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“Asia, like the rest of humanity – as pope Benedict xvi says in his message for world mission sunday – ‘needs to be liberated and redeemed.’”
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has adopted a new benchmark for poverty line that is more accurate and more relevant to the Asia-Pacific region. The new benchmark, called the Asian Poverty Line, has been fixed at an income of $1.35 per day, the Manila-based regional lender said in a press release while presenting its annual statistical publication – Key Indicators 2008. ADB estimated that according to the new evaluation system, there were probably 843 million people in Asia who lived under the poverty line in 2005.
“A new phase begins for the Church of Vietnam,” said Msgr. Nguyen Chu Trinh, bishop of Xuan Loc and chairman of the Committee of Charitable and Social Activities of the Vietnam Bishops’ Council. His assessment of the government’s decision to allow the rebuilding of the Vietnam chapter of Caritas is quite positive. Forced to shut down in June 1976, Caritas Vietnam will be able to operate again, thanks to a decision announced to the Bishops’ Committee by Nguyen The Doanh, head of the Government Committee for Religious Affairs.
A specter is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group. “It’s the specter of a food, fuel and water crisis,” says Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the affiliated organization.
The Apostles of Jesus, Africa’s first Religious Missionary Institute, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It was founded in the late 1960s by two Comboni missionaries, Bishop Sisto Mazzoldi and Fr. Giovanni Marengoni, both deceased.
The growing global gap between the world’s rich and poor requires a Gospel approach to combating poverty, Vatican Cardinal Renato Martino said at a Pan-African conference in Tanzania. Catholic News Service reports that, Cardinal Martino, during his trip to the country, also announced that the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is preparing a document on “poverty in the age of globalization.”
Dark clouds are gathering over China’s economy as it feels the pinch from the US credit crisis and the slowdown in the world economy. The China Construction Bank, the country’s second largest bank but its top mortgage lender, expects its profits to slow down considerably for the rest of the year and in the second half and next year.
On World Mission Sunday, 2008, a very memorable event will unfold in Lisieux, France. Louis and Zélie Martin, parents of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the Church’s patroness of mission, will be beatified. Pope Benedict XVI recently recognized a miracle attributed to the Martins; it involves the healing of Italian Pietro Schiliro, who had a fatal lung malformation. Who were these unique parents?
The mission of the Catholic Church is evangelization of cultures and the inculturation of the faith through intercultural dialogue, a Vatican official recently stated at a seminar in India. Father Theodore Mascarenhas, who heads the Asia Desk in the Rome-based Pontifical Council for Culture, told seminar participants: “Evangelization for the Catholic Church means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity and, through its influence, transforming humanity from within.”
Retired Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo laid aside his miter and took up the sash of the presidency of Paraguay last April 20. He is the first bishop of modern times to be elected to high office and he ended the dictatorial 61-year rule of the Colorado party of the former dictator and tyrant Alfredo Stroessner who drove three of Bishop Lugo’s brothers into exile in fear of their lives.
