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Vacationers face a choice: to be pro-earth or anti-earth tourists. Encouraging vacationers to choose the former was the core of the message from the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers for this year’s World Tourism Day, scheduled for Sept. 27: a tourist “can contribute to keeping the planet alive and to curbing the gradual increase of alarming climate change.”
Christians should not label politics as the realm where corruption flourishes, but should engage in politics as an instrument for building up a society worthy of man. The statement was made by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, when he concluded a two-day Vatican conference on “Politics, a Demanding Form of Charity.”
“It is a duty of justice” that the international community “should be vigilant” over the distribution of the riches of the planet, so that the countries where these resources are located should be the first beneficiaries, and rich countries should not appropriate them for themselves alone. Justice and solidarity, the rejection of violence, and fraternity should, in fact, guide international relations. This is the central theme that Benedict XVI developed, receiving at the Vatican a group of ambassadors who came to present their letters of accreditation, including diplomatic representatives from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
The number of Catholics in the world is increasing – albeit not much: they were 1.31 billion in 2006, an increase of 1.4% compared to the 1.15 billion in 2005. And there is a continuation of the trend that, since 2000, has seen an increase in the number of priests, both diocesan and religious, who went from 406,411 in 2005 to 407,262 in 2006, an overall change of 0.21%. These are some of the figures contained in the Annuario Pontificio for 2008 presented by the Pope.
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 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.
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.”
The Vatican’s new secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is proposing a “universal commitment” in favor of the poor as part of the Vatican’s new diplomatic agenda. In his first address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, the prelate said this is one of the top priorities.
In a 13-page report, the Fides news agency of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples takes a look at the death penalty, calling it “cruel and unnecessary.”
In a message marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Pope Benedict pleaded for nuclear disarmament but backed the increased peaceful use of nuclear energy to promote development for the world’s poor. The pope noted that, among its objectives, the IAEA seeks “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world.”
