Category: World Touch

A Good Tool To Help Save The Earth

Mathis Wackernagel knows better than most of the threats our planet is facing. The executive director of Global Footprint Network believes it is possible to study and solve our ecological problems. His non-profit organization, which works with everyone interested in sustainable development – from governments to corporations and NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund – has no magical solutions, just a well developed tool that is still being perfected. It aims to measure humanity’s demand on the Earth’s resources and the capacity of the planet to deal or not to deal with human activities.

L’osservatore Romano

“Greed Of Managers” Behind Financial Crisis

The only real growth registered in the current financial crisis has been “the commissions, profits of the banks and bonuses for the managers,” Italian economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi says in an article in Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

Parish Donates 15% Of Its Income To Development

A Korean Catholic parish has donated over $100,000 or 15% of its annual income to build houses in Bangladesh and to provide food for people in Burundi. Pungam-dong Church in Gwangju (Kwangju), 270 kilometers south of Seoul, made the offer through Caritas Coreana. Fr. Thomas Koh Eul-sik and three of his parishioners went on purpose to Seoul to deliver the funds.

World

Without Development, Peace Will Not Be Achieved

Caritas Internationalis president Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has told the United Nations that a lack of leadership is delaying the achievement of Millennium Development Goals and appealed to leaders of industrial nations to lower carbon emissions. The Cardinal was addressing the summit on development and climate change at the invitation of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The Cardinal urged the world leaders to make “courageous decisions and fulfill past promises,” so as to achieve the development goals by the original deadline of 2015.

Chile

Put Man At The Center Of The Economy

The financial crisis under way in the United States should remind us that the human person must be at the center of the economy, affirmed the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, during a visit he made recently to Chile.

Vatican

Catholics, Not Fundamentalists

The Pontifical Biblical Commission has published a new document entitled “The Bible and Morality” ahead of the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God. It states, according to a Catholic News Service report: even when it comes to morality, Catholics are not biblical fundamentalists, although they view the Bible as an important source of moral guidance; the various books of the Bible were written in different epochs, in different cultures and by different authors, the scholars said, so when looking for moral precepts, a Christian cannot focus on just one line.

Africa Needs To Take Reins Of Progress

It is time to allow and encourage Africans to take a sense of ownership in leading the development of their continent, said Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, in an address to a U.N. high-level plenary meeting on the theme: “Africa’s Development Needs: State of Implementation of Various Commitments, Challenges and the Way Forward.”“The successes achieved in the consolidation of independence, the overcoming of the ideological conflicts of the 20th century, the abolition of apartheid and, more recently, the strengthening of the African Union and many other regional structures of cooperation, are a sign of hope for the potential of Africa,” the prelate said. “It is now high time to allow and encourage an African sense of ownership in leading a sustained and sustainable developmental process that frees all the peoples of Africa from the scourge of extreme poverty.”

Asia

Religious Freedom Continues To Decline

The situation of religious freedom in Asia is worsening, especially in China and in democratic India, according to the annual report of the U.S. State Department on religious freedom in the world.

Frontiers

Priest, Prophet And President

Retired Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo laid aside his miter and took up the sash of the presidency of Paraguay last April 20. He is the first bishop of modern times to be elected to high office and he ended the dictatorial 61-year rule of the Colorado party of the former dictator and tyrant Alfredo Stroessner who drove three of Bishop Lugo’s brothers into exile in fear of their lives.

India

Cultural Dialogue And The Church’s Mission

The mission of the Catholic Church is evangelization of cultures and the inculturation of the faith through intercultural dialogue, a Vatican official recently stated at a seminar in India. Father Theodore Mascarenhas, who heads the Asia Desk in the Rome-based Pontifical Council for Culture, told seminar participants: “Evangelization for the Catholic Church means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity and, through its influence, transforming humanity from within.”

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