Priests throughout the world should play an active role in contributing to the synodal process, according to two senior Catholic prelates. In a letter addressed to all Catholic priests, Cardinal Mario Grech and Archbishop Lazarus You Heung-sik said priests should try to help show the church as a welcoming home inhabited by the Lord and Read more
People’s real battles should be spent on fighting poverty, hunger, disease, thirst and slavery, Pope Francis says. They should be spending money on those battles, not on fighting each other, nation against nation. Yet vast sums are spent on armaments for waging war. This is “a scandal” that just drags civilisation backward, Francis told a Read more
The Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM) has threatened that Dalit Catholics will protest and not allow the consecration of the non-Dalit archbishop to take place. Dalit Christians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have condemned the appointment of a non-Dalit as the archbishop of Pondicherry-Cuddalore Archdiocese. The appointment of Bishop Francis Kalist from Read more
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the Vatican’s role in mediating the Russia-Ukraine conflict that has impacted the Eastern European country for more than four weeks. “The mediating role of the Holy See in ending human suffering would be appreciated,” President Zelenskyy wrote, adding that he thanked the pope “for the prayers for Ukraine and Read more
A new partnership agreement between two Catholic agencies will help students who are refugees to gain an even footing with their peers. As part of Australia’s Harmony Week 2022, the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle agencies CatholicCare Social Services Hunter-Manning and the Catholic Schools Office have agreed to establish a CatholicCare Student Refugee Fund. The Fund Read more
The United States has determined that the violence against the Rohingya minority committed by Myanmar’s military amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. Hundreds of thousands of the mostly Muslim Rohingya community have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since 2017 after a military crackdown. The action by the military is now the subject of a genocide case Read more
EU sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine are driving up fertiliser prices, leading to what one CEO said is going to be a food crisis. “We are going to have a food crisis. It’s a question of how large,” said Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO of major fertiliser producer Yara International, the Wall Read more
Teachers at a controversial Christian school in Brisbane are being asked to sign employment contracts that warn they could be sacked for being openly homosexual. The Citipointe Christian College is at the heart of yet another scandal after a former teacher lost his job for refusing to sign the document last month. The private primary Read more
A parish in western Ukraine has transformed itself into a reception centre for hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict that has created Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. In the first three weeks since Ukraine’s invasion by Russian forces on 24 February, “about 2,000 people have passed through our church,” Fr Grzegorz Read more
The Covid-19 virus pushed 4.7 million Southeast Asian people into extreme poverty in 2021. According to the an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report presented at the Southeast Asia Development Symposium, 9.3 million jobs have disappeared. The ADB’s “Southeast Asia Rising from the Pandemic” report says the Omicron variant could make matters worse. It predicts the Read more