(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has written a letter to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in reference to the situation in the country. The chief of the Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi sj confirmed the news without giving information about the letter’s contents, on Monday.
Bill Gates this year focused in his annual letter, which launched Monday night, he tackles just one subject: clean, accessible energy. It was a curious decision for the famously intellectually-expansive Gates. Focusing on energy makes all of his other life-improving efforts easier to enact. Get the more than 1 billion people who live without energy hooked to the grid and suddenly, “you can run hospitals, light up schools and use tractors to grow more food.”
The 'Spotlight' on crimes against children It is the responsibility of all to protect society's most vulnerable. There comes a time when truth has to be revealed, when the secrecy of crimes can no longer be contained and denied, and when the guilty must be held to account. History shows that secrecy and cover-ups keep that day of reckoning at bay but one day the truth will come out.
Cardinal Peter K A Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Rome, (who is now at the Paris Climate talks) gave the Pope Paul VI CAFOD Memorial Lecture, on Friday, 4 December, entitled: 'Care for all Creation: a door to our common home.'
Human Trafficking is one of the gravest criminal challenges confronting the international community. The scale of the problem is such that now, according to some studies, it ranks as the second most profitable worldwide criminal enterprise after the illegal arms trade. The International Labour Organisation estimates that 2.4 million people are trafficked globally.
This video and an accompanying report by Human Rights Watch looks at the tragedy of children working in dangerous conditions in small-scale gold mines in the Philippines.
Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest?
In an international forum on economic growth and environmental sustainability, Catholic leaders and experts in the field argued that rather than being opposed, the two go hand-in-hand, and can lead to greater prosperity all-around. “Protecting the environment need not compromise legitimate economic progress,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said May 20.
Philippines Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has been elected president of Caritas, the international confederation of more than 150 Catholic development agencies. The cardinal-archbishop of Manila, dubbed “the Asian Pope Francis”, succeeds Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who has served two four-year terms as president.
Church agencies have warned that the 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal on Tuesday could have a devastating impact on the crippled country. Catherine Cowley, Protection Coordinator for the Catholic aid agency Cafod, said that the second disaster could have immense impact. To donate to Cafod click here http://www.cafod.org.uk/
Migration illustrates one of the signal features of modern life, which is malice by proxy. Like drones and derivatives, migration policy allows the powerful to inflict horrors on the powerless without getting their hands dirty.
After two months of living with local families Dewanto, student at the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, has come to appreciate the unique site.“We came here to feel how to live in the middle of ancestral forests and to get to know the local people that have protected the forests for years,” said the 23-year-old. The villagers have banked on eco-tourism, hoping that by attracting students, locals and foreigners alike, they can convince the world of the importance of protecting their land.
River's abundant food production and diverse ecology should not be traded for a meager amount of electricity. For nearly two decades, the onslaught of the Mekong's development by capitalists has spread its destructive wings with dozens of dams being planned on the lower and upper Mekong River mainstream.
The Middle East's Christian Diaspora. The Christian population of Iraq, which has its roots in the ancient Assyrians who embraced Christianity in biblical times, numbered 1.3 million before 2003. Over the next decade, nearly a million Christians fled to neighboring countries. Many who became refugees fled to the West if they could.
The director of Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Afghanistan was abducted on Monday afternoon by a group of unidentified men from Sohadat village outside Herat, according to Jesuit Provincial of South Asia Fr Edward Mudavassery.
US secretary of state says America is 'actively considering sanctions' as ethnic violence spreads. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has warned of a possible genocide in South Sudan, and raised the threat of sanctions against the leaders of warring factions in the world's newest country.
Migration is in fact “a striking phenomenon because of the sheer numbers of people involved, the social, economic, political, cultural and religious problems it raises, and the dramatic challenges it poses to nations and the international community”, for “every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance”
