News/International

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Development aid that is tied to promoting abortion, contraception and cutbacks in social and educational programs represents a form of "cultural imperialism" from the West that must end, said some African bishops.

Nations and institutions, especially in the West, must stop trying to impose on Africa policies and ideas that fail to respect human dignity and life, said Cardinal Theodore-Adrien Sarr of Dakar, Senegal. These foreign concepts represent "a kind of cultural imperialism," he said.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - U.S. President Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was met with high hopes from the Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi told journalists Oct. 9 that the news "was greeted with appreciation at the Vatican in light of the president's demonstrated commitment to promoting peace on an international level and, in particular, in recently promoting nuclear disarmament."

{mosimage}TORONTO - American Catholics who care about abortion and end-of-life issues are being cynically used in the bitter health care debate in the United States, one of the U.S.’s leading experts on Catholic health care has told The Catholic Register.

“It has partly to do with just political polarization between Democrats and Republicans in this country in the wake of the election of President (Barack) Obama,” said Dominican Father Charles Bouchard, vice president of theological education at Ascension Health in St. Louis.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It’s been a harrowing week for Faye Arellano as she worried about relatives in the Philippines hit by Typhoon Ketsana, the “Katrina of the Philippines.”

Close to 300 people died in and around Manila from the typhoon which struck on Sept. 26.

It dumped an average month’s worth of rain in one day in Greater Manila and displaced about half a million people. A week later, at least 22 people were killed by tropical storm Parma.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Africans must tap into the strengths of their cultural and religious values to promote reconciliation on the continent and to resist the "spiritual toxic waste" spread by the West, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Presiding Oct. 4 over the opening Mass for the special Synod of Bishops for Africa, Pope Benedict said the vocation of the Catholic Church on the continent is to work for peace and to promote the holiness that will lead to justice, strong families and care for the weakest members of African societies.

{mosimage}HARTFORD, Conn.- The cause for sainthood of Fr. Michael McGivney has been moved forward by completion of a supplemental report on a possible miracle attributed to the founder of the
Knights of Columbus.

On Sept. 22 officials of a supplemental tribunal of the archdiocese of Hartford sent the new report to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The contents of the report remain secret. The tribunal gathered more testimony from additional witnesses, including several medical doctors, about the circumstances of a reported miracle.

{mosimage}UNITED NATIONS - Climate change is more than an environmental concern; it is an issue of justice that merits immediate attention by world leaders. This was the message delivered repeatedly by Catholic participants in the Sept. 22 UN Summit on Climate Change in New York.

"It is unfair that people in developing countries pay the consequences for problems that rich countries have created," said Elyzabeth Peredo, director of the Solon Foundation in Bolivia, at a Sept. 22 press conference. As an example, she said Bolivia generates only 0.1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but melting glaciers caused by the warming effect of emissions worldwide endanger crops for small-scale farmers in communities throughout the country's Andes mountains.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY  - Pope Benedict XVI is making a three-day visit Sept. 26-28 to a nation widely viewed as Europe’s least-religious country.

The trip to the Czech Republic was scheduled to coincide with the feast of St. Wenceslas — a 10th-century prince who is credited with bringing Christianity to the Czech people.

It will be a religious pilgrimage for the Pope, who will make stops in the capital to see the Infant of Prague at the Church of Our Lady of Victory and in Stara Boleslav to celebrate the feast of St. Wenceslas, patron saint of Czechs. Pope Benedict will also speak to political and cultural leaders in Prague and meet with President Vaclav Klaus. It will be his first papal visit to the Czech Republic and his 13th trip outside Italy

{mosimage}TORONTO - Avishay Braverman, Israel’s Minister of Minorities, is as good a Jew, as Jewish a Jew, as anyone could hope to meet. And he’s praying that “the Spirit of Jesus” will guide the leaders of Israel and its neighbours over the coming months and years.

“The basis of religion is not about domination. People often take religion and abuse it for domination,” Braverman told The Catholic Register while on a stopover in Toronto Sept. 15. “It’s about acceptance.”

{mosimage}WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge to continue the ban on the use of federal funds for abortion and to maintain conscience protections for health care workers in any health reform legislation was welcomed by two officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the president of the Catholic Health Association.

Speaking with Catholic News Service Sept. 10, hours after Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience, Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development in the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said the president’s address offered an encouraging sign that the administration has been listening to concerns raised by the bishops and pro-life organizations about abortion funding in any reform legislation.