Paul Keenan“I perceive it as an award also for my teachers because many of my teachers, they were priests, they spent many years in communist concentration camps, or prisons and uranium mines and they had very little possibility to write or publish and many died during communism. They inspired me morally and intellectually and I think this award is also for them.”
Fr Tomas Halik, Czech author and philosopher, reacts to news of his naming as the recipient of this year’s Templeton Prize, which honours those who excel in promoting spiritual values.
“In a society that massively exalts an individualism that suits today’s commercial culture, the worship of oneself, the family is the first stumbling block that hinders the dictatorship of individualism. So it should be supported because it is the first place where the concept of “us” comes into being.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family offers his perspective on the family
“We thought, considering the economic strength and technological advancement of Japan, three years would be quite enough for the disaster hit area to return to normal life. It is not so. More than 270,000 people are not able to return to their homes. Almost as many are still living in temporary shelters. As for the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, no one actually knows what [is] really going on inside the damaged plants.”
Bishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi of Niigata, Japan, renews his appeal for prayers and aid assistance three years on from his country’s devastating tsunami.
"We love the church that we have been a part of building and serving for the last 30 years, and we could never be anything but grateful for the time we have had together, but we have felt a clear calling from the Lord to take this new step.”
Ulf Ekman of the Word of Life ministry in Sweden announces that he and his wife, Birgitta, have converted to Catholicism.
“I am convinced that this trip will usher in a new era in Jewish-Christian dialogue: the era of empathy.”
Rabbi Abraham Skorka, fried to Pope Francis and rector of the Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, Argentina on Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to the Holy Land.