VATICAN (SE): Speaking on World Mission Sunday at the Vatican, Pope Francis said that he is promoting October 2019 as an Extraordinary Missionary Month “to nourish the ardour of the evangelising activity of the Church ad gentes (to the nations).”
 
Mission Sunday, which is celebrated on the second last Sunday of October each year and this year fell on October 22, will become the centre-point of a whole month that will be focussed on the work of missionaries throughout the world.
 

HONG KONG (SE): The media office at the Holy See has released details of the much talked about visit by Pope Francis to the Union of Myanmar, which is scheduled to take place from November 30 to December 2, followed by three days in Bangladesh.
 

YANGON (UCAN): The upcoming visit of Pope Francis to the Union of Myanmar and Bangladesh has sparked fears and hopes in both countries.
 
In Yangon, the bishops of Myanmar fear that he will mention the injustices faced by the Rohingya people over attempts to drive them from the country, while leaders of the Islamic faith hope that he will, at least in his articulated prayer.
 

The story of creation presents us with a panoramic view of the world. Scripture reveals that in the beginning God intended humanity to cooperate in the preservation and protection of the natural environment.
 
At first, as we read in Genesis, “no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no one to till the ground” (2:5).
 

VATICAN (SE): While joint statements from popes and ecumenical patriarchs have a longish history, the most recent one signed by Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is the first expressing the concern for the well-being of creation held by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. 

ROME (SE): Pope Francis told a gathering of liturgists attending the Italian National Liturgical Week in Rome on August 24 that the liturgical reform is here to stay.
He explained that continuing the work of reform of the liturgy is a forward moving exercise and can never be a retreat back into rethinking what has gone before by reviewing choices.
 

MANDALAY (UCAN): Pope Francis is to pay an impromptu visit to the Union of Myanmar. His intention is to focus his visit on the troubled Rankine state where for years some one million Muslim Rohingya people have suffered persecution and dispossession.
 
Invited by the president, Htin Kyaw, Pope Francis anticipates making his visit during the dry season in November. It will be the first visit of a pope to the country.
 

KYOTO (SE): Two days after stepping down as bishop of Hong Kong, John Cardinal Tong Hon travelled to Kyoto in Japan as a representative of Pope Francis at the 30th annual Prayer Meeting on Mount Hiei, a gathering that brings people from all religions together to pray and work for peace.
 
Cardinal Tong read a letter from Pope Francis, which opened with the words, “It is my pleasure to send my cordial greetings to you and to the distinguished representatives of the different religious traditions.”
 

HONG KONG (SE): An surprising article appeared in the semi-official Vatican newspaper, Civilta Cattolica, in mid-July attacking what it called a group of right wing Catholics in the United States of America (US) for betraying Church social teaching though political alliances they have made with fundamentalist evangelical groups, especially in the area of bioethics.