Shortly after the 2016 referendum, a friend of mine, an experienced diplomat, said of Brexit that it could best be understood as a type of cult, played out on a vast – and therefore catastrophic – national stage. We both knew of the likely range of disastrous consequences that would flow from the “decision” that the “people” had supposedly then just taken.
Former Pakistan cricket star Imran Khan has pledged to help the weakest in society after declaring victory in what is being perceived as the country's most controversial general election.
In a world where national egotism is growing stronger, fraternity still has something to offer. The concept has formed part of the France's motto of “liberty, equality, fraternity” since 1848. Now, France’s Constitutional Council has ruled that fraternity “must be respected as a constitutional principle by the legislator and may be invoked in legal hearings.”
Lord (Chris) Patten, the former Conservative party chair, has launched an attack on fellow Tories, “right-wing English nationalists” and elements of the press who are seeking to drive through Brexit having used immigration to win the referendum two years ago.
The story of the Aquarius is a sign that Europe is heading for a refugee crisis this summer worse than any previously. Aquarius, a motor vessel hired by non-government organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières, had rescued nearly 700 refugees, a quarter of them children, from unseaworthy small boats off the Libyan coast. It proposed to land them in Italy, as had been done previously. Meanwhile, the new Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, fulfilling what he said was a campaign pledge, refused to let the Aquarius dock.
The Conservative peer Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of Oxford University, has outlined the urgent need to speak out for the role of universities as bulwarks of liberal democracy. "The foundations of liberal democracy are being eroded “at an accelerating pace”.
Over 25 years ago a gang of four men took me at gunpoint from a basketball court to my school office. They introduced themselves as members of a proscribed organization and made me sit on a chair while they kicked my face. That was the first attack I encountered on June 14, 1991, in my three decades of working as a Salesian missionary in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur.
Jacob Rees-Mogg talks to Lorna Donlon about reconciling Catholicism and Consevatism. The light dapples on the grumpy waters of the River Thames and Jacob Rees-Mogg MP and I are nudging towards the end of afternoon tea alongside a terrace in the Houses of Parliament, when I raise the question of the leadership of the Conservative Party. ... “Well, you know I am eligible to be pope,” he pronounces in a jocular tone. “All Catholic males are eligible to be pope if the Holy Ghost so decides …
Tackling human trafficking has become one of the main priorities of the Catholic Church in recent years. In September last year, Vatican officials met with groups, including police authorities, from around the world to share experiences on how they try to combat the scourge.
It is not clear to me that the risk to Alfie’s health of being transported to Rome in an air ambulance in order to receive continued treatment was so great that to have decided to try it would have been gravely unreasonable. When parents with reasonable disagreements with their child’s doctors have no right to take their child to other doctors for treatment, and when medical guidelines allow doctors and judges to make judgements on the worth of a life, the sad reality is this: that bad laws make hard cases.