Category: World Touch

Disappointing Commitments Of Summits

As partners with Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Church’s umbrella humanitarian and development agency, both organizations pushed the G-8 leaders to boost their commitment to women’s and children’s health concerns under the Muskoka Initiative. The development groups also urged the related Group of 20 Economic Summit in Toronto to step up efforts to reduce extreme poverty worldwide by 2015 as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations. But representatives of the world’s leading economies at both summits were focused on other concerns as the worldwide recession continues. “We’ve entered a world where the only language that matters is economics,” Redemptorist Father Paul Hansen, Director of his Order’s Biblical Justice Consultancy, said after the motorcades disappeared and the dignitaries left town. The leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies agreed to cut their governments’ deficits in half by 2013 and stop growth of public debt relative to gross domestic product by 2016. Voluntary financial constraints on government borrowing will allow poorer countries to participate in a healthier world economy, the final G-20 statement argued. “Increasing global growth on a sustainable basis is the most important step we can take in improving the lives of all of our citizens, including those in the poorest countries,” the world leaders said. But Father Hansen was disappointed that G-20 leaders chose to ignore the opportunity to clamp down on speculation in financial markets. “What we have developed is no longer an economy based on goods and services, but an economy based on paper, transfer of hot money, currency speculation, derivatives, hedge funds that have zero basis in goods and services,” he said. The money pledged for women’s and children’s health concerns for the first time included funds from private foundations. Non G-8 countries, including Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland, also pledged funds to the effort. The United Nations estimates that between $15 billion and $33 billion is needed by 2015 to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health enough to satisfy the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations pegs the G-8 share of the total at about $20 billion. About 9 million children per year die of diseases that are easily treatable with inexpensive immunizations, proper nutrition and better health care for pregnant women. Hemorrhages, infection, obstructed labor and very high blood pressure leading to seizures cause more than 350,000 preventable deaths annually among pregnant women. A group of Canadian aid agencies lobbied for a $24 billion fund over five years. Ikem Opara, Program Coordinator for Canadian Jesuits International, was pleased that the G-8 did not entirely walk away from the Muskoka Initiative. “That gave me some hope,” Opara said. “From my own experience growing up in Nigeria, those were the two things that seemed to affect everybody’s day-to-day life the most, child mortality and what maternal health meant.” To make significant progress toward the development goals, food security issues also must be addressed, he said. The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace believes the G-20 took

Michael Swan

Warmest Year On Record

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. Michael Grubb, a member of the UK Climate Change Committee, a body which advises the UK government on climate change, said that, “Hansen’s paper looks like a modest addition to the continuing build-up of evidence,” for climate change. This is particularly important since concerns about climate change have been pushed to the political ‘back-burner’ for a number of reasons. Firstly, the winter of 2009/2010 was an unusually cold winter in China, Europe and North America. Secondly, climate sceptics have launched a well organised campaign, casting doubts on climate change data which has been produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thirdly, there has been continuing fall-out from controversy at the UK’s University of East Anglia, where scientists have been accused of dissent on climate change. Grubb believes that “the public perception (on climate change) has been radically impacted by a short campaign” (by climate sceptics) and that this is “deeply troubling if you want a sensible long-term solution to climate change.” Grubb is hopeful that Hansen’s findings will reinvigorate attempts by governments to reach a fair, ambitious and binding agreement on greenhouse gases at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change which is scheduled for December, 2010 in Mexico. Many places, especially in Asia and Africa, are feeling the heat at this time. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the first four months of 2010 were the hottest ever measured, with record temperatures in North Africa, South Asia and Canada. In May and June 2010, heat waves hit Pakistan and India. Six people died and dozens more fell ill as temperatures soared to 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) in central Pakistan on May 21 and 22, 2010. These land temperatures were measured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. In the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro on the banks of the Indus, where civilization flourished over 4,000 years ago, temperatures reached 53.7 degrees Celsius on June 1, 2010. This is the fourth hottest temperature ever recorded. Previous highs were in 1922, when a record temperature of 57.8 degrees Celsius, the hottest temperature reached, was recorded at al-Aziziyah in Libya. This was followed by a temperature of 56.7 degrees Celsius recorded in Death Valley in California in 1913, and the third hottest, at 53.9 degrees Celsius, was

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC

Crime Is A Threat To Peace In The World

Illustrating the report called, “The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment,” Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of ONUDC, said “Transnational crime has become a threat to peace and development, even to the sovereignty of nations. Criminals use not only weapons and violence, but also money and bribes to buy elections, politicians and power – even the military.” This situation is particularly acute in West Africa, a region used ever more frequently by Latin American drug traffickers as a transit point towards the rich markets of Europe. “West African countries need help to increase their ability to counter transnational organized crime” says the report. “Recent efforts against the trafficking of cocaine, with the backing of the international community, produced promising results. However the region is still particularly exposed and will continue to face a series of potential threats to governance and stability.” Looted natural resources in Africa include fauna. Every year, between 5,000 and 12,000 African elephants are killed to feed the ivory market (between 50 and 120 kg per year). Some organized crime specializes in the selling of counterfeit medicines in Asia and in Africa. “A good part of certain key drugs tested in South-East Asia and in Africa failed effectiveness tests and many are evidently fake. It is clear that organized crime deliberately swindles consumers in some of the poorest parts of the world often with lethal results” the report says. This, according to ONUDC, can have even more serious consequences: “watered down medicines can feed the reproduction of varieties of medicine resistant pathogenic agents, with global implications.” Somali piracy produces profits of 100 million dollars a year, a conspicuous sum at the local level, but very small at the general level. Somali piracy has made many countries mobilize their navies to protect international shipping along routes passing the Horn of Africa.

www.fides.org

Soccer Was Invented By Paraguayan Indians

In an article titled, “The Guarani Invented Soccer,” reporter Gianpaolo Romanato asserted that soccer was born in the 17th century in the region known today as Paraguay. His source for the claim is an account by a Spanish Jesuit priest, Jose Manuel Peramas, who lived for several years at the St. Ignatius of Mini mission, south of Asuncion, which was one of the 30 native missions established by the Jesuits in colonial Paraguay. Father Peramas described the pastimes enjoyed by the Guarani in his 1793 book, “De vita et moribus tredecim virorum paraguaycorum” (Of the life and death of the 13 men of Paraguay). “They often played with a ball that, although it was made completely of rubber, was so light and quick that instead of them hitting it, it bounced around without stopping, driven by its own weight. They did not throw the ball with their hands like we do, but rather they kicked it with the upper part of their bare feet, passing it and trapping it with great agility and precision,” the priest wrote. “Three centuries ago, the Guarani were surely masters of the ball. They are truly the descendents of the real inventors of soccer,” L’Osservatore Romano reported, although many British soccer enthusiasts would be quick to dispute such a claim.

www.catholicnews.com

The Dark Side Of Modern Sport

However, questions have been raised, over the years, about the pay and working conditions of those who work in the football-producing factories. Bob Crilly of the Irish Times discovered that the workers who produce footballs, which retail at €100, often receive only $3 per day. One informant told him that “People buying these balls should understand more about how they are made and insist that the workers are looked after and well paid.” One of the workers told Crilly that, “if they sack a person, there will be 10 queuing the next day for the job.” In recent years, pressure from international agencies has improved the lot of many of the workers, but much more needs to be done. A report by The International Labor Rights Forum found that half of the 218 workers surveyed do not earn €118 a month, which is the minimum amount of money a family would require to meet their basic needs. The ‘exciting ball game’ needs to address and solve this injustice as a matter of urgency.

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC

From The Olympics To The Convent

Holum was born into speedskating royalty. Her mother Dianne was a world-class speedskater who won the Olympic gold in 1972 and reached even greater heights as a coach, mentoring the legendary Eric Heiden to his clean sweep at Lake Placid in 1980. Despite an ongoing battle with exercise-induced asthma, Holum was a champion waiting to happen. Instead, Nagano would signal the final time she would pull on a pair of skates with competitive intent. From that point on, her life began an entirely different journey. “Speedskating was such a huge part of my life,” Holumn said in a telephone interview. “I still loved the sport, but I had this incredibly strong calling that it was time to move on and take a different path in life.” There is no television and no internet at St. Joseph’s Convent in Leeds, England, meaning Holum didn’t watch the 2010 Winter Olympics, that took place last February in Canada and where she was supposed to become a star. The peaceful surrounds of the convent is where Holum, now known as Sister Catherine, devotes her life to religious service as a Franciscan nun. That calling had begun on a trip to Our Lady of Fatima, the holy shrine in Portugal famed for the apparition of the Virgin to three little shepherds nearly a century ago. It was outside the Fatima basilica where Holum decided that a path of religious dedication, not frozen skating lanes, would be her destiny. “It is funny now to think of how different my life is now,” she said. “I had the wonderful privilege of being able to compete as an Olympian, and now I am blessed to be able to serve God and help those less fortunate.” After completing an art degree, including a thesis on the Olympics at the Art Institute of Chicago, Holum joined the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, a faith whose mission is “work with the poor and homeless and evangelization.” Based first in New York, Sister Catherine and her fellow nuns stepped onto the mean streets of the Bronx to work with some of the Big Apple’s most underprivileged children in areas steeped in gang culture. Such work and sacrifice in homeless shelters and soup kitchens gave her a deep-rooted sense of satisfaction that skating had never been able to provide. She attacked each new project with the tenacity of an Olympian, and, according to Sister Lucille, who leads operations at the Order’s Bronx chapter, the “compassion of an angel.” She added: “It is wonderful to see people’s faces light up when Sister Catherine shares her experiences of her time in speedskating. She never boasts about it but she has come to realize that we are incredibly proud of her and are lucky to have her as part of our religious family. The Sisters and the people we try to reach love hearing about what she accomplished.” Last year, missionary work took Sister Catherine to England, where she has found her previous life as an

Yahoo! Sports (Martin Rogers); Wikipedia

Sant’egidio Hails Decline In Executioner Nations

“There is a new trend against the death penalty that is something new to the world,” Mario Marazziti, spokesman for Sant’Egidio, said, according to Reuters. Marazziti says that 56 countries continue to execute people, while 141 countries do not use the death penalty, including 93 that had formally abolished it. Even China, one of the countries where execution is most common, told judges in February to limit the use of the penalty. Amnesty International estimates that at least 7,000 people were sentenced to death in China in 2008 and 1,718 executed that year.

www.ucanews.com

Ricci Is Model For Dialogue And Mission In Globalized World

Father Tsang was born in mainland China to a Catholic family, “but I escaped by swimming to Hong Kong – four hours to Hong Kong, at night – and then went to the States.” The priest, who now teaches at Fu Jen Catholic University of Taiwan, attended the conference marking the 400th anniversary of Father Ricci’s death. Father Ricci, who was born in 1552 and arrived in China at the age of 30, delved into studies of the Chinese language, culture and Confucianism. His respect for the Chinese gradually paved the way for his dialogue with China’s government and cultural leaders. At the same time, “he was very frank and strict, explicit and direct on the goodness of the Christian faith,” Father Tsang said, and “he did not hesitate to point out the defects of Taoism and Buddhism.” While Father Ricci found great fault with what he understood about Taoism and Buddhism, he believed that Confucianism, in its purest form, was a philosophy open to Christianity. After his death, missionaries developed the so-called “Chinese rites” – Confucian-based social rituals involving ancestor veneration and offerings to the emperor – which allowed Chinese converts to preserve elements of their heritage while being Catholic. Centuries of controversy ensued and although the rites developed after Father Ricci’s death, he was so strongly identified with that disputed form of inculturation that his sainthood cause was not opened until the 1980s. Father Tsang said it was unfortunate that the controversy led some to question Father Ricci’s holiness. It is true, he said, that Father Ricci “was very friendly with the Chinese, respecting the Chinese culture, but in terms of the faith, he was very unabashedly Catholic.” In his speech at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Father Tsang said Father Ricci was not so “narrow-minded as to regard non-Christian cultures or religions as nothing good; indeed, he saw quite a lot of compatibility between early Confucianism and Christianity,” and recognized that Confucian teachings could be seen as preparing the Chinese to receive the Gospel. Father Ricci’s respect for the Chinese and his commitment to sharing the Gospel with them offer the still-relevant lesson that Christians cannot claim God is at work only among Christians but, at the same time, they cannot claim that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation, Father Tsang said. According to him, the Chinese today need the Gospel just as much as they did in Father Ricci’s age. The country is enjoying economic prosperity, but “there are grave, hidden problems,” including the repression of human rights, a growing divide between rich and poor, widespread use of abortion and “alarming pollution.” www.catholicnews.com

Cindy Wooden

Stop Small Arms’ Epidemic

In 2009, the International Action Network on Small Arms’ (IANSA) members, in more than 90 countries, highlighted the human cost of small arms proliferation and misuse; they also demanded that governments enact policies that put their citizens’ security first. Civil society organizations taking part in the Week of Action organized public events, conducted media work, and generally engaged more people in the global movement against gun violence. They publicized the UN small arms process, emphasized the importance of an Arms Trade Treaty, promoted implementation of the UN Firearms Protocol, and supported policies linking armed violence and development, among other activities. Also in 2009, the Disarm Domestic Violence Campaign was launched with over 30 events worldwide. The goal of the campaign is to ensure that anyone with a history of domestic abuse is denied access to a firearm, and has their license revoked. In its last annual report, “Gun Violence: The Global Crisis,” IANSA reminded: “A thousand people die every day by gunshots, and three times as many are severely injured. Spinal cords severed, bones shattered, families destroyed, hearts broken. If the death, injury and disability resulting from small arms were categorized as a disease, we would view it as an epidemic. And no country is immune.”

2,000 Deaths And 600,000 Christian Refugees

The following figures, compiled through local Church sources in Iraq, provide a comprehensive picture of the suffering of Iraqi Christians: – Since 2003: about 2,000 Iraqi Christians have been killed in several waves of violence; – Between February 27 and March 1,2010: 870 families, a total of over 4,400 faithful, left Mosul due to anti-Christian violence; – October 2008: more than 12,000 Christians fled Mosul due to a wave of violence; – 40% of Iraqi refugees abroad (a total of about 1.6 million) are Christians (Source: UNHCR); – 44% of Iraqis who have applied for asylum in Syria are Christians. Asylum applications are growing in Jordan, Turkey and in Western countries (especially Sweden and Australia); – The total number of Christians in Iraq: in 1987, 1.4 million; in 2003, 1.2 million; in 2009, 600,000, many of whom were internally displaced; – Iraq’s total population: 27.5 million – 97% Muslim (65% Shiite, 35% Sunni), 3% Christian and other religious minorities.

www.fides.org

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