DUBLIN (SE): The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has asked for a special collection to be taken up at all Masses in the country on the weekend of July 22 and 23 to fund life-saving aid for people currently affected by the devastating hunger crisis in east-Africa.
 
The money raised will be distributed by the Catholic aid society, Trócaire, which is already involved in delivering emergency food, water and health care to the 25 million people affected.
 

KAMPALA (SE): The African nation of Uganda has seen more refugees coming across its borders in the last four months than arrived in the European nation of Greece during the first 10 months of this year.

Its once sparsely populated northern grassland of Bidi Bidi has in a short space of time been transformed into what Caritas Uganda describes of the second largest refugee shelter in the world.

HONG KONG (SE): The bishops of Rwanda issued an apology on November 20 for the involvement of the Church and some of its priests and religious in the genocide that saw over 800,000 people, mostly from the minority Tutsi population, die between 1994 and 1997.

KINSHASA (SE): “Why are you killing me?” are believed to have been the last words spoken by Assumptionist Father Vincent Machozi as he faced the guns of the military on the night of March 20 in the village of Vitungwe-Isale, 15 kilometres from Butembo in the Territory of Beni, North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

BANGUI (SE): Pope Francis jumped the gun in opening the Jubilee Year of Mercy, when he opened the Holy Door of the cathedral in the capital city of the Central African Republic, Bangui, on November 29, ten days before the official opening scheduled for December 8 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Pope Francis spoke to the people of the war-torn nation about the Christian vocation to love our enemies, saying that it protects us from the temptation to seek revenge and from the spiral of retaliation.

HONG KONG (SE): During the first days of a three-nation swing through Africa from November 26 to 30, Pope Francis spoke on three basic themes into which he wove his favourite topics of care for the earth, human rights and interreligious harmony.

In Kenya, he expressed the hope that his time with the people would be a sign of the Church’s esteem for all religions.