Berlin (KNA) The five richest men in the world have more than doubled their wealth since 2020. According to an Oxfam study published on Monday, these five men had a fortune of 405 billion US dollars in 2020. This figure has now risen to USD 869 billion. All billionaires have increased their wealth by USD…
Berlin (KNA) The Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR) is calling for a long-term strategy for war refugees from Ukraine. Temporary protection will end for them in March 2025, said Jan Schneider, Head of Research at the SVR, in Berlin on Thursday. Sustainable follow-up solutions are needed, “otherwise several million people in Europe may…
Paris (KNA) The French Bishops’ Conference is unanimously in favour of the Vatican document on the blessing of homosexual couples. The declaration issued by the Vatican’s authority on the faith in December is seen as an encouragement to priests to “generously bless those who turn to them and humbly ask for God’s help”, according to…
Erbil (KNA) Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako has criticised the failure of Iraqi politics to protect the country’s citizens and in particular its Christian minority. “The state of instability and lack of justice has once again fuelled the flow of migration,” lamented the patriarch of Iraq’s numerically largest church, the Chaldean Church, in an article published…
Munich (KNA) According to Aid to the Church in Need, at least 132 Catholic priests and religious were killed, abducted or imprisoned in 2023. This is according to the international aid organisation’s own research published in Munich on Wednesday. That is eight more people than in the previous year. As it is difficult to obtain reliable…
Hanover (KNA): An independent team of researchers will present the first nationwide study on sexualised violence in the Protestant Church and Diakonie at the end of January. The results will be presented at a press conference in Hanover on 25 January, the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts announced on Wednesday. The study offers…
Banja Luka (KNA) With a military parade and drone show, ethnic Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina celebrated a controversial holiday to mark the founding day of Republika Srpska on Tuesday evening. The day of remembrance has divided the south-east European country for years. The Bosnian Constitutional Court has repeatedly declared the celebration illegal in the country’s Serb…
Freiburg (KNA) The German Cardinal Walter Kasper (90) has once again criticised the reform plans of the German Catholic bishops. The former Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and Curia Cardinal told the online platform “communio.de” that the establishment of a Synodal Committee, which is to prepare the appointment of a new decision-making body with equal representation of…
Manila (KNA) More than two million people attended the procession with the historic “Black Nazarene” statue of Christ in the Philippine capital Manila on Tuesday. It was the first procession with the life-size statue since 2020; in previous years, the traditional procession was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 15,000 security personnel and…
Geneva (KNA): United Nations aid organisations will present this year’s aid programme for Ukraine and war refugees in neighbouring countries on Monday. This was announced by a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva on Tuesday. It is expected that more than 14.6 million people in Ukraine, 40…