TAIPEI (UCAN): Taiwan has granted citizenship to two missionaries from the United States of America, Father Alan Doyle and Sister Mary Paul Watts, in recognition of their contribution to society.
 
“I am a genuine Taiwanese,” 80-year-old Father Doyle said on July 9 as he received his identity card.
 
Father Doyle has lived in Taiwan for 53 years and worked in the area of the preservation and development of the Hoklo language, often referred to as Taiwanese, during his more then half a century on the island.

TAIPEI (UCAN): Father Karl Stahli, from the Swiss Bethlehem Mission Society and a student of Bunun culture specialising in its witchcraft practices, died at the age of 80 after more than 50 years in Taiwan.

KAOHSIUNG (UCAN): Inspired by a 19th century missionary to China, Father Joseph Youta Djiba, from Togo, was ordained in Taiwan on February 18 for the Chinese province of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD).

Archbishop John Hung Shan-chuan, from Taipei, who is a member of the same congregation, ordained the young Togolese at Our Lady of Fatima church in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

TAIPEI (SE): “As Your Holiness states in the Message for World Day of Peace, women are often leaders in nonviolent action,” the first female head of state in the ethnic Chinese world, Tsai Ing-wen, from Taiwan, says in a letter to Pope Francis dated January 5.

Tsai tells the pope that she is devoted to enhancing the wellbeing of the people of her domain and, significantly, creating a new era for cross-strait peace between Taiwan and mainland China.