The Most Reverend Michael YEUNG Ming-cheung (楊鳴章), Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, passed away due to liver failure in Canossa (Caritas) Hospital at 1:30 PM on 3 January 2019. He was 73. Born on 1 December 1945 in Shanghai, he was ordained priest on 10 June 1978. Consecrated bishop on 30 August 2014, he succeeded Cardinal John Tong as 9th bishop of Hong Kong.

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– Tej Francis

A devout man named Diotallevi d’Antonio Santilli was the owner of a modest house near the town of Spoleto, Italy, located on the road to Trevi. In all the documents of the time, the owner of the house was shown to be Antonio Diotallevi, although in actually the owner was Antonio’s son. With his savings he bought several small plots of land, and he is known to have owned some cattle, but he was not a rich man. He had three children named Sante, Antonello and Baptist.

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– Joaquim Magalhães de Castro

As the vehicle struggled over the uphill zigzag path that came from the main road, we are able to see several houses in ruins, proving the ancestrality of the place. We had witnessed nothing of the sort in the previous villages. I am slowly reconciled with the country, now that the houses with half-timbered walls – windows, doorways and richly decorated parapets – show their authenticity. Protected by the eaves, the wood-burning sauces are used to warm the fireplaces in the long winter. Houses almost intact in their original layout, undone only by the substitute zinc ceilings of the schist slabs and the stem. Between the roof and the base there is an open loft where all kinds of implements and the hay for the cattle are stored. The intense brown of the woods contrasts with the white of the lime that covers substantial parts of the walls made of mud. In the surrounding fields potatoes and all kinds of vegetables are grown. There are no synthetic fertilizers around here, and what you put on the table is one hundred percent organic. It reminds me of Georgia, where the fruits tastes like true fruits, a rarity in our days.

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– Robert Carroll

St Joseph Freinademetz The First Saint To Ever Serve in Hong Kong. A Catholic Musical produced in Hong Kong is planned to be staged in Macau. The show’s producer Fr Tan Lei Tao has long been hugely inspired by Freinademetz who’s still “a big influence” in his life. The Saint was a devoted missionary dedicated to China where he arduously built church community after community. Though a multilingualist his motto was: “The language that all people understand is that of love.”

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– José Maria C.S. André

This year, the crib of St. Peter’s Square is a 16 m long, 5 m high and 6 m deep sand sculpture. It took 20 large trucks to transport 700 tons of sand from Jesolo in northern Italy to St Peter’s Square. Ten workers carried out the operation of compacting the sand to make it more consistent, and then mounted the roof that protects the whole scenery from the elements. Over the next two weeks, four international sculptors with experience in this type of material joined forces to sculpt the figures: Richard Varano (from the United States), Ilya Filimontsev (from Russia), Susanne Ruseler (from the Netherlands) and Rodovan Ziuny (from the Czech Republic). Richard Varano has won the world title of sand sculpture eleven times and the others are also top sculptors in this specific field.

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Christopher Wells

(Vatican News) “Peace be to this house!” In his greeting to the world for the 52nd World Day of Peace, Pope Francis takes up the words proposed by Christ in the Gospel. The Holy Father notes that “the ‘house’ of which Jesus speaks is every family, community, country, and continent.”

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– Tej Francis

LEICESTER, UNITED KINGDOM

BISHOP SAYS IRAQI CHRISTIANS WANT TO STAY, CONTRIBUTE TO COUNTRY

(Crux) Bishop Paul McAleenan said he was “shocked” by what he saw during a recent trip to northern Iraq to visit with Christians returning to their homes four years after being driven out by the Islamic State.

The Westminster auxiliary is the Lead Bishop for Migrants and Asylum Seekers at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. During his visit to Iraq’s Nineveh Plains – the heartland of the country’s Christian population – he witnessed first-hand the reconstruction efforts in the predominantly Christian towns that were overrun by the Islamic State forces and spoke to many returning Christians who were displaced by the violence.

He saw projects sponsored by Aid to the Church in Need and the Knights of Columbus to help the returning population to rebuild their lives.

“The Church is leading the reconstruction and ostensibly because there is no obvious civic structure, so someone has to lead and the Church has stepped into the opening, and it is leading the redevelopment and the reconstruction and is making plans for the future, not only in terms of dwelling homes but also in needs like universities and hospitals,” he said.

Despite the devastation brought by the Islamic State onslaught, and the threats of future persecution, McAleenan told Crux the Christians of Iraq don’t want to leave.

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In Genoa, Italy there lived a poor woman, named Petruccia who undertook to build a church, which appeared to everyone impossible; she did not fail to lay the first stone of it, and assured everyone that she should not die before the Blessed Virgin and St. Augustine finished this work. In fact, this church was found miraculously completed a short time afterwards.”

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– Tej Francis

PARIS, FRANCE

‘WHAT CAN WE SAY?’ FRENCH BISHOPS CAUTIOUS IN RESPONSE TO ‘YELLOW VEST’ PROTESTS

(CNA) French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced Tuesday morning that the government would suspend the imposition of a proposed fuel tax increase for six months. The planned increases, originally set to take effect in January, have been at the center of two weeks of demonstrations nationwide, including rioting in Paris.

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