As the press centre fills, the first reports filter out of the Pope's remarks to journalists accompanying him on the plane. The familiar Alitalia A330 touches down on the airport tarmac flying the Vatican and local flags from its cockpit; state officials and bishops form a welcoming committee; the Pope emerges, is greeted, is whisked away in a limousine to the city centre, where he climbs into the "popemobile" for a tour of streets lined with well-wishers. Then comes the welcoming ceremony in which the president or prime minister addresses him, and he gives a speech in response.

Soon after the press centre fills with Italian voices and veteran journalists as the dozens of VAMPS - journalists working for the major agencies, permanently accredited to the Holy See Press Office, who sit at the back of the papal plane - arrive. Father Frederico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, breaks away from the papal entourage to give a briefing to the press corps that helps shape the first stories.

True to form, all of this happened yesterday. Yet Pope Francis's arrival in Rio de Janeiro - just before that of the royal baby - managed to be strikingly different from what we have been used to in papal trips. Once he was in the air - after carrying his own bag onto the plane - he rejected the usual interview with pre-prepared questions in order to meet the reporters one by one, asking them about their families, getting to know them and telling them, jokingly, that journalists are not the saints he is most devoted to. In a flight in which he remained permanently active - "this pope has an extraordinary energy," Father Lombardi remarked - he also visited the cockpit for 15 minutes to chat with the pilots shortly before landing.

But he still gave journalists their story, making some important criticisms of a throwaway culture in which the jobless young are set aside. "The world crisis is not treating young people well," the Pope said. "We are running the risk of having a generation that does not work. From work comes a person's dignity." Continue reading

Sources

• Austen Ivereigh in ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: BBC

Austen Ivereigh is a Catholic journalist and the co-ordinator of Catholic Voices.

Last June, over 100 governments gathered at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in city of Rio de Janiero to address the inseparable concerns of the environment, development, and poverty. Although the results of UNCED, otherwise known as the Earth Summit, are difficult to evaluate, it is still necessary to attempt to do so. In general, UNCED was not as comprehensive and effective as it hopes to be. Why we say this is the subject of this article.

Moral commitment

The Earth Summit sought to achieve the strengthening of objectives and the binding of action to sustain life. Instead, only selected concerns and their operationalization were agreed upon without specific targets or timetables. Twenty years after the Stockholm Conference where the participating countries developed the moral vision of urging unity of action to protect our fragile globe, UNCED has been little else but a forum to exchange development concerns. To illustrate this weakening moral vision, we shall cite how one issue (nuclear weapons) and one situation (the World Bank) were treated during the Conference.

The Stockholm Declaration called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. UNCED failed, however, to approve a paper on nuclear power and to affirm the condemnation of nuclear weapons, even if the global power struggle today has been diminished.

For the last 30 years, the model for development operationalized by the World Bank has been criticized by non-government organizations working closely with the poor. True, the World Bank was heavily funding energy programs, particularly those concerned with global warming. At the same time, however, it was also fueling the poverty of millions and adding to the environmental problem. Yet the World Bank remained virtually unchallenged by governments, even during the Conference. Read more

Sources

• ESSCNews
• Image: Brazil Surf Travel