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.

Since 2014, an official campaign carrying out the demolition of crosses on Christian churches has been conducted, primarily in Zhejiang province.

Chinese authorities do not like to see crosses dotting the skyline of their country: the cross is a religious, Christian symbol which they see as contradictory to their atheistic ideology.   

 NIIGATA (SE): The remembrance of the dropping of the two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 should have as much to teach us about times of peace as times of war.

On August 5, the evening prior to the anniversary of the first atomic attack, the Peace Cathedral in Hiroshima played host to what Bishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi described as one of the most significant prayer vigils for peace he has ever witnessed.

HONG KONG (SE): “The Chinese party-state is tightening the vice on both foreign and domestic non-government organisations (NGO) sending strong new signals of its determination to repress unwelcome foreign influences and activities that spread western values,” Stanley Lubman, from the Berkley School of Law at the University of California, says in an article published by ChinaRealTime on June 16.

The Church in eastern Asia is facing a drop in vocations, turning religious congregations and mission societies into an aging group.

In China, religious life remains a sensitive topic to discuss and research. Foreign missionaries were expelled in the 1950s and when religious activity was revived in the 1970s, virtually no religious congregations still existed on the mainland.