Giorgio Bernardelli

In a letter released by the Catholic charity, 124 faith leaders call on the finance ministers of the richest countries in the world to take concrete steps to end the scandal of poor countries spending more on debt repayment than on health and education. The goal is to set up a UN Debt Convention and a public global debt registry.

Twenty-five years after the 2000 campaign, Pope Francis marks the Jubilee relauncing an appeal in the footsteps of from John Paul II to forgive loans to those who cannot repay them. The denunciation of a UNCTAD report: ‘Worldwide 3.3 billion people live in countries forced to pay more money for interest on debt than for education and health. The South of the world has paid the heaviest bill for the crises’.

An Indian Jesuit from Goa, he is the superior of the community of the Vatican Observatory. He told AsiaNews that his “field of research is the origins of galaxies” billions of years ago, studying “the complexity and beauty of the universe”. Tools exist to find answers about “what exists outside the solar system”.

In the ‘favourable’ climate created by the war, the Israeli authorities yesterday demolished the Al Bustan Centre, in the neighbourhood close to the Suleiman Walls. An area that for years they have wanted to clear of Arab families in order to expand the infrastructure of the tourist park that is bringing to light all the remains of ancient Jewish Jerusalem.

A former Israeli prime minister and a former Palestinian ambassador to the UN recently issued a joint appeal to resume negotiations for the two states and a political solution for Gaza. The pope received them in audience at the Vatican together with Gershon Baskin (Israeli negotiator with Hamas) and Samer Sinijlawi (a Palestinian very close to Mohammad Dahlan) just as the Israeli government claims to have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Fr Alberto Berra, a PIME missionary in the city of the first atomic bomb in 1945, speaks about the decision to award the prize to the association that gives voice to the victims who still bear the signs of the explosion from almost eighty years ago. “They feel they have received a mission: to be a voice for the world” because, as Pope Francis said in Hiroshima in 2019, “it is not only the use of atomic weapons that is immoral, but also their possession.”

The Jesuit, a well-known member of the Indonesian Church, speaks about what Francis will say tomorrow in Jakarta to the authorities and the local Catholic community. The most important issues today are “friendship between religions and care for the environment.” This trip is different from the John Paul II's in 1989, when Suharto was still in power. For Fr Magnis-Suseno, “The danger today is called oligarchy,” but he has faith in the future.

By the end of the year, two priests and three nuns from Italy, India and Myanmar will set up a new outpost in the Diocese of Tanjung Selor, Indonesian Borneo, together with other congregations established elsewhere in the world inspired by PIME’s charism. For the Institute’s Superior General, Fr Brambillasca, this is “a project to renew in everyone the desire to leave for the mission.”

The bishop of Shanghai is in Rome for the conference marking the centennial of the first meeting of all Chinese bishops. The Church is one, but its development in China must "be in line" with the "great rebirth of the Chinese nation”. Communion with the pontiff is “the best guarantee of a faith freed from external political interests,” said Card Parolin. “There may be misunderstandings, but [they are] never half-hearted with respect to the Church's journey in China.”

The day that marks the birth of the modern State of Israel falls this year against the backdrop of the tragedy of 7 October and the war in Gaza. The risk of a political defeat is even greater than a military debacle. As Israel’s Declaration of Independence says, the challenge is "playing one's part in a common effort for the progress of the Middle East.”

The texts of the meditations personally written by the pontiff for this year's Good Friday evening celebration. In the Year of Prayer he has proclaimed in view of the Jubilee, a path full of indications on this fundamental dimension of Christian life. Persecuted Christians and all those who suffer the tragedy of war entrusted to the name of Jesus.

In a place where 1,832 people are already in prison on political grounds, the new law implementing Article 23 only “cloak[s] injustice with a veil of institutional legitimacy,” wrote a few months ago Chow Hang-tung, jailed for remembering the dead in Tiananmen Square. The real answer is not to forget this China behind bars, in Hong Kong and in the People's Republic.