MADHAYA PRADESH (Agencies): Christians in India are facing more danger than ever before. 
 

DILI (UCAN): Timor-Leste lurched into a constitutional crisis after the minority government of prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, failed to pass key legislation, including a fresh budget, in the week before Christmas.
 
Asia’s most Catholic nation and youngest democracy now faces the prospect of a new government, or a second election inside nine months, as the country’s parliament has been in gridlock since the 22 July 2017 election failed to deliver a workable majority (Sunday Examiner, 24 September 2017).
 

NEW YORK (SE): The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has declined to endorse abortion as being an essential part of emergency humanitarian response.
 
C-Fam reported that access to safe abortion to the full extent of the law was included for the first time in the sexual and reproductive health Minimum Initial Services Package designed by UN agencies and abortion groups to place the sexual and reproductive health agenda, and specifically abortion, into the humanitarian responses programme.
 

BRUSSELS (SE): A chaplain to a retirement home in Bruges, Belgium, 57-year-old Father Alexander Stroobandt, is being prosecuted for keeping silent over the suicide plans of an old friend.
 
The priest is basing his defence in part on the requirement to maintain the secrecy of the confessional at all costs and in all circumstances.
 

MANILA (UCAN): It is now eight years since the Maguindanao Massacre took place on a lonely road in Ampatuan on 23 November 2009, which saw 58 people murdered and buried in mass graves.
 
At least 34 of them were journalists covering a journey being made by the vice mayor, Esmael Mangudadatu, to file his certificate for candidacy as governor of the province at the office of the Commission on Elections.
 

Hong Kong (SE): At end of his four-day visit to Myanmar on November 30, Pope Francis had met with the country’s president, Htin Kyaw; state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi; its senior military general and army chief, Min Aung Hlaing; as well as leaders of the Buddhist, Muslim, Baptist and Jewish faiths.
 
To the dismay of some observers and rights advocates, not once while in Myanmar did he publicly use the word, Rohingya.
 

KERKRADE (SE): Regular columnist for the Sunday Examiner and longtime advocate for the rights of children, indigenous people and the abused, Father Shay Cullen, was presented with the Martin Buber Plaque Award in recognition of his work at a ceremony in Kerkrade as part of the International Festival of Dialogue in the Netherlands on November 17.
 

VATICAN (SE): The international co-president of the worldwide Catholic peace organisation, Pax Christi, told Vatican Radio on November 13 that even the threat of using nuclear weapons against any state or people is immoral.
 
Marie Dennis, from the English branch of Pax Christi, said she hopes that the condemnation of all nuclear weapons by Pope Francis will have some impact on the serious and frightening exchange going on between Washington and Pyongyang.
 

VATICAN (SE) The world does not just need a brain drip, but the brain needs a good and complete wash, the governor of California in the United States of America (US), Jerry Brown, maintained at a gathering held in the Vatican on November 4.
 
He pointed to the need to slow the devastation being caused by climate change, stressing that society cannot simply rely only on science and technology, but must begin to accept the need for more transformational approaches.
 

HONG KONG (SE): To mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the Commission of Episcopal Conferences in the European Union held a gathering in the Eternal City from October 27 to 29, the final day of which included an audience with Pope Francis.
 
Meeting under the theme of Rethinking Europe, the bishops chose the anniversary for their gathering because they believe that the treaty that was signed in 1957 marked the beginning of the integration process which finally lead to the formation of the European Union.