Risky air drops and truck deliveries across some of the most dangerous roads in the world: To tackle what is currently Africa’s worst hunger crisis, the U.N. World Food Program is using all means at its disposal. Every month, the agency moves more than 25,000 tons of food in its war on hunger. In mid-April Read more
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has made finding a solution to the Manus Island standoff a priority. The remaining refugees and asylum seekers of the Lombrom Naval Base insist that their new locations in Lorengau closer to community areas will be unsafe, and refuse to leave. During this crisis, the Turnbull government has become visibly Read more
Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens. In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless – classic symptoms of depression – surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13- to Read more
Labor Day, September 4, 1967, in the United States was just like so many other Labor Days before: the last day before the start of school, a federal holiday, banks and stores closed, and people preparing to join friends and family for backyard barbeques. But some 8,000 miles away in South Vietnam it marked the Read more
Each year the holidays bring with them an increase in both the consumption of alcohol and concern about drinking’s harmful effects. Alcohol abuse is no laughing matter, but is it sinful to drink and make merry, moderately and responsibly, during a holy season or at any other time? As a historical theologian, I researched the role that pious Christians played in Read more
You may remember me as your predecessor as executive director of the Secretariat for Christian Doctrine at the U.S.C.C.B. You replaced me in January 2005. I am writing this open letter to you in response to your open letter to Pope Francis in which you address what you describe as a “chronic confusion” that seems to mark Read more
Denis O’Reilly, a Pākehā now well into his 60s, linked up with Black Power because he was committed to social justice. It was the same concern for social justice that had his brother, Laurie, who died nearly 20 years ago, becoming a lawyer and then the Commissioner for Children. Each of the boys had many other Read more
Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, gave me a candid insider’s look at how social networks purposely hook and potentially hurt our brains. Be smart: Parker’s I-was-there account provides priceless perspective in the rising debate about the power and effects of the social networks, which now have scale and reach unknown in human history. He’s Read more
John B. Buescher offers an entertaining history of tobacco use in the Vatican. It turns out that rolled tobacco (cigars and cigarettes) has been especially favoured by recent pontiffs: Pius X took snuff and smoked cigars. Benedict XV did not smoke and did not like others’ smoke. Pius XI smoked an occasional cigar. Pius XII did not Read more
Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther, a German monk, initiated a split in Christianity that came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. After the Reformation, deep divisions between Protestants and Catholics contributed to wars, hostility and violence in Europe and America. For centuries, each side denounced the other and sought to convert its followers. Then, in the early 1900s, Read more