In recent years, we have become more and more aware of how vulnerable our oceans are to climate change. The Arctic Ocean is capped by frozen seawater, called sea ice. This melts during the Northern Hemisphere spring and summer months.

The anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last December 10 reminds us that migrants fleeing war and the economic effects of climate change have rights that must be respected.

The growing intolerance towards these unfortunate people is detestable and must be contested and denounced. 

VATICAN CITY (CNS): Before he became Pope Francis, Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio had a reputation for disliking interviews.

Aboard his first papal flight to Brazil for World Youth Day in July 2013, he told more than 70 journalists from around the world, “Really, I don’t give interviews. But I don’t know why. I can’t, that’s just how it is. I find it a bit tiresome, but I’m grateful for your company.” 

Christmas is much more than Santa Claus and consumerism. It is about compassion, love for the poor and seeking justice. Jesus was sent to help change the world. We must carry on this mission but we also have to understand what that challenge is.

HONG KONG (SE): Although hailed as the end of the infamous One Child Policy, the announcement made by Beijing on December 27 that from now on all couples will be allowed to have two children, only constitutes a nuanced numerical adjustment to the old policy, rather than signalling its demise.

HONG KONG (SE): In the manner in which St. Columban proclaimed himself an exile for Christ when he left his native Ireland for Europe over 1,400 years ago, a group of Chinese priests, sisters and lay people from Wuhan carried a banner reading, Exiles for Christ, as they travelled in pilgrimage along the Han River from Hanyang between November 11 and 14 in the footsteps of the Columban missionaries of the 1920s.

NEW YORK (CNS): Despite its brevity, In Our Time (Nostra Aetate), or the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council marks a starting point for dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews that must be continued into the future.