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(Vatican Radio) A bleak 2017 is staring Venezuela in the face, with hyper inflation, food queues and a long winter of discontent. 

In his "Urbi et Orbi" message on Christmas Day, Pope Francis wished peace upon our broken world and highlighted the situation in Venezuela saying:  “May courage motivate the beloved country of Venezuela to undertake the necessary steps to put an end to current tensions, and build together a future of hope for the whole population”.

James blears reports on the economic and social difficulties faced by the population and on a political impasse which does not bode well for the future.

Listen: 

THE 100 bolivar banknote will soon be replaced by a five hundred. but this cant keep pace with rampant inflation, which is more than 200 percent, and could treble in this coming year.  

Long food queues, acute shortages of basic commodities, even toilet paper, a currency which is reminiscent of the wheel barrows of banknotes, in the long ago era of the Weimar republic in a desperate post world one Germany.

It's all unravelled since the death of hugo Chavez on October 13th 2013.  oil prices which made vezezuela rich have plummented and hard times are gripping it.

The national electoral council refused a recall referendum on president Nicolas maduro before January, so he or his vice president will complete the presidential term. the outlook politically, economically and socially appears bleak for Venezuela.

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(Vatican Radio) Romania plunged into political turmoil Tuesday as the president refused to nominate as prime minister an economist who could have become the country's first female Muslim premier. 

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

President Klaus Iohannis made clear that he used the Christmas holiday to decide whether to nominate the 52-year-old Muslim Sevil Shhaideh to the post of prime minister. 

On Tuesday he urged the Social Democratic Party, the winners of the December 11 elections, to nominate someone else as government leader. "I carefully examined the pros and cons and I have decided not to accept this nomination," he told reporters.
 
"Consequently I request the PSD-ALDE coalition to put forward another name."

He did not say why he would not name Shhaideh as the country's first female Muslim prime minister of this mainly Eastern Orthodox Christian nation of some 22 million people. 

UNDER PRESSURE

However she had been criticized for lacking sufficient political experience. Shhadeih briefly served as regional development minister last year. 

Social Democrat chairman Liviu Dragnea is unable to become prime minister because he was convicted this year of election fraud.

The opposition had accused him of trying to run the country from the sidelines by installing Shhaideh as his puppet.

Tuesday's tensions comes amid public pressure on politicians to end corruption and social difficulties in what is one of the poorest European Union nations. 

Many people still struggle with the daily burden of transition in Romania, where ousted authoritarian leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed in 1989, on Christmas Day. 

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Denver, Colo., Dec 27, 2016 / 10:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When Bayaud Enterprises was started in 1969 in Denver, Colorado, they had one thing on their mind: employment.

But not just any kind of employment. They wanted to seek out individuals with chronic mental illness and psychiatric disabilities to find them permanent jobs and an independent lifestyle.

Flash forward to 2016, and Bayaud Enterprises has aided over 7,000 individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment find full-time jobs, housing, and benefit acquisition instead of relying on local boarding and care homes.

“We think there is a real connection between people living independently and working...it provides dignity to the individuals,” executive director of Bayaud Enterprises David Henninger told CNA.

“The neat thing about employment is you really get to see a person blossom,” Henninger said, adding that the impact of finding permanent work for someone with a disability is life-changing.

Henninger has been with Bayaud Enterprises since its founding in 1969, and has been its executive director since 1973.

Although it was originally started as a Colorado-state run program through the Mental Health Institute at Ft. Logan, Bayaud evolved by starting its own program that helped patients after they left mental health centers.

“In a psychiatric hospital setting, you often see people initially at their worst – at the bottom of the barrel in terms of where they are,” Henninger said.

“As part of their recovery from a mental illness, the impact of work is really huge, in terms of ego and self-worth,” he said.

Bayaud Enterprises created a diverse work program that includes subcontracted work from the local business community. They hold ten different federal contracts in the state of Colorado and work with organizations such as the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and local hospitals and hotels.

In addition, they own a secure document shredding business with over 5,000 customers across the front range. Instead of sending the shredded paper to a landfill, Bayaud Document Services compounds the paper into bales and sends it to recycling.

With such a diverse range in businesses, Bayaud is able to place every individual seeking work at the appropriate level of employment. Henninger noted that Bayaud has aided individuals with “all sorts of ability,” from people with higher education degrees to people who have been diagnosed with aspergers.

“We outplace about 400 people a year into competitive jobs that aren’t related to Bayaud – and success stories there abound,” Henninger stated.

Henninger recalled one man in particular who came to Bayaud without permanent housing. He was placed as an administrative assistant in a small insurance company and worked there for several years.

“The owner of the insurance firm really liked him...when the owner decided to retire, he actually turned the business over to this individual and that individual is now running a small insurance company and has hired his own employees,” Henninger noted.

Bayaud Enterprises continues to serve over 1,200 individuals in Colorado every year through their employment services and benefit acquisition services. By offering resource navigation, they are also able to help individuals secure additional benefits such as social security, disability, medicaid, food supplement services, housing, and transportation.

“When people approach Bayaud, they are unemployed. So, people are finding some differences in their own personal lives that are significant,” Henninger stated.

Bayaud Enterprises is also focused on remaining community-centric by being involved in local community and emphasizing permanent employment and housing. They have cultivated relationships with local homeless shelters, such as the Samaritan House, by placing homeless residents in long-term jobs.

Their program also boosts local economy by generating annual payrolls of about $5 million every year.

“Our longevity of 10+ years of all of our staff says that they believe in our mission of providing hope and opportunity and choice...we do make a difference and we see it,” Henninger continued.

“Really, these jobs become transformational.”


This article was originally published Feb. 23, 2016.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Octavio Duran

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SANTA FE, N.M. (CNS) -- Santa Fe Archbishop John C. Wester attacked an effort to reinstate tax on groceries in New Mexico.

In a statement a week before Christmas, he said such a tax burdens the poor and working families.

"Our neighbors are hungry!" he said. "At this time as we prepare for Christmas, countless nonprofits and civic organizations work to fill food baskets, but some legislators want to take food out of another basket, the grocery basket, with their proposed food tax."

Bringing back a food tax has been discussed in interim hearings of the state Legislature. Although not yet formally introduced, it could become part of comprehensive tax proposal, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Archbishop Wester called on all New Mexicans to oppose the food tax.

"This 'tortilla tax,' as many have labeled it, only shifts the burden onto the poor and working families," he said. "What makes this idea even more obscene is that New Mexico ranks second highest in the nation for children living in hunger and highest for children living in poverty."

A spokesman for New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, told AP that the governor has said she would veto any effort to raise taxes on families. AP quoted Michael Lonergan, her spokesman, as saying Martinez "has never supported raising taxes -- especially on food and gas."

In 2004 New Mexico repealed its decades-old regressive tax on food. Then-Gov. Bill Richardson vetoed a reimposition of the food tax in 2010. Children and family advocates in New Mexico have successfully fought more recent efforts to bring back the food tax.

Most states exempt groceries from sales tax. The exceptions are: Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota, which tax groceries at the same rate as all other products. Missouri, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia also tax groceries, but at a rate lower than other products.

Idaho's income tax law provides a $20 credit per person designed to partially offset the impact of taxing groceries, according to the Washington-based Tax Foundation. Kansas has a law that provides for a limited refund of the tax for the disabled, the elderly and low-income households.

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IMAGE: CNS pohoto/Musa Al Shaer, pool via EPA

By Doreen Abi Raad

BEIRUT (CNS) -- Lamenting the exodus of Christians from their ancestral homelands, Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East pleaded for peace and security in their annual Christmas messages.

In separate statements, the prelates shared their anguish regarding the persecution and uprooting of Christians from the region.

Cardinal Bechara Rai, patriarch of Maronite Catholics, appealed to the international community to work to end terrorism "that is killing and displacing families and depriving them of their rights and dignities" He made the comments in his message from Bkerke, the patriarchate north of Beirut.

He also called upon the U.N. Security Council "to work seriously to find political solutions to the wars, aimed at bringing comprehensive and lasting peace and the repatriation of refugees back to their homelands."

In his message, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan called attention to "our beloved brothers and sisters of Syria and Iraq ... deprived of the Christmas joy, having endured the horrible consequences of war, violence, and all kind of persecutions." They suffered "all this hardship" because of their Christian faith and their willingness "to persevere in faithfulness to Jesus the Savior," he added.

Patriarch Younan reiterated that Christians were "uprooted from their lands and driven out unjustly from their homes by barbarian terrorists, in Mosul and the Plain of Nineveh, Iraq," referring to the exodus of some 100,000 Christians -- among them more than 60,000 Syriac Catholics -- when the region was overtaken by Islamic State militants in 2014.

"How would they welcome Christmas, but in tears and anxiety for their future!" the patriarch wrote.

Regarding his visit in late November to the recently liberated Christian villages in the Nineveh Plain, Patriarch Younan said "there is still a lot to do" to inspire confidence "to our eradicated and exiled community" to return to their ancestral land.

"We have to keep hoping that the local government and international leaders will expel the terrorists and restore peace and security," he said, emphasizing that this is a basic condition for the return "of our uprooted people."

"We hope the same for all the inhabitants of war-torn Aleppo, the second largest city of Syria, after being liberated and reunified," he added.

Patriarch Younan expressed his appreciation for the "praiseworthy efforts of many Catholic politicians in the West who would disagree with the official policy of their government in dealing with the plight of Christians in the Middle East."

"We need the honest and courageous solidarity of elected people, like Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, to speak up on behalf of Christians and other minorities who have been oppressed, abused and up-rooted by jihadists who kill innocents in the name of their religion, either in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Nigeria."

Before Christmas, Smith, R-New Jersey, visited Irbil, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq to meet with Christians who had fled Islamic State forces.

The patriarch said it is "quite evident that our people have been persecuted because of religious hatred and forgotten because of the political opportunism of the powerful of this world."

Patriarch Younan, a native of the Syrian province of Hassake, served for 14 years as bishop of Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac Catholic Diocese of the U.S. and Canada, which is based in Newark, New Jersey. He was elected patriarch in January 2009.

Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregoire III Laham, in his message, stressed that "today in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, the Christian presence is threatened ... by wars that have given rise to this terrifying exodus, especially of Christians."

"This is a prayer for the peace of Christmas to protect our suffering countries, especially Palestine, Iraq and most especially our beloved Syria," the Syrian-born patriarch wrote. "I continue to repeat my motto: give us peace and security, because that is the warranty and condition for Christian resistance, presence, role and witness."

Patriarch Laham urged the region's Christians to stay in their homelands, stressing that "our presence here is of great, global and historical significance! We are not asked to sacrifice our families, though we must struggle to remain here despite dangers, difficulties and hardships."

"If Christians emigrate," Patriarch Laham added, "it is as though Christ were leaving his country and homeland."

From Baghdad, Iraq, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako, wrote: "Amidst the concerns and worries of Iraqis, Syrians, and people of the Middle East, in which children and civilians are victims of a harsh war, millions of persons are displaced from their homes, driven out of their lands and are living in tragic conditions, after the destruction of their towns' infrastructure."

He expressed his hope that "this feast may revive our people's hope to return to their homes, ancestral lands, history and memories."

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