TESTIMONY - It is a land that is marked by deep social inequality, where the embers of religious discrimination crackle beneath the ash. Bangladesh is home to 160 million people, 88% of whom are Muslim, 10% Hindu, 1% Buddhist and less that 1% Christian (mostly Catholics). There are 350.000 Catholics in the country. Fr. Sergio Targa who has been a missionary since 1992...

EDUCATION - "A thousand children and teenagers who live in crime-ridden areas of El Salvador have found their best weapon against violence in a music programme supported by the World Bank and funded by Japan." It is the Don Bosco Youth Symphony Orchestra, which started just over a year ago in San Salvador. The story is told in an article in the newspaper El Nuevo Herald...

NEWS 2014 - On Aug. 1-3, down the street from the famous rock music festival Lollapalooza in Chicago, the Daughters of St. Paul are holding their annual vocations discernment retreat for women age 18-35. “If God is planting a charism in you to the order or religious life, when you hang out with nuns, you are going to feel that, you are going to feel a sense of belonging or not”...

MESSAGES - Australia’s Consecrated Religious are gathered in Melbourne for their National Assembly focusing on the theme “Living on the Fault Lines- Leading in a Climate of Change”. The Assembly of representatives from more than 180 congregations of Sisters, Brothers and Religious Priests living and working in all states and territories, was addressed...

HEALTH - Scientists, policy makers, community leaders and people living with the HIV virus are halfway through the International AIDS conference taking place this week in Melbourne, Australia. As the number of new infections and AIDS related deaths drops and more people receive life-saving anti-retroviral drugs, participants are looking particularly at how to close the gap...

REFLECTION - At the end of June I was asked to speak in Washington, DC at a Coptic Solidarity conference. I receive similar invitations quite often these days, because while I am a dreadfully inadequate spokesman for their cause, I do speak of the suffering of Arab Christians whenever I can. Islam’s war on Christianity, in fact, is the subject of my forthcoming book...

EDUCATION - Vatican City.  ‘Educate Today and Tomorrow: A Passion that Renews Us’, is the title of the working document published on April 7 by the Congregation for Catholic Education in preparation for the World Congress on Education that will be held in Rome on November 18-21, 2015.  The 50th  anniversary of the Council Declaration on Christian Education...

REFLECTION - Several reports published in the past weeks provide useful information on the situation of the Catholic Church in Poland. During the recent European Congress on Vocations in Warsaw, the European Vocation Centre (EVS) presented recent findings on the formation of candidates to the priesthood and religious in the Old Continent. Moreover...

MESSAGES - The General Chapter of the Dominican Sisters of Charity of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin meeting in Tours, France, who are present in 36 countries, including Iraq since 1873, declares being extremely upset about the tragic situation of Christians in Iraq. We totally agree with the declaration of “very deep concern” of the Secretary General of the United Nations...