The increased screen time and isolation due to quarantine measures or restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic have put vulnerable minors at greater risk of grooming and abuse online, a Jesuit safeguarding expert said. Almost every nation that has had lockdowns or other restrictions has had similar consequences in which young people are spending a lot…
With anti-racism protests gripping the United States and other countries, young activists in Myanmar see it as the right time to challenge racism in the Buddhist-majority country. Launching a campaign called ‘Don’t call me ‘Kalar’’ on Facebook, the effort seeks to end the use of a term that historically referred to people from the Indian…
Build new future with Laudato Si’ say Vatican panelists The coronavirus pandemic and ongoing global crises clearly indicate that Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for creation urgently needs to be implemented worldwide, a panel of church leaders said. “After Covid-19, nothing will be the same,” Aloysius John, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, said last week at a Vatican news…
Covid-19 hits Yemen’s hospitals hard CAFOD and other humanitarian agencies warn that Yemen’s health care system, already ravaged by five years of civil war, is collapsing, while its people risk famine as the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. “Yemen is desperate for peace,” Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen,…
Reaction was largely laudatory to the Supreme Court’s June 18 rejection of a Trump administration bid to revoke Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era executive order that allowed young people brought into the country illegally as minors by their parents to stay in the United States. Under DACA, about 700,000 young people who qualify…
The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has lamented a decision by the country’s Supreme Court this week on the legal definition of sex in civil rights law. Archbishop José Gomez issued a statement in response to a case on whether sexual identity and gender identity is covered by laws prohibiting employment…
A wife and daughter have accused their Christian husband and father of committing blasphemy in the first case of its kind in Pakistan. Anwar Masih from Lahore has been charged under blasphemy law 295-C for uttering blasphemous words about the Prophet Muhmmad (PBUH). Last week, the Civil Line police station registered a case against Mr…
India’s leading lay organisation has urged the prime minister’s office to consult religious leaders before radical decisions are taken on worship during the Covid-19 lockdown period. At a webinar hosted by the All-India Catholic Union (AICU) last week, Catholic leaders discussed a guideline that the government issued for opening religious places. The guideline allowed opening…
Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane has pitched for the Church to take a key role in Australia’s Covid-19 recovery efforts, adding that the task cannot be left solely to politicians. “We’re in a situation now where the world has changed, perhaps forever,” said the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference last week. “We now…
An 83-year-old Chinese bishop has been installed as the third bishop to be recognised by the Communist regime since the Vatican-China 2018 agreement on the appointment of bishops. Bishop Peter Lin Jiashan was officially appointed as head of the Fuzhou Diocese in Fujian province last week. Since 1997, Bishop Lin had refused to register with…
Michael Kelly