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“The Gospel has a lot to give to and to receive from these millenary cultures and peoples.”
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 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.”
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.
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.
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.
Science and religion together play a crucial role in humanizing and neutralizing the ill effects of globalization, two Indian Jesuit scholars contend. Religious values can give a human face to globalization by making people all over the world see themselves as members of a single society linked by global trade, technology and new socio-cultural concepts, they maintain. Fr. Job Kozhamthadam, president of Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth (Light of Knowledge University), a pontifical seminary, and Fr. Kuruvilla Pandikattu, associate director of Indian Institute of Science and Religion (IISR), presented their views at a recent seminar.
The Society of the Divine Word’s Philippines Central Province (SVD PHC) began its two-year celebration of 100 years of missionary presence in the Philippines at Quezon City, highlighting mssion challenges today. The Order is planning the creation of a missiology institute as part of the centennial project.
In his message for Lent, Benedict XVI writes that it is foreign to the Gospel perspective to do good deeds expecting a personal return, perhaps in terms of public image. The entire Gospel is summed up in the commandment of charity, and according to the example of Jesus, what gives value to all almsgiving is love, which inspires different forms of giving, according to the opportunities and conditions of each one.
Is he a prophet, priest, politician or a popular uncorrupted elected leader? These are the questions that run through everyone’s mind when they hear that Father Ed Panlilio, 54, a Catholic priest on a leave of absence from regular priestly duties, is now the elected governor of Pampanga Province in the Philippines. Father Ed, as he is affectionally called by the hundreds of thousands who supported his bid for election last May, won against the traditional dynastic families that have ruled for generations. It was a powerful message from the people who had almost despaired of finding an honest independent candidate to oppose the elite. The people want to end the corruption and the culture of vice that the traditional politicians had fostered. Father Ed Panlilio has been named Filipino of the Year 2007 by a leading daily.
