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Climate change is taking place even faster than the worst predictions made by the UN’s panel, Al Gore said at the enlarged World Economic Forum meeting that once more took place at Davos (Switzerland). The former US vice-president and winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize warned that there were forecasts that the North Pole ice cap could disappear during summer months within five years.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world to put the looming crisis over water shortages at the top of the global agenda this year and take action to prevent conflicts over scarce supplies. He reminded business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum that the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan was touched off by drought – and he said shortages of water contribute to poverty and social hardship in Somalia, Chad, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Colombia and Kazakhstan.
Conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken the lives of an estimated 5.4 million people since 1998 and continue to leave as many as 45,000 dead every month, according to a major mortality survey released by the International Rescue Committee.
The U.S. bishops asked President George Bush and Congress to make the needs of the poor their number one priority as they were debating and passing an economic stimulus package. The bishops said this in a letter addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that urged bipartisan cooperation to “find effective ways to protect the poorest families and low wage workers from financial hardship during this economic downturn.”
The Church’s charitable organizations are models to imitate, in the sense that their low operating costs mean nearly all donated monies go directly to the needy, said Cardinal Paul Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the agency that coordinates and promotes the world’s Catholic institutions of assistance and volunteering.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the powerful Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and twice prime minister, has pushed to the brink a country already known for regionalism and ethnic suspicion. Bhutto was widely acknowledged as the only leader who enjoyed popularity in the four ethnically distinct provinces of the country, Punjab, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) besides her own Sindh.
In his New Year’s Day address, President Hu Jintao said that China was facing “unprecedented opportunities as well as challenges” in 2008. Rhetoric aside, analysts agree that 2008 will be a landmark year for the mainland.
Catholic nuns in India are planning a theology research institute to empower women religious and redress the gender disparity in religious studies. The four-day annual plenary of the women’s section of the Conference of Religious proposed the initiative before it ended on January 1. About 350 major superiors representing more than 90,000 women religious gathered in Mangalore, 2,290 kilometers southwest of New Delhi, for the assembly.
Four Franciscans, three priests and a brother arrived in Sudan in July 2007. The archbishop of Khartoum, Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir, introduced them officially to the diocesan community, during the Eucharistic celebration in honor of St. Daniel Comboni, on October 10. The four newly-arrived Franciscans (2 Sudanese from the South, 1 Croatian and 1 Filipino) have offered themselves for the job to answer the call of their Superior-General. The superior of the group is Filipino Father Melito Penili. After a few years of academic and administrative work in the Philippines, he spent four years in Libya among the OFWs. Then he frequented a two-year Arabic course at Dar Comboni in Cairo, a language school for missionaries.
Benedict XVI asked political leaders in Kenya to engage in dialogue and urged the strife-torn East African nation to build peace based on justice and brotherhood. Kenya erupted in violence after the disputed December 27 presidential election. More than 600 people have been killed and thousands more displaced in the violence that has brought about fighting based on ethnic lines.
