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The important lesson to draw from this saga is to appreciate how a group of adolescents had the mental capacity to wait and be united in adversity in order to survive.
Missionaries are present amongst the Lumads advocating for their land rights, setting up literacy schools, improving their livelihood and providing for health programs. They also promote inculturation with the view of deepening the people’s faith.
The type of development being applied in Amazonia is having devastating effects, says Cardinal Claudio Humes – president of the commission for Amazonia of the Brazilian Conference of Bishops. The prelate explains how the local Churches are preparing for the Synod of Bishops for Amazonia which will be celebrated in October 2019.
The Ati tribe’s 2.1 hectare property is by far the smallest ancestral domain in the Philippines. Other domains cover thousands of hectares of land that are sold or used for purposes of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The author recounts an experience of “standing at the edge of hell” in a music festival with other Catholic and Protestant Christians campaigning against abortion. The reactions of the festival goers passing by were rather aggressive, using obscene gestures and vulgar language.
On November 4, 2017, Sister Rani Maria Vattalil was beatified at Indore (India). She worked with the landless and exploited farming families. Her activities were a thorn in the flesh of moneylenders, social exploiters and propertied upper castes, who hired an assassin to get rid of her.
The turning away of 629 migrants by Italy and Malta signals a growing trend of discrimination and rejection of the poor and wretched from the Middle East and Africa by Europe and the U.S. Yet Spanish authorities opened their frontiers to welcome them in an act of solidarity.
People involved in the Church’s mission imitate the Good Samaritan – they see those who are in need, give them their attention and take care of them. In doing so they keep the command of Jesus “Go and do the same yourself.”
On May 10, Pope Francis visited Nomadelfia, the small town where “brotherhood is the law”. This example of Christian utopia, inspired by the community of the Acts of the Apostles, is the dream of a prophetic figure of priest, Fr. Zeno Saltini, an example of “holiness in the neighborhood” about which Pope Francis wrote in his last apostolic exhortation.
In evangelizing the poor the primary goal should not be their conversion but rather a selfless love that expects nothing in return. Mother Teresa and her sisters served the needy as an act of love to Jesus Himself.
