HONG KONG (SE): “‘They kept the best wine until last.’ These words excited me when I heard them in a new context. They come from the story of the wedding feast at Cana and I realised that maybe a fresh taste could be inserted in my own marriage,” Kevin Lai Yuk-ching from the Diocesan Pastoral Commission for Marriage and Family, said.

At a meeting in the early 1990s, an informal discussion on domestic violence drew some alarm when I mentioned marital rape.

“What!?” exclaimed a couple of men, “there is no such thing as marital rape!” Even now, in the 21st century, I find that there are still men who share their view.

The Justice Verma Committee was set up in December last year by the Indian government in the wake of a brutal gang rape of a student in Delhi.

Pope Francis has given many homilies since he was elected on March 13 and has mentioned creation on numerous occasions.

HONG KONG (SE): “It seems their strategy is to win the hearts of the people by proving that they love their country more than the Communist Party does,” Martin Chung Chi-kei, a doctorate in philosophy candidate in European Studies at the University of Hong Kong, says of the group from Hong Kong that erected a Chinese flag on the disputed Diaoyu Islands, or Senkaku Islands as the Japanese call them, in August last year.

Father Gianni Criveller

As the conclave convened officially on March 12 to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI—and set the future direction for the Universal Catholic Church—I find myself hoping as never before that the cardinals choose wisely.

It is my hope that the next pope will guide the Church according to the principles on which Jesus founded it: to bring the good news of salvation to those who do not know about it.

HONG KONG (SE): “It takes two to tango,” a bit of proverbial wisdom tells us. Another sage jewel tossed around in casual conversation goes, “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

Scripture too chimes in with its own bit of wisdom from the Book of Proverbs, “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband does safely trust in her, so that he shall have no lack of gain” (Proverbs 10:31).

The question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” is a common enough prompt to a conversation among Catholic people, one which, as often as not, rambles drearily through preferred diets, bad habits and delicacies that may well be done without for a bit.

But does that add up to using the time constructively? Maybe there is something that could be taken on during Lent that may not just result in a smaller stomach or finer sense of well-being, but a minor conversion in our faith lives.

WARSAW (CNS): On a damp street in Warsaw, Poland, not far from St. Florian’s Cathedral, a tiny mattress lies on display behind a safety-glass window, installed at waist height on a dull gray wall. 

To the left, a door sign reads Sisters of Our Lady of Loretto. Across the teeming thoroughfare a multi-storey hospital gazes down over rutted sidewalks. 

WASHINGTON (SE): Billed as a saint to transcend partisan politics, the champion of the Catholic Labour Movement in the United States of America (US) from the time of the Great Depression of 1929 to 1932 through to her death on 29 November 1980, Dorothy Day was put forward by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as a candidate for sainthood in December 2012.