Home > Archive

November 2017

Around the Traps
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

 
Do hidden problems go away?
DUBLIN (SE): Priests from the archdiocese of Dublin in Ireland are saying that the repeated failure of the archdiocese to publish annual changes in the appointments of priests is a cover up for serious shortages.
 
This is the second year in a row they have not been made public, which The Irish Catholic maintains is concealing the extent to which sick and retiring clergy are not being replaced...

Indigenous solidarity
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

HONG KONG (SE): The annual Filipino Tribal Sunday festival was held in Edinburgh Place in Central on October 29, but this year’s event showed an important expansion, as for the first time a tribal group from Mindanao was also represented.
 
Running under the theme of Tribal Filipino Migrants Unite! Defend our Land, Life and Resources! Fight for a Just Peace! the festival day witnessed the launch of the Defend Land, Life and Resources Coalition Hong Kong, which...

Spurious arrest of Church worker in Mindanao
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

MANILA (UCAN): Julito Rivera Otacan, a member of the Rural Missionaries of The Philippines, was arrested together with five indigenous people from the Banwaon group during a raid on a village in the southern Philippines and charged with the illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
 
Soldiers and police swooped on the village of Balit in San Luis town, Agusan del Sur province, claiming that they were looking for Communist rebels on October 27.
 
The...

The poor are the majority
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

MANILA (UCAN): If democracy was taken seriously, the poor of the world would get the biggest voice, as they are the majority, but in a world where money counts, their voice is inclined to get swept under the political and economic carpet.
 
Nevertheless, the urban poor of Manila put their voice into the arena with a series of protests ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) summit, which began in the city on November 13.
 
The protests criticised...

How many equals a veritable training community?
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

PARIS (SE): Archbishop Jorge Carlos Patrón Wong, the man who carries the responsibility for seminaries in the Vatican at the Congregation for the Clergy, told the bishops of France on November 5 that his office believes seminaries with tiny numbers of students should be closed or merged with others.
 
In presenting key points from the recently promulgated guidelines for the formation of future priests, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis (The Gift...

The community of communion
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

Pope Francis referred to All Saints’ Day as a celebration of a family. A priest in Hong Kong echoed a similar sentiment at a Mass on the feast day, calling it a community.
 
Indeed, humanity is a great multitude: from the fellowship of the apostles, prophets, martyrs, those preachers and teachers, to kings and queens, elderly vendors in the market, that pauper on the street corner begging for alms, that the community of communion springs, making amends for us who are...

Clandestine bishop out from shadows
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

LANZHOU (AsiaNews): Bishop Joseph Han Zhihai, who was ordained clandestinely as a bishop in Lanzhou in 2003, has come out of the shadows to be installed by the government as bishop of Lanzhou in northern China.
 
However, he had told the Vatican Insider in 2015, “It is best not to ask for government recognition,” but added the rider that in his case the government had been prepared to offer recognition back in 2010.
 
He put his name on...

Fie on casinos
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

TAIPEI (UCAN): Father Chou Jung, from the parish of the Sacred Heart in Kinmen, a group of islands off the coast of China near the city of Xiamen under the administration of the People’s Republic of China, has linked the anti-corruption campaign being run by the president, Xi Jinping, to a resounding no vote against casinos being built on the island.
 
Residents on the islands overwhelmingly voted against casinos on their territory on October 28 with reports saying 24,...

Possession is paramount
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

MANDALAY (UCAN): The government of the Union of Myanmar announced at the end of October that it will harvest the farmlands abandoned by the Rohingya people who have been forced to flee the violence mostly perpetrated by the military in Maungdaw, the Rakhine State, but did not release any plan to compensate the owners or use any of the proceeds to help them.
 
The Global New Light of Myanmar reported that the harvesting programme will cover some 8,000 hectares and...

Aquino charged with overstepping mark
 (Saturday, 18 November 2017 )

MANILA (SE): The former president of The Philippines, Noynoy Aquino, was charged on November 8 in the anti-graft court in Manila with overstepping the mark in giving the go ahead to a suspiciously botched security operation in Mamasapano in the lawless province of Maguindanao.
 
He is being charged with graft, usurping official function and allowing a suspended police chief, Alan Purisima, to take part in the operation on 25 January 2015.
 
Aquino was...