A charitable trust operated by the Catholic church is making a small but useful contribution to Dunedin’s Servants Health Centre by paying for two part-time receptionists. The Servants Health Centre is providing a valuable service with a team of volunteers including GPs and practice nurses volunteering their services for free. GP and clinic founder John Arnold says Read more
An unnamed union critic has accused New Zealand churches of hypocrisy because while they support the their support for the living wage campaign, they are in some cases not paying their own employees a living wage. Church leaders however say the wages they pay is not something they control. It depends on the Government controlled Read more
‘There’s no place like home’ on violin played in support of Caritas’ submission on the Social Housing Reform Bill this week. Caritas Advocacy Coordinator Lisa Beech played the violin as part of her state housing story to show. Beech told the Committee how when she lived in Housing New Zealand flats in Petone, a long-time Read more
The United Nations estimates that as many as 200 million girls are missing today, the majority from India and China. What are the cultural patterns and individual stories behind this shocking statistic? Evan Grae Davis, an American who has extensive experience in the developing world, has produced a documentary film that answers this question through Read more
My Facebook newsfeed in recent days has been filled with exciting stories and photos about World Youth Day (WYD)—which ended today with a Mass in Rio. Yet again, we have had some amazing quotes from Pope Francis on his visit to Brazil reminding us about the church’s social and ethical obligations towards the poor. However, Read more
The third and final installment in a series on social justice in Catholic social doctrine: When the Italian Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793-1862) coined the term “social justice” in the middle of the 19th century, he probably could not have foreseen its mention in an 1894 curial document and a 1904 encyclical, nor the Read more
There is no better way to channel the mind-bending logic of 18th century thinkers on poverty (men who we can assume were not poor themselves, by virtue of the fact that history remembers them) than to simply quote their words. Meet Philippe Hecquet, a well-known French doctor speaking in 1740: The poor … are like Read more
It was a shipwreck of African migrants off the coast of Lampedusa, a small island in the Mediterranean, that spurred Pope Francis into action. In the past 18 months more than 500 people have died, or gone missing at sea, trying to escape Africa. The world barely noticed. Standing on Lampedusa on Monday, Francis prayed Read more
Last Tuesday members of the Holy Family Catholic Women’s League in Labasa, Fiji, hosted social worker Selina Lee-Wah to lunch to acknowledge her achievement. Two months ago President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau conferred the Order of Fiji on Lee-Wah in recognition of her distinguished service of a high degree to humanity at large in the country. Read more