Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki – New Bell Rings for Peace

In the year marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world is closer than ever to a new nuclear holocaust. If it happens, it will be infinitely more deadly than the tragedy that brought us 1945. The scene of devastated buildings, disintegrated living beings, and people killed in seconds—the result of an energy so devastating that their shadows remain imprinted on the walls or asphalt of the two martyred Japanese cities to this day—will be replicated across the planet. And, in the end, no one will be left to tell the tale.

Border Conflict Between Thailand and Cambodia – Local Catholic Community Concerned

Military clashes that recently erupted again on the Cambodia-Thailand border, with the use of powerful military vehicles and fighter jets—a factor creating a very tense situation—have rekindled long-standing fears among Catholic communities in the region. “We have woken up to the nightmare of a possible war,” Jesuit Father Enrique Figaredo, Apostolic Prefect of Battambang, a Cambodian province bordering Thailand, told the Fides news agency.

MISSIONARY AMONG THE AMAZON PEOPLE – Xaverian Father Mario Lanciotti

Professor Mario Polia, an anthropologist, historian of religions, and a profound connoisseur of Andean cultures, recently published a collection of oral histories gathered by Father Mario Lanciotti, a Xaverian missionary active in Brazil in the 1960s and a former missionary in China and Japan. This now sheds new light on missionary testimony among the peoples of the Amazon.

MISSIONARIES IN IVORY COAST – Africa is Still a Mission Land

It was only in 1895 that the first missionaries from the African Mission Society (SMA) arrived in Ivory Coast. In other words, the Catholic Church, as an organized entity (let’s not forget the first attempts at evangelization carried out by priests who sailed on Portuguese caravels, from the 14th century onward) is relatively young there. Thus, Ivory Coast is still a “mission land,” with an entire hierarchy made up of bishops originating from that country’s diocesan clergy. But, as Bishop Marcelin Yao Kouadio of Daloa and president of the Episcopal Conference of Ivory Coast told the news agency Fides, “we are always open-armed and ready to welcome foreign missionaries from religious congregations (especially women) and institutes of apostolic life.”