National and World-wide Issues
This page provides information and links to national and international issues and events related to faith, outreach and social responsibility. Please check back as articles are added or updated. In addition, you may wish to check out the following on-line news and opinion sources:
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The Vatican - Official site
News.va - Official Vatican news network EWTN - Global Catholic television |
Catholic Register - Canada's Catholic news source
Catholic News Service - US Catholic Bishops CRUX News Service - Boston Globe Media |
POPE FRANCIS’ MESSAGE
By Philip Pullella, June 27, 2018 VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - When Pope Francis wanted to appoint a woman as deputy head of the Vatican press office in 2016, he quickly ran into opposition from the Catholic Church's male-dominated hierarchy. "I had to fight," Francis said in a rare, two-hour interview with Reuters in his residence this month. Asked why the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics, then three years into his papacy, could not put a woman into a middle-ranking Vatican role without a fight, the pope smiled and replied: "Bosses cannot always do what they want. "They have to convince. There is a verb, a word, that helps me very much in governing: 'to persuade'. It is persuasion, slowly persuading, if you can manage to do it." Francis de-clined to say who had resisted his appointment of Paloma Garcia Ovejero, a 42-year-old Spanish journalist, the only woman with an executive role in the Vatican press office and one of fewer than a dozen in Vatican leadership posi-tions. The episode is an example of one of the battles this pope has fought to change the culture of the Vatican even incrementally, to turn it and the Church beyond its walls into a more efficient, inclusive and forgiving institution Pope Francis Declares September 1st
Annual World Day of Prayer for Creation Christians are asked to implore God's help in protecting creation and to ask for forgiveness "for sins committed against the world in which we live." "The life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body of nature, but lived in communion with all worldly realities. The Orthodox Church has set aside a similar day of prayer since 1989. 
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Pope Francis Blames Unfettered Greed for Increased Pollution, Inequality, and Global Warming
The following excerpt is from the CRUX, June 2015: VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has published a sweeping condemnation of humanity’s treatment of the environment, blaming “unfettered greed” for increased pollution, inequality, and global warming, “mainly as a result of human activity,” and urging everyone to act quickly, as the Earth begins “to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” He ties environmental degradation directly to poverty — saying the continued abuse of the natural world has the greatest effect on residents of the developing world and serves to keep them at a disadvantage — and abortion, writing that a “throwaway culture” leads to a diminished respect for all human life. The encyclical is particularly critical of unregulated markets and wealthy nations in the global north unwilling to sign on to global environmental accords. Ending months of anticipation on Thursday, the Vatican released Laudato Si, or Praise be to You, a sprawling, 184-page document touching on a variety of ways that human beings interact with their surroundings, from deforestation and unclean water to architecture and urban planning. Further Reading:
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