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The growing global gap between the world’s rich and poor requires a Gospel approach to combating poverty, Vatican Cardinal Renato Martino said at a Pan-African conference in Tanzania. Catholic News Service reports that, Cardinal Martino, during his trip to the country, also announced that the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is preparing a document on “poverty in the age of globalization.”
The Apostles of Jesus, Africa’s first Religious Missionary Institute, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It was founded in the late 1960s by two Comboni missionaries, Bishop Sisto Mazzoldi and Fr. Giovanni Marengoni, both deceased.
A specter is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group. “It’s the specter of a food, fuel and water crisis,” says Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the affiliated organization.
“A new phase begins for the Church of Vietnam,” said Msgr. Nguyen Chu Trinh, bishop of Xuan Loc and chairman of the Committee of Charitable and Social Activities of the Vietnam Bishops’ Council. His assessment of the government’s decision to allow the rebuilding of the Vietnam chapter of Caritas is quite positive. Forced to shut down in June 1976, Caritas Vietnam will be able to operate again, thanks to a decision announced to the Bishops’ Committee by Nguyen The Doanh, head of the Government Committee for Religious Affairs.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has adopted a new benchmark for poverty line that is more accurate and more relevant to the Asia-Pacific region. The new benchmark, called the Asian Poverty Line, has been fixed at an income of $1.35 per day, the Manila-based regional lender said in a press release while presenting its annual statistical publication – Key Indicators 2008. ADB estimated that according to the new evaluation system, there were probably 843 million people in Asia who lived under the poverty line in 2005.
Ever since the wheel was invented, perhaps nothing so boosted technology as the discovery of oil. The black gold minted the petrodollar, and helped topple the Soviets, ignite Gulf wars and restore Russia. But power still flows down umbilical pipelines! After burning 150 trillion barrels of oil since the world’s first oil-well was drilled 149 years ago, oil-guzzling industrial nations now panic they will need equal quantities just for the next 25 years. West Asia’s role in the equation compounds the panic. Thus, greed fires a green gold rush. The world’s irrigated land area tripled in the past 50 years, but grain demand for agro-fuels has doubled in three years, leaving less grain for food. With the World Bank saying grain price hikes may spread food riots to 33 nations, the U.N. secretary general called a food summit in Rome.
China and India rejected accusations that, with the United States, they are responsible for the collapse of talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO), failing to reach an agreement on more open import rules, lower domestic subsidies and import duties. “In the face of a world economic downturn, serious inflation and imminent financial risks, the failure will have a major impact on the fragile multilateral trading system,” said China’s Minister of Commerce Chen Deming.
A type of malaria vaccine for humans is to be tested, following the success of trials undertaken with animals. There is currently no vaccine for the illness which kills between two and three million people every year. Oxford University scientists, part of an international team, reported, in the journal Nature Medicine, that its virus-based jab worked well in mice.
The number of orangutans in Indonesia and Malaysia is in rapid decline, above all, because of illegal deforestation and the expansion of palm oil plantations. The ape risks extinction within a few years, if adequate measures are not taken, says a study that has appeared in the scientific journal Oryx.
There is a “right to water,” based on the dignity of the human person, and it is not simply an “economic good,” the Pope affirmed in a message to the international exposition on “Water and Sustainable Development” under way in Zaragoza, Spain. The Holy Father, who sent his message through Cardinal Renato Martino, the Holy See’s representative at the expo, stated: “Because of the […] pressure of multiple social and economic factors, we must be conscious of the fact that today water must be considered a good that must be especially protected through clear national and international policies, and used according to sensible criteria of solidarity and responsibility.”
