Caritas Internationalis President Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga wants governments to deal urgently with climate change. Rodriguez wants a deal on climate change that puts poor communities in developing countries first and provides for a sustainable future. “Our climate is changing. This year we saw floods in Central America, South and South East Asia and drought across Read more
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said in a speech to MPs, peers and charity workers that Government cuts are “already being felt disproportionally by the most vulnerable”.
It is the closest a Catholic bishop in England and Wales has come to criticising the Coalition’s austerity measures.
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Pope Benedict has called for delegates attending the UN conference for revising the Kyoto deal to craft a credible deal to cut greenhouse gases. Benedict, dubbed the ‘green pope’ for his environmental concerns, launched his appeal on Sunday during his regular Angelus message. He said the deal needs to take into account the poor and future generations. Read more
Thousands bid a tearful farewell to Sister Valsa John, the murdered nun who was laid to rest at St Paul’s Cathedral in Jharkhand’s Pakur district yesterday while details emerged as to how she actually died.
On Tuesday night, the nun was sleeping in the house of a villager called Sonaram Hembrom when around 30-40 people armed with crude weapons laid siege to the house.
“The poor have lost a benefactor. The religious sister was serving the poor, especially tribals, and fighting for justice,” said Cardinal Telesphore Toppo of Ranchi.
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Global efforts to increase access to clean water favours the middle-classes and ignores most of those in need. WaterAid Charity says a global plan to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015, is failing so badly that some of the world’s poorest countries will not have this basic necessity for another Read more
It was Judas who said “the money would be better spent on the poor.” The same thing is being said on some quarters about the money spent on staging World Youth Day at a time when there are famines, wars, natural disasters and debit crises. Is WYD money well spent? “Today, as in every age, there is Read more
“New Zealanders are proud of their universal healthcare services, with its founding roots in the Good Samaritan story, but they must be ever vigilant,” says Gerald Arbuckle. “Healthcare is not a commodity, to be available only to those who have money. It is a fundamental right. When people on the margins of our society begin Read more
Computer hackers from Europe recently targeted St Ambrose Cathedral in Des Moines, Iowa and stole more than NZ$800,000, according to CBS News. It was money ear-marked to help out the homeless and abused women. “You kind of have to take a deep breath and you have to trust in the Lord,” Richard Pates said. “Why Read more
Global reform of the food system is needed in order to help people buy adequate food, Oxfam warns. Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze, even on those who can currently afford food, the NGO says. In an acceleration of a trend which has seen food prices double in the last 20 years, the charity Read more
While discussing the Budget some commentators on Thursday’s Radio National “Afternoons with Jim Mora”, it may even have been the man himself, asked was not the Standard and Poor that everyone is so respectful of the same organisation that got us all into financial strife in the first place. There was a suggestion that New Zealand should take the Iceland Solution Read more