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Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Fr. Alex Thomas Kaliyanil SVD, the Mission Superior of Zimbabwe, as the new Archbishop of Bulawayo. Fr. Kaliyanil was born on May 27, 1960 in Vallamchira parish in the Archdiocese of Changanacherry, Kerala, and is the youngest of five siblings.
As an African Union Summit on Agricultural Investments opened in Libya, donors and non-profit groups called the participants’ attention to the role smallholder farmers – mostly women – can have in feeding their communities.
Chronic hunger may be “the defining human tragedy of this century” as climate change causes growing seasons to shift, crops to fail, and storms and droughts to ravage fields, an advocacy group said. Oxfam International made the warning in a report released as leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) or the wealthiest nations prepared to meet in Italy, with an agenda to include both food security and climate change.
Fr. Shay Cullen, a regular contributor to World Mission, has been honored with the Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Meteor Ireland Music Awards. The founder of the PREDA Foundation received the prestigious statuette with a Celtic design, together with a donation of $140,000. Fr. Shay, nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, is a missionary priest from Dublin and a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban who has worked tirelessly in protecting women and children and human rights in the Philippines since 1969.
An estimated 642 million people in the Asia-Pacific region suffer from hunger. The alarm was raised by the FAO. The UN organization for food and agriculture confirms that, for the first time in history, the number of people suffering hunger in the world will reach 1 billion in 2009, a sixth of the global population.
“Is it a celebration of victory of peaceful, peace-loving people over those who were violent or those who were terrorists? Or is it a celebration of the victory of one group over another? Will this victory lead to a dominant and suppressive authority in the hands of one group over another group who will be made refugees or internally displaced for long years or for eternity?” For Sarath Fernando, moderator of the Movement of Lands and agriculture reform and human rights activist, Sri Lanka needs to start answering these decisive questions for its future. The fate of the refugees and the society that will be born out of almost 30 years of war: these are the issues that are beginning to concern the people of the Island nations’ south as celebrations of the government’s victory over the Tamil Tigers’ wind down.
The Congo Basin countries, home to the world’s second largest tropical forest, are 260 years behind those of the Amazon Basin, where the trend is to hand ownership of the forest to communities, according to a new study assessing tropical forest tenure. The conclusion was drawn from a comparison between the annual rate of transferring forest to communities in 39 countries, representing 96% of global tropical forests.
No one is exempt from the “indisputable obligation” to protect the planet, says the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Bartholomew I affirmed that climate change is the biggest threat for all types of life on earth in a message for World Environment Day, sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program. And urged people, “independently of their religious origins, to take the ecological crisis into consideration.” He added: “Today, more than ever, there is an indisputable obligation for everyone, that of realizing that environmental considerations on our planet are not just romantic ideals of a small group.”
Warning of a possible six to eight year employment and social protection crisis due to the economic downturn, International Labor Organization (ILO) Director-General Juan Somavia called on delegates to the 98th International Labor Conference to adopt a “Global Jobs Pact.” Somavia cited a range of dire economic challenges facing the world of work, ranging from rising unemployment and increasing poverty to stress on businesses, adding, “all of this put together means that the world may be looking at a job and social protection crisis of six- to eight-year duration.”
Islamic-Christian dialogue can make great progress through art: this is what is taking place in the southern Philippines, on the island of Mindanao, in the Sulu Islands, thanks to a new initiative involving Christian and Muslim artists and scholars, using film, photographs, paintings, and sculptures with the motto: “Art: Instrument of Peace.” Through this exposition, organizers are leading an awareness campaign in the multi-religious society of the southern Philippines.
