As our Pacific Islands cousins face the unprecendented impacts of climate change, they are looking for allies who will support them by taking concrete actions to limit global warming to 1.5oC and will also rehome the now inevitable climate change refugees from low lying Pacific states. Those allies are precious few. Most nations are long Read more
The Hon. Aupito William Sio has just returned from Europe where he had an audience with Pope Francis and represented New Zealand at COP23, the world’s most important climate change conference. The Māngere electorate MP, who won his seat for the fourth time with another massive majority, is now the Minister for Pacific People and Associate Read more
Fiji has turned a tiny part of Germany into a tropical Pacific island as it leads global negotiations on climate change, and so securing a stage for islanders’ worries about rising sea levels. Fiji is the first small island state to preside at UN climate negotiations since they began in the 1990s. The country’s chief Read more
The Minister for Climate Change James Shaw and Pacific People’s Minister Aupito William Sio met with Pope Francis on Saturday. En route to United Nations COP-23 Climate Change Conference in Bonn, they took part in a Pacific Island Leaders Forum discussion with the Holy Father. The Pope received in audience the leaders of the “Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat” from the eleven island Read more
A group of faith-based organisations in Fiji have come together to draft and promulgate the COP23 Multi-Faith Charter. They have committed themselves to do more to help address the effects of climate change within their own faith communities, as well as make specific calls for increased ambition and action by Parties and non-state actors. The Read more
Caritas Oceania, represented by Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, will return to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference – COP 23 – to advocate for climate justice in Oceania and globally. Coming just after the launch of Caritas’ State of the Environment Report for Oceania 2017: Turning the Tide, Caritas will be Read more
As David Marr reminded us in his 2012 Quarterly Essay, Political Animal: the Making of Tony Abbott, Abbott’s Catholicism was groomed by the highly charismatic and worldly Emmet Costello, the priest he met as a 16-year-old. It went on to flourish under the tutelage of Bob Santamaria. Abbott was and is on a mission from Read more
Callista Gingrich is the United States’ new ambassador-designate to Rome, according to a statement from the US Embassy to the Holy See. The Senate confirmed her election with a vote of 70-23. News sources say Gingrich is a practising Catholic. She is the third wife of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who is Read more
The Archbishop of Suva, Peter Loy Chong, has suggested that the sacred thread of connectedness in creation has been lost. He said this in a presentation Reweaving the Ecological Mat — Ecology and Development. This was part of a series of lectures organised by the Pacific Theological College’s Institute for Mission and Research, the University of the Read more
End-Time preachers are blaming the bad weather in the USA on God’s wrath. Radio preacher Rick Wiles said Houston is underwater because it “boasted of its LGBT devotion.” Ann Coulter suggested it might have something to do with the city’s former mayor being a lesbian. “I don’t believe Hurricane Harvey is God’s punishment for Houston Read more