April 2019

MINSK (CNS): Catholic and Orthodox leaders condemned the bulldozing of memorial crosses at a site of communist-era mass executions in the Kuropaty Forest, outside Minsk, Belarus. The crosses marked the site where tens of thousands of execution victims were thrown in mass graves, mostly between 1937 and 1941.
 
Media reports said at least 15 protesters were arrested in early April when police cordoned off an area of the forest and bulldozers moved in to demolish about 70 15-...

SOUTH COTABATO (UCAN): Farmers in the southern Philippine region of Soccsksargen, Mindanao, have resorted to selling their farm animals to survive the impact of a drought that has reportedly ravaged about 15,000 hectares (150 square kilometres) of farmland.
 
Father Ariel Destora, director of the social action centre of the Diocese of Marbel, said the scorching heat brought about by the El Niño phenomenon that has hit the region this year had dried up grasslands....

HONG KONG (SE): A two-and-a-half hour long Cantonese musical, Lei Matau (Matteo Ricci the Musical), telling the story of Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci’s mission in China in the late 16th and early 17th centuries was performed in Hong Kong Cultural Centre Grand Theatre in Tsim Sha Tsui, from April 20 to 28. The musical is the brainchild of Father Giovanni Giampietro, of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, who holds great admiration for the 17th century missionary....

Easter is the time we recall the tragic events of 2,019 years ago when a Jew, a man from Palestine, was spied upon, betrayed, persecuted, falsely charged, vilified, abandoned and arrested. It started with a mock trial that handed down the death penalty for the man from Nazareth, the Son of Man; Son of God, Jesus.
 
We also celebrate the resilience, the determination and the belief and hope of the persecuted and oppressed to rise up and speak out and...