Pope shakes up office that handles migration, COVID
Rome, ItalyAP Pope Francis on Thursday removed the head of the Vatican office that handles migration, the environment and COVID-19 issues, and put a trusted cardinal and one of the Holy See’s most influential nuns at the helm temporarily. Francis thanked Cardinal Peter Turkson for his five years of service but decided on new leadership […]
Wow!: A gift of Christmas joy for the children of the incarcerated
LUIS ANDRES HENAO and MARIAM FAM, of The Associated Press, report on how US prison ministries bring joy to prisoners and their families at Christmas…
Vaccines, pills and data offer some Christmas cheer in face of Omicron advance
Johannesburg, South Africa/London, UKReuters Omicron advanced across the world on Thursday, with health experts warning the battle against the COVID-19 variant was far from over despite two drugmakers saying their vaccines protected against it and signs it carries a lower risk of hospitalisation. Coronavirus infections have soared wherever the highly infectious Omicron variant has spread, […]
Pope demands humility in new zinger-filled Christmas speech
Rome, ItalyAP Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the “glitter of our armor” was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church’s mission. As he has in the past, Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task […]
Three bodies found, but scores buried by landslide at Myanmar jade mine
Reuters Myanmar rescuers found two more bodies at a jade mine on Thursday after an official conceded there was little hope of finding survivors among scores of people buried by an avalanche of dirt and rubble while searching for fragments of the gems. Many were swept into a lake below by the landslide of mining […]
US pastor asks federal court to sanction immigration officials
Washington DC, USRNS The pastor of a historic New York church is asking a federal court to sanction immigration officials, arguing they offered “false or at best misleading” accounts in response to a lawsuit and put her at risk of arrest in Mexico under false pretenses as she aided asylum-seekers. “They consistently lied or hid […]
Plans move forward for 2022 Pope, Russian Patriarch meeting
Rome, ItalyAP Plans are progressing for a possible meeting next year between Pope Francis and the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church following their historic encounter in Havana in 2016, a top Russian Orthodox official said Wednesday. Metropolitan Hilarion, foreign relations chief of the Russian Orthodox Church, met for about an hour with Francis on […]
Origins: The history of the shopping centre Santa
In an article first published on The Conversation, Australian marketing experts GARY MORTIMER and LOUISE GRIMMER look at how the shopping centre Santa became a staple of the festive season…
Explainer: Why Libya’s election has collapsed and what comes next
Tunis. LibyaReuters Libya said on Wednesday its planned election would not take place but it has not set a new date or worked out how to move forward to avoid a return to conflict. This sets out the main issues and what might happen next. How did we get here?Libya fell apart after the 2011 […]
Updated: Hong Kong university dismantles, removes Tiananmen statue from campus
Updated: 8.30am, 24th December (AEDT)Hong Kong, ChinaReuters A leading Hong Kong university has dismantled and removed a statue from its campus site that for more than two decades has commemorated pro-democracy protesters killed during China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. The artwork, of anguished human torsos, is one of the few remaining public memorials in […]