Chiara Zappa

For 57 years, the Sisters of Saint Jeanne Antide Thouret have taught Christian and Shia children and youth to live together in Dahye, a Hezbollah stronghold on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital. Since war broke out, a hundred families have been forced to flee, and about 20 had their homes destroyed. The wounds caused by fear are invisible amid the uncertainty about the future. The feeling that someone is close to them is the only sign of hope.

Silent prayer in front of the monument bearing the names of the more than 200 victims of the 2020 explosion. Kneeling in front of a child with a picture of his father who died in the tragedy. After five years, there are still obstacles to the investigation. The story of Nation Station, a kitchen set up in those days to feed those who had lost everything and which is trying to be a laboratory for the future.

Ahead of the Pope's visit to Turkey, Monsignor Antuan Ilgıt, the first native to lead the Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia, speaks: ‘I feel close to young people because of my life experience,’ he says. ‘Our Church? It is a seed for the world.’

From Italy, exiled film director Fariborz Kamkari comments on what is happening in his country. Khamenei has failed to understand that with 7 October 2023 he found himself in a dead-end street. The Pasdaran are at a crossroads, between a military regime that makes peace with the West or mass destruction like with Hamas. Iran has a long history of “stolen democratic revolutions” while it is among Kurds that the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement first emerged.

While the world's spotlight is on the tragedy in Myanmar, the rebirth of the Turkish region struck by an equally powerful quake on 6 February 2023 is still far away. “The earthquake is always with us, in the trauma we experienced, in the people we lost, in the destroyed buildings we walk through every day,” said one survivor. In the place where Jesus’s followers were first called "Christians," local Christians are forced to go back and forth from a nearby town.

On the first anniversary of the massacre in his kibbutz in Neti HaAsara, the testimony of an Israeli businessman among the protagonists of the movement calling for the relaunch of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. ‘We can forgive each other for what we did in the past and even for what is happening today, but we will not be able to forgive each other if we do not work to build a future together’.

Fr Bahjat Karakach, a Franciscan, talks about the difficult situation in the battered city after 13 years of war, a powerful earthquake, and the Gaza War. With inflation and rents skyrocketing, people survive with “remittances from relatives abroad.” The parish is involved in various projects in neighbourhoods once occupied by militias where poverty and degradation are high. The Church today is "a light in the midst of darkness.”

After the meeting with society's most vulnerable in the house of Mother Teresa's nuns, the speech at the Rencontres Méditerranéennes. "Just saying 'enough' to migration means turning a blind eye to the future: integration is tiring, but it prepares the future." The invitation to the Churches of the different shores of the Mediterranean: evaluate the opportunity of a joint Episcopal Conference.

From Algeria and Lebanon to Jerusalem to Morocco, bishops and young people of different faiths reach out to each other at a crossroads of migration to imagine new paths of coexistence, starting in La Solidarité, a neighbourhood where 90% of the residents are of North African and Sub-Saharan origin. The pontiff will be given the Manifesto for a Theology from the Mediterranean drafted by representatives from 17 institutions located on the five shores of the sea.

Pope Francis will deliver a much-awaited speech tomorrow before Mongolia’s authorities and the diplomatic corps in the State Palace in the Mongolian capital. Russia is the country's main energy supplier but 90 per cent of its exports go to China. Meanwhile, “new” partners are lining up, eager for access to its mineral riches, starting with strategic rare earths. During his visit, the pontiff hopes to encourage steps towards peace.

Pope Francis flies out tonight on his historic trip to the country of the steppes. Kenyan-born Sister Anne Wangeci Waturu, head of Caritas Mongolia, speaks about it. “We try to meet the specific needs of people who live in peculiar social and weather conditions,” she says. This includes help to protect livestock and family gardens to deal with the consequences of climate change.

Discovering Mongolia’s small Catholic community ahead of the pontiff’s arrival on 31 August shows how the country is rebuilding its identity after 70 years of communism and the difficult transition to democracy. The small local Catholic community has been a work in progress for the past 30 years. Fr Peter Sanjajav is one of the first two local priests. “Today my story helps me serve as a bridge between different cultures and experiences, alongside those who are searching,” he said.