World

Fighting Human Trafficking – Caritas Vietnam Sets an Example

August 16, 2025August 16, 2025 adminWorld

Regarding human trafficking, which is increasing in a complex and exponential way in Vietnam (and throughout the world), with social media playing a key role in this particular situation – a “fertile ground” where criminals exploit different ways to attract and defraud potential victims – Sister Teresa Pham Ninh Khanh Hau, of the Caritas Diocese of Hung Hoa, north of Ho Chi Minh City, convened a meeting of over a hundred teenagers to share essential knowledge with them, aiming to raise awareness and “help them remain vigilant against human trafficking.”

Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki – New Bell Rings for Peace

August 8, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

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

August 2, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

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

July 25, 2025July 25, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

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

July 17, 2025July 17, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

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.”

CATHOLIC MINORITY OF SULAWESI – On the Paths of Dialogue and Mercy

July 9, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

They walk together with the Muslim population along the “paths of dialogue and mercy”. As Catholics, they live in an area of Indonesia where they make up a tiny fringe of society. But this fact does not discourage or frighten them.

DIED IN THE NAME OF FAITH – Centenary of the Beatification of Korean Martyrs

July 5, 2025July 5, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

On Saturday July 5 marks the centenary of the Eucharistic liturgy celebrated on July 5, 1925, in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, during which the first Korean martyrs were proclaimed blessed. We are talking about 79 Catholics who suffered martyrdom, ‘in odium fidei’, in the name of their faith during the infamous persecutions of Gihae (1839) and Byeong-o (1846). Among them was the first Korean Catholic priest, Andrew Kim Taegon, who completed his academic training in Macau and later managed to enter Korea as a missionary. However, thirteen months after his ordination, he was put to the sword in 1846, at the age of 26. He is now recognized as the patron saint of the Korean clergy.

PEACE FOR A BELOVED COUNTRY – Between War and Natural Disasters

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

Since the beginning of the civil war in Myanmar in 2021, there have been an increasing number of areas where fighting has taken place, where civilians have been living for too long as displaced people, facing continuous and increasing difficulties whenever they flee from areas of intense conflict. As far as the Catholic community is concerned, the Sagaing region is undoubtedly the most affected, with frequent bombings and “widespread suffering among the civilian population,” as recalled by Peter Sein Hlaing Oo, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Mandalay, in the north-central part of the former Burma. For this reason, this local prelate, like other members of the local Church, view with optimism the words of Pope Leo XIV, who, during the Sunday Angelus prayer on June 15, recalled the ongoing fighting in Myanmar.

A SAINT THE CHURCH NEEDS TODAY – Peter To Rot, the first Saint of Papua New Guinea

June 18, 2025June 18, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

By decision decreed by Pope Leo XIV during the celebration of his first Ordinary Public Consistory, the martyr Peter To Rot, a native of Papua New Guinea, will be canonized on October 19 of this year, precisely on the Sunday on which the 99th World Mission Day is celebrated. On that same morning, the Blesseds Ignatius Choukrallah Maloyan, Vincenza Maria Poloni, María del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, Maria Troncatti, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros and Bartolo Longo will be inscribed in the Book of Saints. A month and a half earlier, on September 7, the Italian Blesseds Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis were also canonized.

INDO-PAKISTANI CONFLICT OVER KASHMIR – The Vatican Inspires Peace

June 11, 2025 adminAll Categories, World

In the wake of the recent military crisis between Pakistan and India – which has once again rekindled the threat of a nuclear apocalypse – Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, a Sikh MP, has urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to work with international organizations to begin a process of “adequate recognition” to find a city that can be presented as “a symbolic place of peace for humanity”. Amritsar, the holy city of Sikhism, near the border between India and Pakistan and home to the famous Golden Temple, is an ideal candidate for this purpose and should therefore be declared a “war-free zone” and receive international protection, as is the case with the Vatican.