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For the first time since 2002 the number of refugees in the world has increased. According to a report released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were 9.9 million people forced to leave their countries by war, poverty and natural disasters by the end of 2006.
China’s Great Wall and the Taj Mahal in India are among the modern day seven wonders of the world in a poll of 100 million people online. The other five are Petra in Jordan, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Peru’s Machu Picchu, the mountain settlement that symbolizes the Incan empire, Mexico’s Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza and the Colosseum in Rome.
Hundreds of thousand of sacred places will be integrated in a UN-backed network in order to preserve threatened wild species, announced the English newspaper, The Independent. It explained the reason of the initiative of the United Nations Development Program, similar to the one that UNESCO took when it was necessary to save Abbu Simbel’s temple (Egypt), which would come to give origin to the creation of the famous label World Heritage, which today classifies and protects hundreds of cultural and natural sites all over the world: The great religions, according to an Atlas recently published, own over 7% of the habitable land of the planet; and those sacred places, in many cases protected by spiritual traditions, are privileged “habitats” for fauna.
A year after Pope Benedict merged it into the Vatican Council for Culture, Holy See Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has announced that the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue will be restored in its own right.
Rising anti-Christian violence “is irrational and greatly harms the country’s development. It projects an image of an illiberal and fascist India which, in the long run, will destroy everything its people has created,” Msgr. Oswald Gracias said. As he talks about the recent big demonstration by Christian groups in protest against religious intolerance, the archbishop of Mumbai (the prelate who chairs the Indian Bishops’ Conference) does not mince words. Indeed, the latest events “have shown that India’s Christian community can no longer remain silent if it wants to ensure the safety of its members. I express my closeness to the demonstrators,” he explained. “Even though I could not be there in person I want to join my voice to that of all those who are demanding that the government protect minorities and safeguard citizens’ human rights.”
The government of Timor Leste (East Timor) has awarded the Dom Martinho da Costa Lopes Medal to several deceased Catholic clergy and Religious in recognition of their contributions to the liberation of the country. The honor, named after the late administrator of Dili diocese, its first native prelate, was conferred posthumously on Monsignor da Costa Lopes himself; Father Hilario Madeira of Dili diocese’s Nossa Senhora de Fatima (Our Lady of Fatima) Church in Suai; Father Mario do Carmo Lemos Belo, former vicar general of Baucau diocese; local Canossian Sister Maria Celeste de Carvalho; and Italian Canossian Sister Erminia Cazzaniga.
Caritas Manila, the social service agency of the Archdiocese of Manila, wants to educate 10,000 poor students by 2010 as part of an ambitious plan to help 300,000 families in the Filipino capital.
Promoting good moral values and a culture of peace are goals Indonesia’s Catholic Church has set for itself as it commemorated the 200 years since the founding of the Archdiocese of Jakarta. The bicentennial was marked in the capital by celebrations that saw the participation of top Church leaders as well as members of the Indonesian government, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who expressed his appreciation for the contributions of the Catholic Church to the social development of the country.
Benedict XVI said that in today’s globalized economy, there is no true development without solidarity. The Pope was addressing the 350 experts who came to the Vatican to discuss “The Growing Role of Emerging Countries in Global Competition: Economic, Social and Cultural Consequences.”
It is time for the US to come together to address the moral, human and environmental dimensions of global climate change, the chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Policy says in a letter to American legislators. Bishop Thomas G. Wenski calls on congressional leaders to resist special interest group and instead focus on “common ground for common action to advance the common good.” “We hope this will be a time for our nation to come together across partisan, ideological and interest groups lines to address the moral, human and environmental dimensions of this growing challenge that faces all of humanity,” he writes.
