VATICAN (Agencies): As an immediate sign of his concern and an encouragement to other donors, Pope Francis has sent US$50,000 ($392,000) each to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi to assist with initial emergenacy relief efforts after Cyclone Idai hit the region and caused massive flooding, Catholic News Service reported on March 22.
 
In Mozambique, more than 700 people were feared dead and more casualties expected as of March 23, africanews.com reported.
 

LAGOS (CNS): While Catholic and Muslim leaders welcomed the release of 104 schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram, they urged the government to work for the release of the remaining girl, a Christian who reportedly refused to denounce her faith. 
 
The schoolgirls, who were kidnapped on February 19, were released on March 21. Five of them were killed during captivity. 
 

HARARE (AsiaNews): Constantino Chiwenga, the general who orchestrated the coup in Zimbabwe that finally saw the president of 37 years, Robert Mugabe, resign on November 22, was in Beijing for meetings with the Chinese military and the defence minister, Chang Wanquan, just a few days before he made his decisive move on November 15.
 
Although it was billed as a normal military exchange, an article published in the Global Times on November 16 may suggest otherwise.
 

HONG KONG (SE): The world spent the days following November 15 with the international media fixated on the silent coup in Zimbabwe, in which the military took control of the government and set in motion a process that quickly saw the man regarded as the great liberationist when he became the first prime minister of the newly independent country in 1980, threatened with impeachment to the cheering of his own political party and huge crowds in the street.
 

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.