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(Vatican Radio) Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, addressed the 32nd session of the Human Rights Council Thursday, drawing attention to the efforts of the Catholic Church in education on behalf of young women and girls.The 32nd session of the Human Rights Council has as its focus Women’s rights and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: delivery on the promise to leave no one behind. Archbishop Jurkovic said education "represents one of the most important determining factors for the promotion of women in society", empowering them in their role as protagonists in society in the face of inequality and violence. "Collaboration with and respect for women are fundamental in building a society based on real values, including those related to religious convictions."He noted that the Catholic Church sponsors around 400,000 elementary and secondary schools in all parts of t...
(Vatican Radio) Vatican Weekend for 19th of June 2016 features our weekly selection of readings and reflections on the Sunday gospel presented by Jill Bevilacqua and an interview focusing on ‘Chesterton & Eugenics: the challenge of our time’ with the President of the Chesterton Institute at Seton Hall and editor of the Chesterton Review, Fr. Ian Boyd, CSB along with his Seton Hall colleague and friend, Prof. Dermot Quinn.Listen to a programme presented and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick:
(Vatican Radio) A video message by Pope Francis was released on Friday to highlight an awareness and fund-raising initiative by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The charity’s “Be God’s Mercy” initiative marking the Jubilee Year of Mercy was formally launched at a press conference in the offices of Vatican Radio. Please click here to listen and watch Pope Francis' video message. In his video message the Pope urged people to “carry out works of mercy together with ACN in every corner of the world, in order to meet the many, many needs of today.”Please find below a full English translation of the Pope's video message on behalf of the charity, ACN:"I want to appeal to all men and women of good will all around the world for a work of mercy to be done in each town, in each diocese, in each association. We, men and women, need God’s mercy, but we also need each other’s mercy. We need to take each ...
(Vatican Radio) A group of nine Syrian refugees, including two Christians, arrived in Rome on Thursday from the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, following the visit of Pope Francis to the island on April 16, when he accompanied three families of refugees back to Rome.The Vatican Gendarmeria, with the help of Interior Ministry of Greece, the Greek Asylum Service, and the Community of Sant’Egidio, accompanied the refugees from Athens to Rome on Thursday. The Community of Sant’Egidio will provide for their housing, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.The refugees, six adults and three children, are all Syrian citizens who were in the Kara Tepe refugee camp. They had arrived in Lesbos from Turkey.
The Ethiopian Catholic Church’s Social and Development Commission Coordinating Office of Meki (ECC SDCOM) is providing irrigation water to 1200 households. The irrigation scheme constructed at Azezera Beredu Kebele of Arsi Zone has the potential to irrigate about 450 hectares of land. The project which includes the Women Savings and Credit Cooperative is implemented with a budget of 3 million Euros secured from Oxfam Intermón.The local community which is traditionally dependent on rain-fed agriculture hopes that with the new structure, they will be able to harvest crops about three times a year. This will significantly increase the annual income of every beneficiary household as they now can produce beyond consumption. The surplus will be for the market. For such a rural community, any increase in the income for families means fewer burdens on women and children. This will allow children to attend school without disruption thus moulding them into more successful citiz...
(Vatican Radio) June 18th marks the first anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical Laudato Si’, focused on the care of our common home.The document, presented at a high profile press conference in the Vatican, explores the interconnected concerns of caring for human life and protecting the environment, calling for action based on an interior ecological conversion.Named after the words of St Francis in his Canticle of the Creatures, the encyclical asks what kind of world do we want to leave to our children and urges humanity to work together to solve the most pressing problems of inequality, injustice and environmental destruction.One year on, numerous conferences and encounters are taking place to examine the impact of the encyclical and ask how it is changing hearts, minds and practical policies.Among the interreligious organisations that have taken the Pope’s call to heart is the Jerusalem based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Devel...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis wants to see the laity more and more involved in the Church’s mission to evangelize in light of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The Pope made that affirmation in an address Friday to participants of the last Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity ahead of the reform process that will bundle the department together with the Council for the Family and the Academy for Life. As one phase comes to a close, a new horizon opens for the mission of the laity in the Church, Francis told participants at Friday’s audience. In this, the last plenary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Pope began by thanking those who have worked in this institution of the Curia for their commitment. The Council was set up after the Second Vatican Council with the blessings of Pope Paul VI.No to lay people acting on "proxy" of the hierarchyThe Pope recalled the many fruits born over the last 5...
239 Catholic couples were able to celebrate their marriage in style in Indonesia, thanks to collaboration between the Diocese of Atambua and local authorities in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province. The event was held under a huge tent in St Filomena Church in Mena, where Fr Kanis Oki and several priests concelebrated the nuptial Mass organised as part of the Jubilee of Mercy "to reiterate the beauty of marriage”. Practical reasons brought about the mass wedding, most notably a desire to facilitate the issuance of marriage certificates, a notoriously painful process in Indonesia. A few months ago, Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa spoke publicly about the importance of marriage and birth certificates, something that many Indonesians fail to grasp. He noted that 85 per cent of all children in NTT, the country’s most Catholic province, do not have a birth certificate. Some 36 million Indonesian children out of a total of 87 ...
An Indian court jailed 11 Hindus for life on Friday for murdering dozens of Muslims during riots in Gujarat in 2002 that shook India at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state's chief minister.The court sentenced 12 other people to seven years in jail for arson and their role in rioting in which 69 Muslims were killed, while another was handed a 10-year sentence, prosecutors said. The massacre came during a series of religious riots that flared for two months in Gujarat, killing more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. The court called the massacre the "darkest day" but rejected prosecutors' demand to sentence the defendants to death after ruling that the attack was not planned. A Hindu mob scaled the boundary wall of a housing complex in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, in February 2002 before torching the homes in which Muslim families were trapped. Among the victims were children and women who were burned to death.Th...
The Islamic State group is committing genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes against the Yazidi community in Iraq and Syria, a U.N. panel said Thursday, calling on countries to do more to stop it. The Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued its first report on Thursday specifically looking at IS crimes against Yazidis after the extremist group's attack on unarmed Yazidi communities in northwestern Iraq in August 2014. Many Yazidis were taken into Syria, and over 3,200 Yazidi women and children are still captive, the report said. The 41-page report, based on 45 interviews with survivors, religious leaders, activists, medical staffers and others, seeks to put allegations of rape, sexual slavery and other crimes in a wider context of crimes against humanity and genocide by alleging that such practices are part of a IS strategy to wipe out the Yazidis, whom the radicals see as infidels.The U.N. estimates that some 5,000 Yazidi men were killed by IS m...
