Vatican diplomatic corps members should first spend a year in ministry or as missionaries, Pope Francis has announced. Francis’s announcement approved a written suggestion made at the recent synod for the Amazon which asked for the current curriculum for trainee diplomats to change. Instead of doing an internship at the nunciature as happens now, trainees Read more
Pope Francis has honoured four priests and a nun for their distinguished service to the Catholic Church in Timor-Leste. Holy See representative, Monsignor Marco Sprizzi, presented the missionaries with the Decoration of Honor. This honour is given by the pope to laypeople and clergy for outstanding contributions to the Church. Read more
Staff at a British Catholic charity were baffled when a handwritten letter arrived from a remote parish in the South Pacific Solomon Islands seeking help to build a new church. With no internet access, how could the parish priest have got their address in Cirencester, an English country town? And how could he know his Read more
Chinese authorities have detained 21 Japanese missionaries over the past few weeks. The missionaries were working in several southwestern provinces and in the northwestern autonomous region of Ningxia. The detention of the 21 Christian group members is thought to be part of the Chinese authorities’ efforts to crack down on missionary work. They are categorising missionary Read more
A murder at a Southern French retirement home for Catholic missionaries has sparked a huge police search. The home is in the village of Montferrier-sur-Lez, near the city of Montpellier. Read more
Kiwis Lindsay and Denise Christie went to Colombia in the 1960s and eventually founded a charity called Conviventia, which now works throughout Latin America to empower marginalised communities. Fifty years later, their grand-daughter Adriana Avendano Christie, 24, and her partner Gabriel Acuna-Caruajal, 30, have started charity which is a social enterprise called The Pallet Kingdom Read more
A Spanish priest infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia is the first patient to be sent back to Europe with the deadly disease. An air force plane from Spain was sent on August 6 to get Fr Miguel Pajares, 75, who was in West Africa doing missionary work. The illness has claimed the lives Read more
The Mormon church is planning to arm its missionaries with 32,000 iPad minis, as well as broadening its social media outreach. This comes after a test programme last year which saw 6500 Mormon missionaries in the United States and Japan equipped with the devices. Mormon leaders say using iPad minis has helped missionaries keep in Read more
Christianity is seen as a national identity in our country, says the prime minister of the Solomon Islands Gordon Darcy Lilo. “In towns and villages many people acknowledge the sovereign hand of God over our nation and acknowledge his plan for our destiny,” he said. “The vast majority of Solomon Islands population are Christians.” He Read more
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra Australia, is hosting an exhibition exploring Polynesian spirituality and the concept of atua encompassing gods, the ongoing influence of ancestors and ancestral beliefs. For its exhibition Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, the National Gallery of Australia has negotiated loans from more than 30 museum collections around the world. The Vatican Read more