MACAU (UCAN): The diocese of Macau is offering professional training for local high school teachers with a little help from the Jesuit-run Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan.

Established 80 years ago, the St Joseph Diocesan College of Macau has been offering training courses for kindergarten and primary school teachers for more than half a century, but is now, for the first time, offering a diploma course for high school teachers.

VATICAN (UCAN) : The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Indonesia, Bishop Martinus Dogma Situmorang, urged the Vatican to give local Churches more space to be themselves, especially in the translation of liturgical texts, during his country’s bishops five-yearly ad limina visit to Rome.

COLOMBO (SE): The Sri Lankan government has announced it will take urgent measures to close the last of the camps that have housed more than 200,000 internally displaced persons, or refugees, from the war zones that covered much of the country during the 30-year civil war which ended officially in May 2009.

SEOUL (UCAN): Thomas An Jung-geun, a Korean freedom fighter who assassinated the first prime minister of Japan, Hirobumi Ito, who was also the first resident general of the colonial Japanese government on the Korean Peninsula, is being considered by the Preparatory Committee for Beatification and Canonisation of Seoul archdiocese for beatification.

At a symposium held on September 28 at the Catholic Centre in Seoul to discuss the possibility of canonising An, he was described as a Catholic patriot.

VATICAN CITY (CNS): “Christian love urges us to dialogue and to promote positive and constructive relations with individuals and communities of other religions. 

“It is uplifting to hear that tremendous effort has been made in Pakistan to witness the fact that Christians and Muslims can work and walk together in peace,” said Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, in a message marking a new missionary initiative of the Church in Pakistan.