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PARIS (AP) -- Eight children and three adults were struck by lightning Saturday in a Paris park after a sudden spring storm sent a bolt crashing down upon a children's birthday party, a spokesman for Paris' fire service said. He credited an off-duty firefighter with playing a critical role in getting medical help to the victims but some were still fighting for their lives....
(Vatican Radio) Hungary says it will soon open a third transit zone on its border with Serbia where refugees can apply for asylum amid concerns about a new influx of people fleeing war and poverty. The announcement came after the United Nations refugee agency urged the two countries to find a human solution to the situation of refugees camping in dire conditions at the border between the two countries.Listen to Stefan Bos' report: The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said Hungary and Serbia should care for the hundreds of refugees who are stuck at the border, waiting to enter the European Union. The UNHCR Representative in Serbia, Hans Schodder, visited the small tent city Friday that has formed on the Serbian side of the razor-wire fence Hungary put up last year to keep out migrants.He expressed concern that the estimated 300 people are camping in an area without toilets and running water, relying on aid groups for food and water. Schodder declined to compare t...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday received some four hundred children of different ethnicities, cultures and religions – many of them migrants and refugees – who had traveled to Rome from Calabria in southern Italy aboard the “Children’s Train” – the Treno dei Bambini – an annual initiative of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which this year has as its theme, “Carried by waves”: a theme that is designed at once to invoke the often deadly danger of migration, and the hope in the promise of a better future that drives people – along with the threat of torture, slavery and death – to flee their homelands and seek a better life on strange and distant shores.Click below to hear our full report The children arrived Saturday at St. Peter’s railway station in the Vatican: their conveyance brining also the pain of the experience of its young passengers – their undeniable suffering, weaved together with ...
(Vatican Radio) This weekend here in Rome, the Church is marking the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy in a special way with the Jubilee of Deacons. As their very title suggests – taken as it is from the Greek word for “servant”, diakonos – Deacons are ordained to a ministry of service in the Church: they proclaim the Good News liturgically, they assist priests at the Altar, and they preach to the faithful on matters pertaining to authentic Christian living. Deacons also bring the Blessed Sacrament to the sick in hospital and to the housebound: they visit prisoners, offering them both companionship and counsel; they baptize, receive the marriage vows of couples entering Holy Matrimony, and they pray for the dead.Two Deacons from the United States, the Rev. Messrs. Doug Breckenridge and Greg Kandra, visited Vatican Radio during the course of their pilgrimage to celebrate the Jubilee of Deacons, and spoke with us about the joys and challenges of t...
(Vatican Radio) Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia's military will target Romania and Poland in response to a US-built missile defense system in the region. He made the comments during his two-day trip to Greece which ended Saturday with a visit to a Russian monastery. Listen to Stefan Bos' report: Putin used his first visit to a European Union country this year to condemn western policies towards Moscow, describing a newly expanded American missile defense system as a threat to his country's security - and vowing to retaliate.Standing next to Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, the Russian leader said Moscow had in his words "no choice" but to target Romania because itrecently opened a missile defense base as part of the system, and Poland, which wants to do so within two years.Putin warned especially citizens in Romania that they will face uncertain times because of the missile shield, which will be operated by...
Vatican City, May 28, 2016 / 06:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday, Pope Francis met with the president of the Republic of Singapore, marking 35 years of diplomatic relations between the Southeast Asian country and the Holy See, and the first ever state visit by a Singaporean president to a Pope.During the visit, President Tony Tan Keng Yam and the pontiff addressed topics relating to “the importance of interreligious and intercultural dialogue for the promotion of human rights, stability, justice and peace in south-east Asia,” according to a statement by the Holy See press office.The “cordial discussion” also addressed the “good relations between the Holy See and Singapore,” and the “collaboration between the Church and the State, especially in the educational and social fields,” the statement continues.After the meeting, Pope Francis gave President Tan a medal of peace, explaining how government is about bringing people together.The...
BERLIN (AP) -- The World Health Organization says there is "no public health justification" for postponing or canceling the Rio Summer Olympics because of the Zika outbreak in Brazil....
PARIS (AP) -- He's a fugitive on Interpol's Red List and a marine vigilante who's done jail time for extradition requests. Yet to many, he's also a heroic marine conservationist who risks his life and those of his crew to save countless endangered whales, turtles, dolphins and sharks from slaughter....
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's government has offered the new Taliban leader a choice: make peace or face the same fate as his predecessor, killed in a U.S. drone strike last week. But Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is a hard-liner who has used his religious credentials to justify the Taliban insurgency that has killed or wounded tens of thousands of Afghan civilians as a "holy war" and his succession has inspired little hope for an end to the bloodshed....
BEIRUT (AP) -- Islamic State militants entered a major Syrian opposition stronghold in the country's north on Saturday, clashing with rebels on the edges of the town as the extremist group builds on its most significant advance near the Turkish border in two years - even as it loses ground elsewhere in the country and in neighboring Iraq....
