Bangladesh unions say ‘downgraded’ garment workers miss expected pay rise
Dhaka, BangladeshThomson Reuters Foundation Bangladesh’s union leaders said on Tuesday that some garment factories were assigning long-standing workers lower salary grades than they deserved to reduce the impact of a pay rise, after a week of violent protests in which one person was killed. The government and factory owners said they were unaware of the […]
Final US Jesuit group releases names of accused abusers
RNS The Northeast province of the Society of Jesus has released the names of 50 men it says have been credibly accused of child sex abuse since 1950. With the report’s release on Tuesday, following others from the Catholic order’s US provinces in recent months, all Jesuit provinces in the United States have now unveiled lists of […]
CSW expresses concern over religious freedom protections in Cuba’s new draft constitution
Religious freedom advocacy CSW is “deeply concerned” that Cuba’s National Assembly failed to add protections for religious liberty to a final draft of the country’s new constitution before it goes to a public referendum on 24th February. In a statement, the UK-based organisation – which noted it continues to record widespread religious freedom violations in […]
BOOKS: A PAINFUL JOURNEY TO PRIESTHOOD
DAVID ADAMS reads Australian Rev Libby Gilchrist’s account of her long and painful journey to becoming an Anglican priest…
In first, Native American tribe displaced by sea gets land to relocate
Thomson Reuters Foundation A small Native American tribe in Louisiana whose land has nearly vanished into the sea has moved a step closer to relocating its community further inland after authorities acquired new land for the move, part of a first-of-its-kind project. The 208 hectares of farmland will be made available to members of the […]
Eco-friendly locomotive will be “rolling ambassador” for German Protestant festival
A special locomotive bearing the motto of the 2019 Kirchentag, Germany’s biggest regular Protestant festival, will travel the length and breadth of the country as a “rolling ambassador” for the event that takes place this year in June in the western German city of Dortmund. Painted in the red livery of Germany’s national rail company, […]
SUFFERING
Suffering is one of the profound mysteries of existence. The fact that we recognise suffering assumes good and evil, which philosophically, is strong evidence for the divine. PICTURE: Cullan Smith/Unsplash In a materialistic world, such categories would simply not occur to us! So how are we to understand suffering? Much suffering is simply pure evil, […]
DISPLACED PEOPLE: TOO SCARED TO RETURN HOME, MYANMAR REFUGEES IN THAI CAMPS FACE AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
RINA CHANDRAN, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports from the Thai-Myanmar border…
In northern Kenya, al-Shabaab militants target Christian teachers
RNS After the militant group al-Shabaab killed three of his colleagues in a recent attack on Christian schoolteachers here, Jared Nyanchong’i packed his few belongings and boarded a bus to the capital, Nairobi. “These people call us black Satan, devil and kafir,” said Nyanchong’i, 40, a father of three. “The life of teachers is very important. […]
ESSAY: SHOULD CATHOLICS VIEW THE POPE AS INFALLIBLE?
In an article first published on The Conversation, REBECCA RIST, associate professor of religious history at the University of Reading, looks at the question of papal infallibility…