The seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II is a good reason to tell my dreadful experience of war – and in the end – how it led me to the Good Samaritan Sisters. On December 8, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. This brought Japan into World War II. At that time I Read more
The power of the 24-hour news cycle is that sometimes we hear a story so often that we stop hearing it at all. Unless it comes leaping off the screen at us. Unless it breaks through the headlines for some reason, appears again after its few seconds on Twitter and comes alive outside itself. In Read more
The Bougainville Government has adopted a missing persons policy to try and determine what happened to those who vanished during the Bougainville Civil War. The Red Cross helped formulate the policy and says it’s ready to help locate, identify and return human remains. Listen to Interview The new approach could see the possible exhumation of Read more
I am always conflicted by the Anzac Day remembrances and the call to honour the “glorious dead”. Nothing about war is glorious, regardless of who wins; and if the dead could speak, their first utterance would be to ask why. No war is “good” or “just” or “necessary” from the standpoint of the aggressor, though Read more
First impressions aren’t always accurate. But in my first days here I have been struck by the extent of trauma people have experienced – and real worries that the violence that has rocked South Sudan since mid-December may not be over. The capital of Juba is calm, but it is only “outwardly” so, one of Read more
As part of a continuing series “On the Road,” Steve Hartman meets an 8-year-old boy who found $20 in a parking lot and was thinking of spending it on a new video game. That changed when he saw the man in uniform. View YouTube video
Catholic, Protestant and Muslim leaders from the Central African Republic have warned of a genocidal war in their country. They have pleaded for the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers. Continue reading
In recent days, the Ukrainian peninsula has been at the heart of what some have described as the greatest international crisis of the 21st century. But this is not the first time the region has been so critical to international affairs. Many educated people have at least heard of the great struggle known as the Read more
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church appealed for the unity of his country as Russia effectively took over the Crimea region. In a statement on Feburary 28, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halyc also prayed for the people of Crimea. “The entire family of the UGCC faithful pleads to the compassionate Lord for Read more
The last weeks have seen a ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places: Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Pakistan. Also suffering are places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central Africa, in Russia and across Read more