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“For the Church, mission is not an option. It is her vocation and duty. A community which doesn’t care for mission resembles more a spiritual club than a Church.”
The editor of World Mission magazine, Fr. José Rebelo, is one of the laureates of the 2010 International Award for Excellence in Journalism (www.ucip.ch/aw/2010/aa.htm), given by the Geneva-based International Catholic Union of the Press (UCIP). “The two major criteria of the award are content value and journalistic presentation,” states the award description.
At the end of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, a film on a group of French monks who were martyred in Africa during the 1990s won the 2010 event’s second highest honor. “Of Gods and Men,” a film by the French director Xavier Beauvois (right side photo), centers around the true story of seven Cistercian monks who were taken hostage and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in 1996. Though the monks were told to return to their native France, the group refused and chose to remain in the conflict-torn region of the Algerian mountains, knowing that they would be martyred. The movie was awarded the “Grand Prix” honor, which is the festival’s second highest prize.
The African continent loses between US$200 billion and US$400 billion annually in capital flight by firms (mainly foreign). This fact has emerged from the 20th World Economic Forum on Africa, held in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.
Fr. Matteo Ricci was primarily a missionary who went to China to bring the Gospel.” And in doing so, he formed an important “dialogue between cultures, between China and the West.” This is what Benedict XVI said at the Paul VI Hall packed with thousands of pilgrims from Macerata, birthplace of Matteo Ricci, and Marche, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the death of the great Jesuit missionary. Welcoming the bishops and the faithful, the Pope also greeted the Chinese with a resounding “Nimen hao?” (How are you?)
Though there is a declining number of children being forced to work, the trend over the last decade shows the rate of that decline is getting slow. According to the latest report from the International Labor Organization (ILO), there are still today more than 215 million children working, often in agriculture. More than half of them – 115 million – are employed in activities that the ILO describes as dangerous, although not reaching forms of slavery, per se.
Fishing is a critical means of providing food, livelihood, trade, and economic growth in many developing countries – as well as in the United States. In many small island developing nations and coastal countries – such as Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and Ghana – fish provide at least 50% of the population’s total animal protein intake. And approximately 43.5 million people’s year-round income depends on fish production while the income of another 4 million depends on seasonal jobs as fishers and fish product workers.
Since humanity is suffering from a lack of reflection and deep thought, evangelization has become an even more immense mission, underlined Benedict XVI. The Pope made this assertion when he received participants in the ordinary assembly of the Supreme Committee of the Pontifical Missionary Societies.
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan top a new ranking of countries at “extreme risk” of experiencing natural disasters compiled by a global risk assessment company. The Natural Disaster Risk Index (NDRI), released by Maplecroft, ranks 229 countries according to the human impact of natural disasters in terms of deaths per annum and per million of population, plus the frequency of events as well as the likelihood of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, flooding, droughts, landslides, extreme temperatures and epidemics. Asia accounts for most of the disaster-related deaths since 1980. Ranking countries most vulnerable to natural disasters over the past 30 years could enable businesses and investors to identify risks to international assets while supporting humanitarian efforts to push governments into investing in disaster risk reduction initiatives.
The landslide victory of the new president, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, was obtained on a wave of hope and nostalgia that began with an emotional tsunami during the long 8-hour funeral procession of his mother, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, last August 2009.
