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“The time has come to ensure, for the sake of peace, that no man, woman or child will ever be hungry again,” says Pope Benedict XVI when receiving in audience participants of the 34th general conference of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), headquartered in Rome.
A Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue, working to heal the 1000 year old rift between the Orthodox and Catholic Church, has announced that the Pope has primacy over all bishops – but the lines are still blurred as to what the Holy Father’s authority entails. Pope Benedict said a “fundamental priority” of his pontificate is to heal the split of the two denominations.
The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace met with the founder of a U.S.-based organization aiming to replace minefields with farmland, and made an appeal for the elimination of unexploded ordnance. Cardinal Renato Martino spoke in Rome with Heidi Kuhn, founder of the international Roots of Peace, according to a communiqué from the Vatican dicastery.
The Eritrean government has thrown the Catholic Church into tension by expelling 13 missionaries in unclear circumstances. The expulsion order was issued to four Comboni missionaries (2 Mexicans, a Filipino and a Kenyan), 2 Comboni sisters, 2 Pavonian fathers, 2 Filipino Pius teachers, 2 nuns of an unspecified congregation and a lay missionary.
Public health and HIV/AIDS activists from the developing world are seeking to break the monopoly over drugs held by pharmaceutical giants through a new global campaign designed to influence international debate over the issue. Formulated at the end of a three-day meeting, which brought some 200 participants from 20 countries to Thailand’s capital, the campaign seeks ‘’a new way out of the current patent system; one that will encourage innovation of new drugs and access for all,’’ says one of the organizers of the International Conference on Compulsory Licensing: Innovation and Access for All. ‘’What we have now is innovation controlled by the pharmaceutical industry that allows them to have a monopoly on drugs.’’
An appeal carried in the hands of children and handed to representatives of the nations of the world said that violence is an illness polluting the planet. The appeal for peace, made public by the Catholic Lay Community of Sant’Egidio, was presented to the leaders at the concluding ceremony of the 21st International Encounter of Peoples and Religions held in Naples. The encounter brought together 315 religious leaders of various creeds.
Forty years since the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, with which Pope Paul VI underlined the importance of education for justice and development and the growing disparity between rich and poor countries, a new disparity is affecting the poorest peoples: the “digital divide” produced by a lack of access to modern technology of information and communication.
“In just 10 years, what was once a luxury and a privilege, the mobile phone, has become a basic necessity in urban and rural Africa” said Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, underlining Africa’s progress in the sector of telecommunications with important social and economic effects.
The declaration of a state of emergency and the suspension of the Constitution “is part of a conspiracy to postpone the coming elections and to prolong the dictatorial rule of Musharraf,” said Shahbaz Bhatti, President of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, regarding the current political situation in the country.
Pope Benedict XVI has completed his second encyclical, a meditation on Christian hope, Vatican sources said. The text, tentatively titled Spe Salvi (“Saved by Hope”) comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which he wrote: “For in hope we have been saved.”
