Article Archive
Please click below to view any of the articles in our archive.
(Vatican Radio) Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the 52-year conflict with the Marxist FARC rebels. It was seen as a surprise choice after Colombians narrowly voted in a referendum last week to reject the peace deal signed by Santos and the rebels.The Nobel Committee said Santos had brought one of the longest civil wars in modern history significantly closer to a peaceful solution but there was still a real danger the peace process could come to a halt and that war could flare up again.Santos has promised to revive the peace plan despite the outcome of the referendum and said the Nobel peace prize award was "of invaluable importance" to further the peace process.Colombia’s Catholic Church played a key role as a mediator between the two sides during the long-running peace negotiations and has been at the forefront of trying to promote reconciliation.Ulrike Beck is the Colombia Programme Officer f...
CUAMM, an Italian non-governmental organisation, known as “Doctors with Africa” has expressed anxiety concerning the situation of the Oromia region of Ethiopia in the wake of a deadly stampede that killed about 55 persons.The deaths occurred early this month when Ethiopian Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at a huge crowd attending the Oromo religious annual festival known as Irreecha in the town of Bishoftu, some 40km from the capital Addis Ababa. The massive stampede that resulted saw some people falling into nearby ditches or off a cliff into the nearby lake.The Oromo People celebrate Irreecha to thank God for the blessings and mercies they have received throughout the previous year. As the festival was underway, some sections of the crowd started shouting anti-government slogans and making anti-government gestures that made police nervous. The government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has declared a three-days mourning period and is blaming the oppos...
(Vatican Radio) More than one million children in Syria have been signing a petition calling for peace as part of a fresh appeal to political leaders to end the Syrian civil war. At least 2,000 schools from many parts of Syria are taking part in the initiative in which youngsters have been drawing pictures and writing messages for the attention of the United Nations in Geneva and the European Union in Brussels.The Peace for Children scheme, organised with help from the Catholic charity, 'Aid to the Church in Need,' involves children of all ages describing in words and pictures the impact of the five-year conflict for them and their loved ones.The initiative was developed by the charity in response to reports that at least 2.1 million Syrian children are unable to attend school – with many education buildings evacuated or damaged because of the conflict.This week, children of all denominations in the capital, Damascus, as well as in Homs, Yabroud, Marmarita and A...
(Vatican Radio) A gruesome and terrifying cache made up of some 55,000 photographs of victims of torture perpetrated by the Syrian regime exposes the horror that took place between 2011 and 2013 in the prisons of Damascus.Entitled “Codename Caesar: Syrian detainees victims of torture” a selection of those images produced by ‘Caesar’ – a former forensic photographer of the Syrian Military Police, make up an exhibition that has been shown at the United Nations in New York, at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress, at the Holocaust Museum in Washington and in major European cities.It is currently showing in Rome and Mouaz Moustafa, Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force who presented the exhibition to the press, told Vatican Radio that work is ongoing – not only to try and identify the victims in the photographs, but also to try and obtain some justice.Listen: Mouaz Moustafa explains that ‘Caesar’ was off...
(Vatican Radio) Georgia’s ambassador to the Holy See says she believes the Pope’s recent visit to her country can help promote better relations with other Christian Churches.Ambassador Tamara Grdzelidze, an Orthodox theologian and former official at the World Council of Churches, told Vatican Radio she was saddened by some of the negative media coverage of the two day papal visit.Pope Francis spent September 30th and October 1st visiting the capital Tbilisi and the nearby ancient city of Mtskheta, where he and Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II prayed together in the 11th century Svetitskhoveli Cathedral.Speaking on her return to Rome with Philippa Hitchen, the ambassador highlighted some of the most positive points of the trip.....Listen: Firstly, Ambassador Grdzelidze mentions the gestures and speeches of the patriarch and the pope in the Patriarchal cathedral which she says “spoke this language of fraternal love” as they described the...
Christian and Muslim activists in Pakistan have welcomed a new law that punishes crimes of honour against women. Thursday, after two years stuck in the National Assembly, the bill was approved. It eliminates the so-called loophole that allowed killers to enjoy impunity due to a legal provision under which a relative of the victim could forgive the perpetrator.“It is good news and a step in right direction,” Sister Genevieve Ram Lal, national director of the Catholic Women Organization, told AsiaNews. The old law “was a license to kill and people were using this excuse to settle personal grudges”,The Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Amendment Bill) 2015 and the Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Amendment Bill) 2015 were both passed by joint sitting of both houses of parliament on Thursday. The legislation imposes Imprisonment for life on “honour” killers even if victim’s family forgives them. Now forgiveness will only spare them the death penalty....
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has appealed for concrete solidarity for the victims of Hurricane Matthew that has killed more than 500 people in Haiti, left tens of thousands homeless, and is now moving up the east coast of Florida.Meteorologists say Hurricane Matthew is the most powerful storm to batter the Caribbean in a decade.A telegramme signed by the Vatican Secretary of State on behalf of the Holy Father says the Pope “expresses his sadness and joins in prayer with those who have lost loved ones”.“Having learnt of the devastation wrought by the passage of Hurricane Matthew, which has claimed many lives and caused considerable damage” the telegrammed reads “the Holy Father expresses his condolences and assures the families of the victims his closeness while entrusting the deceased to the mercy of God”.And while he assures the injured and all those who have lost their homes in the disaster of his spiritual closeness and love, Pope Francis cal...
Vatican City, Oct 7, 2016 / 06:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After Hurricane Matthew killed more than 300 people and left thousands more homeless, Pope Francis has written a telegram assuring his prayer and spiritual closeness to all those affected by the disaster.“Learning of the devastation wrought by hurricane Matthew, which has caused numerous victims and considerable damage, His Holiness Pope Francis expresses his sadness and assures his prayer for all those who have lost a loved one,” the Oct. 7 telegram read.Signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and addressed to the president of the Haitian Bishops Conference Cardinal Chibly Langlois, the letter expressed the Pope’s “deep sympathy in these painful circumstances.”A category three storm with winds racing at 120mph, the hurricane is the most powerful Caribbean storm in a decade and has devastated Haiti, which is still reeling from the catastrophic earthquake that crushed much of the...
Vatican City, Oct 7, 2016 / 07:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After electing their new General Superior, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate had a meeting with Pope Francis, who told them that in the midst of a rapidly changing world, humanity needs missionaries filled love and zeal for the Gospel.“Today, every land is 'mission territory,' every dimension of the human being is mission territory, awaiting the announcement of the Gospel,” he said Oct. 6.“The field of the mission today seems to expand every day” with men and women in desperate situations, he said. “Therefore there is need of you, of your missionary courage, your willingness to take to all the Good News that liberates and consoles.”Pope Francis met with the Missionary Oblates exactly one week after they held elections for their next Superior General in Rome, as well as in honor of the 200th Jubilee of their founding, which is being celebrated throughout 2016.On Sept. 30th, the ...
By Carol GlatzVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Wherever public policy, communitiesand even religions may have failed, sports and recreation are ready and set tolift wounded spirits and build cooperation and peace in the world, said anumber of speakers at a Vatican conference."Sport is the medicine my mother couldn't giveme" to counteract the bullying and exclusion growing up in York,Pennsylvania, one Special Olympic champion said.Despite growing up poor, partially blind and mentallychallenged, "I could do Double Dutch like no one else" with jump-ropes and could run faster than the others, Loretta Claiborne said during aglobal conference on "Sport at the Service of Humanity," hosted bythe Pontifical Council for Culture Oct. 6-7.Maria Toorpakay Wazir -- a professional squash player whogrew up in the Taliban's "hotbed of terrorism" tribal regions ofPakistan -- told the audience "it was an accident" and a blessing"I got into sports.""When I realized at 4 years old, boys have morefreedom than girl...
