Sadly, and ironically, just last week, the abortion statistics for 2019 were released – and they broke my heart. For the second year running, we recorded the highest abortion figures ever experienced in England and Wales.
Cheer, clap, rattle our pots and pans to show how much we cherish our NHS staff and all who work on the front lines in care homes, pharmacies, stores, transport and delivery or one of the three-quarters-of-a-million volunteers. I am not alone in hearing in that glorious cacophony the sound of a people and a nation rediscovering their better selves.
This is what Pope Francis said in the Urbi et Orbi Easter Message, inviting Europe to give concrete proof of solidarity: “After the Second World War, this continent was able to rise again thanks to a concrete spirit of solidarity […]. It is more urgent than ever, especially in the present circumstances, that these rivalries do not regain force, but that all recognize themselves as part of a single family and support one another.” Today, the pope continued, “the European Union is presently facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its own future but that of the whole world.”
Survival, isolation, community and love are explored in these plausible, prescient books. Jane Ciabattari on the novels that tell us ‘we’ve been through this before and we’ve survived’.
An interview on ‘the courage to look ahead’. The whole planet is experiencing a crisis. At this most serious moment there is a need for guidance to accompany us and help us understand the meaning of what we are living through.
When drawing the roadmap for India's fight against coronavirus, Modi banked heavily on a lockdown — perhaps the only easily available method before him. But its effect on the masses — the daily wage workers, farmers and migrants — is turning out to be disastrous.
“How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13). Before Covid-19, when I sang those words I used to think of my brothers and sisters in Iraq: how long will their suffering go on, decade after decade? Now they are the words in all our mouths. How long, O Lord, will this pandemic continue?
In a more recent book, the medical doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer[3] states that in the time of cholera there is also a need to critically question all the social, cultural and political conditions that characterize people’s lives and so should be an integral part of any intervention aimed at promoting health on the ground.
The famines of ancient Egypt are well known, the one that occurred in Rome in 5 BCE, those that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages,.. Recently, North Korea found itself unable to feed its population. It appears we are facing an endless problem, an endemic evil. Will humanity be able to heal this plague that has reappeared throughout history? What are its causes?
Church leaders are condemning the second church attack in the province in three months. In November, a mob raided St. Dominic Catholic Church in Waqya Chak village of Arifwala subdistrict, destroying its boundary wall and gate. They also removed a cross from a wall.