provide sexual services during the event.
