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An international human rights organization is campaigning for the Vietnamese government to investigate recent police violence against some 700 marchers who were trying to file a lawsuit against a polluting Taiwanese steel plant. Amnesty International said on Feb. 20 that hundreds of marchers, including women and children, from Song Ngoc Catholic Parish in Nghe An province were attacked by police on Feb. 14 while travelling to a court in neighboring Ha Tinh province. They intended to submit 619 individual complaints against Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese company that spilled toxic waste into the sea in April 2016 causing Vietnam's worst ecological disaster, according to a Reuters report. The complainants want damages totaling $20 million for the devastation of fish stocks they depended upon for their livelihoods.Father Francis Xavier Nguyen Hong An, head of Vinh Bishop's House Office, issued a statement On Fe...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met on Friday with participants in a conference on the human right to water, organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.Listen to the report by Philippa Hitchen: Pope Francis said the questions concerning the right to water are not marginal, but basic and pressing. Basic, because where there is water there is life, and pressing, because our common home needs to be protected.Yet we must also realise, he said, that not all water is life-giving, but only water that is safe and of good quality. The right to safe drinking water, he insisted, is a basic human right which cries out for practical solutions and needs to be given the central place it deserves in the framework of public policy. Our right to water, the Pope continued, gives rise to an inseparable duty. Every state, he said, is called to implement, also through juridical instruments, the Resolutions approved by the United Nations General Assembly since 2010 concerning the huma...
(Vatican Radio) The blessing of a newly commissioned icon of Christ the Saviour sets the stage for Pope Francis’ historic visit to the Anglican Church of All Saints on Sunday. It’s the first time a pope has ever visited an Anglican place of worship in his diocese of Rome and it comes as the centerpiece of celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the community.The icon, which will be blessed by the Pope, together with Anglican and Orthodox leaders attending the afternoon prayer service, is the work of English artist Ian Knowles, who heads a school for Palestinian art students in the Holy Land.He talked to Philippa Hitchen about the aims of the Bethlehem Icon Centre and the way this type of liturgical art can help to heal our ecumenical divisions…Listen: Knowles says he started the school four and half years ago as an attempt “to revive iconography as living art in the Holy Land” since research suggests that this art form began in the monast...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis received in audience on Saturday the French voluntary service agency, “the Catholic Delegation for Cooperation”, which is marking the 50th anniversary of its foundation.Listen to Lydia O’Kane's report: The Catholic Delegation for Cooperation is the international voluntary service agency run by the Church in France and has volunteers on missions in over 50 countries who work in solidarity with local Churches and communities on development projects.Culture of MercyTo mark its 50th anniversary the delegation on Saturday was received by Pope Francis in the Vatican where he told them to promote a culture of mercy.He said this culture needed to be one where “no one looks to the other with indifference or runs away when he sees the suffering of brothers “. Do not be afraid, the Pope told those gathered “to walk the streets of fraternity and to build bridges between peoples…”Through your initiatives, your pl...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday encouraged the Comunità di Capodarco in its work to help the disabled and marginalized people of society.The community was founded in 1966 in the Capodarco neighborhood of the eastern Italian city of Fermo.Its main activity is organizing services for the rehabilitation of disabled people, with a particular aim of social and occupational integration. Over the years, its sphere of action expanded to helping young people, children, drug addicts, immigrants, the mentally ill, and other populations on the peripheries of society.“The Comunità di Capodarco, existing in numerous local chapters, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year,” – Pope Francis told them – “With you, I thank the Lord for the good accomplished during these years … You have chosen to be on the side of people who are less protected; to offer them hospitality, support and hope, in a dynamic of sharing. In this way, you have con...
On Saturday morning in the Vatican, Pope Francis met with parish priests participating in a training course dealing with annulment procedures and other legal issues surrounding marriage.The course was organized by the Roman Rota, the highest appellate tribunal of the Church.Referring to the proposals of the Synod of Bishops on “Marriage and the Family”, and his subsequent Apostolic Exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia”, the Pope praised this study initiative saying it is the parish priest who is in daily contact with families and is called to concretely apply the appropriate juridical norms.In most cases, said the Pope, the parish priest is the first to whom young people turn when they decide to marry and create a new family. And again, it is to the parish priest that couples come when their marriage is in crisis and they need to rediscover the Grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony.No one knows better than you do, he told the priests, the complexity and ...
Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb 25, 2017 / 04:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics in Cincinnati are hoping that an upcoming meeting of bishops and leaders will give the local Church a much stronger voice to address issues of racism and violence.“It is a blessing for this archdiocese, through the archbishop, to embrace addressing racism, the pervasive gun violence, restorative justice…race relations, and mental health, that our voice has to be heard,” said Deacon Royce Winters, director of African-American ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.“That’s what we really wanted to do was to say as big and as powerful as the voice of the Catholic Church is in the United States, we have to do our part to bring about justice and the dignity of life for all peoples,” he told CNA.The Feb. 28 meeting of Catholic leaders at Xavier University – entitled “Promoting Peace In Our Communities” – is a continuation of a years-long effort by Cathol...
Vatican City, Feb 25, 2017 / 05:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday Pope Francis told a group of parish priests training on the new marriage annulment process to place strong emphasis on good preparation that isn’t limited to just a few courses, but extends even to the first few years after marriage.“I ask myself how many of these youth who come to marriage preparation courses understand what ‘marriage,’ the sign of the union of Christ and the Church, means,” the Pope said Feb. 25.“They say yes, but do they understand this? Do they have faith in this?” he asked, and voiced his conviction that “a true catechumenate is needed for the sacrament of marriage.”Part of this formation process he said, means being thorough, not “to make preparation with two or three meetings and then go forward.”During marriage prep, couples must be helped to understand “the profound meaning of the step that they are about to take.&rdquo...
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope's own advisers question....
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) -- Two crudely armored pickup trucks cruised along an eastern Mosul highway. A masked Iraqi officer riding shotgun yelled "Go! Go! Go!" and switched the radio from Iraqi folk music to fast, patriotic battle hymns as the vehicles sped up and weaved through the busy afternoon traffic....
