MANILA (UCAN): A Catholic lay worker in Timor-Leste, a psychiatrist in India, a peace advocate in the Philippines and a social worker in Vietnam are among this year’s winners of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.
 
Carmencita Abella, president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, said this year’s winners have been key in advancing causes to improve lives and transform societies across Asia. 
 

NEW DEHLI (Agencies): “This demand is absurd and it displays ignorance about the sacrament of confession,” said Oswald Cardinal Gracias of Mumbai, president of Catholic Bishops Conference of India, reacting to a proposal by the National Commission for Women, an Indian federal agency, to abolish the sacrament of confession CNS reported.
 

Mandalay (UCAN): Bishop Francis Daw Tang of Myitkyina, Myamar, called for an urgent improvement of jade mining regulations and protect the environment. He said there are no proper regulations or systems for properly managing soil dumps that have killed hundreds of people annually in conflict-stricken Kachin State.
 

MANDALAY  (UCAN):  “We are getting more assessments and then delivering aid to other affected areas,” Father Paul Thar San, director of Karuna, in Hpa-an, the capital city of Kayin State, Myanmar. The area was been hit with strong monsoon winds and heavy rain since the third week of July, causing rivers to swell.
 
At least 11 people have died and more than 100,000 people have been displaced by the widespread flooding, according to the disaster management department.
 

SYDNEY (CNS): “Contraception is not for women, it’s for men,” Dominican Father Wojciech Giertych told The Catholic Weekly, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia, during a visit in mid-July. 
 
He pointed out that widespread use of contraception has led to increased violence and aggression against women saying, “It makes men egoists. It makes many of them degenerates and we’re seeing the consequences of that.”
 

On July 23, the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, warned the public during his third State of the Nation address that his two-year war on drugs would become even “more chilling.” 
 
Earlier that day, a group of activists heard Mass before taking to the streets of Manila armed with banners and placards calling for an end to extrajudicial killings, rallying for “democracy, justice, and freedom,” and demanding he step down from office.
 

ROME (CNS/Agencies): “The path to saving our very humanity from vulgarity and barbarism passes through a commitment to safeguarding life. Every life. Beginning with that which is most exposed, humiliated and trampled upon,” the Italian Bishops’ Conference said in a July 19 statement after a woman survivor and two bodies were recovered from the wreck of a migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea.
 

MANILA (UCAN/VaticanNews): Philippine authorities have again ordered the immediate deportation of Australian missionary Sister Patricia Fox after she was declared an “undesirable alien” by the Bureau of Immigration in a 19-page resolution released on July 19, UCAN reported on July 20.
 
Bureau spokesperson, Dana Krizia Sandoval, said the board of commissioners decided that Sister Fox’s actions were “inimical to the interest of the state.”
 

Shroud of Turin expert criticises new study casting doubt on authenticity
 
VATICAN (CNS): Emanuela Marinelli, a leading expert on the Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus, dismissed a new study claiming that blood patterns on the shroud are not consistent with those left by a crucified person. 
 

Bhopal (UCAN): Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, called on the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to intervene and stop the harassment of Christians after the state of Jharkhand ordered a probe into the funding of more than 80 Christian organisations.