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The Arctic is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the results of the melting ice in the “Earth’s fridge” will be catastrophic to the planet. The data from this summer’s “defrosting” came just in time as a warning to the leaders
who will meet next December in Copenhagen to discuss an agreement to curb greenhouse gases. A debate that will affect all humanity.
Published in July, Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth), Benedict XVI’s first social encyclical, was widely acclaimed by its deep insight on a world affected by a global recession and still ruled by a soulless system that deprives millions from their fundamental rights. Four months have passed, and it is time for an accurate reflection over its obvious strengths and its not so obvious omissions. Because humankind is facing one of the most critical periods in history, marked not only by an almost unprecedented economic and financial crisis, but also by an ecological mayhem that can endanger the future of life on Earth.
In 1995, fifty-one of the largest one-hundred economies in the world were corporations. The combined sales of the top Japanese corporations alone were almost equivalent to the combined Gross Domestic Product of all South America.
Fr. Vincenzo Bordo, a missionary who manages a soup kitchen and three Family-Houses for boys in Seongnam (close to Seoul, South Korea’s capital), is quite happy with the kind of life he has been leading for twenty years. It is his daily routine that fills him with joy: to beg out of love; to bow in front of the poor; to extend a caress to the boys before sending them to bed; to praise the Lord before falling asleep. Amid the daily endeavors, these simple gestures give him serenity.
He thought that the impact of the bullets that reduced to shreds the right side of his body was the only one that he had to bear but, soon, Fr. Fulvio Cristoforetti was faced by another – an unexpected shock that changed his life, AIDS. This is the extraordinary adventure of a Comboni missionary in Uganda, Africa.
“You will find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden. Untie it…”
(Read Mark 11:1-11)
