Economic Systems Must Protect Human Dignity: “International trade should be based on social justice, particularly as the poor are hit hardest by the global recession, says the Holy See’s permanent observer at the Geneva U.N. offices.  Archbishop Silvano Tomasi affirmed this when he addressed the Seventh Session of the WTO Ministerial Conference, Vatican Radio reported….During the meeting, ministers of the 139 WTO member countries evaluated the state of negotiations for a worldwide agreement on the liberalization of trade.  Though ‘every country has the right to define its own economic model,’ Archbishop Tomasi said, systems should be thought out in the context of ‘inclusive and equitable globalization,’ in which ‘solidarity, investment, the transfer of technology, the capacity to build and the exchange of knowledge are means at the service of development.’  All of this, he added, should be ‘based on the centrality of the person.’  Economy should protect the dignity inherent to every human person, the prelate affirmed.  And that is why the market should be directed to the common good, responding above all to the needs of the poorest.  To attain this objective, the Holy See representative contended, there must be ‘a decisive step toward a system of trade based on the principle of social justice.’”

(From Zenit, Dec. 7, 2009)

How Much are Health Execs Worth?: “Thirty Catholic and other faith-based institutional investors are using their shareholder clout to urge 21 health-related companies to disclose publicly the compensation packages for their top executives and their lowest-paid U.S. employees, including the costs of health care.  Shareholder resolutions filed by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are seeking reports comparing total compensation packages of highest and lowest paid employees in 2000, 2004 and 2009.  The report would analyze any change in the relative size of the gap between the two; evaluate whether top executive compensation packages should be modified; and decide whether the corporate board should continue to monitor the results of the comparison.  ‘Given the historical lack of transparency in the health care industry related to costs, this [information] is not something that shareholders know today,’ said Margaret Weber, who chairs the board of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and represents the Basilian Fathers of Toronto.”

(From America, Dec. 21-28, 2010)

Climate Change Destroying South Pacific Island: “For those who doubt climate change is real, Rev. Tafue Lusama is willing to share his testimony. Thanks to the Ankle Deep in Reality Tour established by Restoring Eden, I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from Rev. Lusama, a few weeks ago.  His message is simple: ‘Do you care for your brothers and sisters?’  Rev. Lusama’s home is the small island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific.  12,000 Christians (the entire population) call Tuvalu home and live in an area approximately 10 miles square (roughly 1/7 Washington D.C.’s area). Currently land disputes are commonplace as rising sea levels result in coastal erosion.  Saltwater has replaced fresh in water tables, destroying traditional cropland.  Rain is the only source of freshwater.  The seawater infiltration also destroys native trees, which exacerbates the situation and puts an entire culture at risk.

“‘It’s not just the land, the sea is dying,’ remarked Rev. Lusama.  ‘The ocean is becoming more acidic and bleaching (killing) the coral.  As the coral dies, the fish move and we are forced to travel further to supply food for our families and with gas at $17 per gallon no one can afford to fish.’ Many families have already relocated to Australia or New Zealand but relocation requires money and a job in the host country, neither of which are available to most of Tuvalu’s people.  Rev. Lusama’s message is simple, ‘Believe creation change is real; reduce carbon dioxide levels by 40%, and care for your brothers and sisters in Christ.’”

(From In the Beginning, Evangelical Environmental Network, December 2009)

Alaska Bishops Urge Action on Climate Change: “Citing Pope Benedict XVI’s recent calls to protect nature, Alaska’s four Catholic bishops have urged Congress to take action on global climate change.  ‘Addressing global climate change is about our responsibility to care for God’s creation and to care for one another, especially the weak and the vulnerable,’ wrote Alaska’s four bishops in a Nov. 17 letter to” Alaska’s Senators and Representative. In the letter the three acting bishops and one retired bishop asked “Alaska’s congressional delegation to support legislation such as the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of 2009.  The bill, S. 1733, was introduced in October by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.  On Nov. 5, it passed the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works by a vote of 11-1.  It now advances to the full Senate.”

(From The Catholic Telegraph, Dec. 11, 2009)

U.S. Military Presence Expands in Colombia: “On the eve of a pivotal political year in Colombia the U.S. is expanding its military presence.  On October 30th a new agreement was signed that gives the U.S. access to seven military bases in Colombia and ignores the concerns of Colombia’s neighbors, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.  Many in the U.S. share objections to the new basing agreements that represent both a renewed commitment to the disastrously failed ‘war on drugs,’ even as they complicate relations between the U.S. and the increasingly progressive governments of Colombia’s neighbors.  Additionally, the new bases are a stamp of approval for the government of Alvaro Uribe, whose partisans are currently pushing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to run for an unprecedented third term in 2010….In recent weeks, many Colombian organizations and political parties have voiced strong objections to the expansion of the U.S. military presence in their country.  They are worried it will exacerbate the lack of accountability for crimes committed by the military, reinforcing a culture of impunity that protects well-connected human rights violators.”

(From Global Exchange, Winter 2010)

Priests Allowed in Sri Lankan Rebel Camps: “In early December military officials began allowing Catholic priests to celebrate a few Masses for former Tamil rebels being held in camps in the country’s north.  ‘We are allowed in only for religious purposes,’ says Fr. Emilianuspillai of the Mannar diocese, where most of the 17 rehabilitation camps for Tamil rebels are located.  Sri Lankan authorities still will not allow access to the camps by the International Committee of the Red Cross.  No civilians are allowed in but parents and relatives can meet for a limited time at camp entrances.  More than seven months after Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war ended, about 12,000 former rebels continue to be held.  Church officials have estimated that about 3,000 of the detainees are Catholic, while the rest are Hindu.  Priests celebrate Mass in small prayer centers or in the shade of trees.  They are screened on arrival; cameras and mobile phones are prohibited.  The priests also are not allowed to carry letters or messages between the detainees and their families.”

(From National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 25, 2009)

Slavery in Our Time: “As the Obama administration is helping to improve the United States’ international reputation on human rights, more people are traveling to developing countries to meet the most vulnerable people and see the world from their perspective.  One of the worst realities is that thousands of human beings are trafficked every year and forced to become sex slaves, domestic workers, child soldiers, or agricultural laborers.  The statistics are shocking: 27 million enslaved people worldwide; a $12-billion industry growing faster than drugs or arms; 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders each year; and 80 percent are women and children.”

(From Global Exchange, Winter 2010)

Humanitarian Ticketed on Border: “Nearly two years ago, 14-year-old Josseline Janiletta Hernandez Quinteros crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.   She and her 10-year-old brother, both from El Salvador, joined a group led by a paid guide, known as a coyote, with hopes of meeting up with their mother, who lived in California.  Along the way, Josseline fell ill and the group left her behind.  Her brother wanted to stay with her, but Josseline told him he needed to keep going.  He needed to make it to see his mother, she told him.  Josseline said she’d be all right – she was his big sister, after all.  Josseline died in the desert alone. Her body lay in a river basin for three months until Dan Millis, a volunteer with the humanitarian group No More Deaths, stumbled across it.  Millis was hiking through the rough desert with three other volunteers leaving water for illegal immigrants.  The group, which searches for migrants in need of medical assistance, also leaves behind food, water and socks at designated locations along migrant trails. Each item is dated and the group tracks the locations.  Two days after Millis found Josseline’s body, federal law enforcement officials ticketed him for littering after he left supplies behind on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge on the U.S. – Mexico border.”

(From The Catholic Telegraph, Dec. 11, 2009)

Indonesian Catholic Priest Charged for Helping Farmers: “Police detained Fr. Rantius Manalu, a priest of the Sibolga diocese in Northern Sumatra, and interrogated him for seven hours before charging him with unauthorized use of public land.  Manalu has been distributing rubber tree seedlings to farmers in this rural western Indonesian province and encouraging the farmers to plant the trees in land long left idle.  Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry says it owns the land and it cannot be used for farming.  However, local farmers say they have permits to use the land dating back to 1941.  Hundreds of people, Muslim and Christian alike, rallied outside the police station while Manalu was in detention.  Leading the rally was Bishop Ludovikus Simanullang of Sibolga.  He said that Manalu’s ‘decision to hand out the seedlings to farmers was taken with the accord of the diocese’ and that the priest ‘fulfilled his pastoral mission by defending the rights of the people.’”

(From National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 25, 2009)

Ohio Archbishop Says Execution Wrong: “When Ohio inmate Kenneth Biros was executed Dec. 8 with a one-drug lethal injection – the first person in the U.S. to be executed in this manner – the Ohio Catholic Conference did not specifically address the execution but instead reiterated the church’s opposition to all means of capital punishment.  ‘The death penalty is wrong no matter what you use’ to carry it out, Carolyn Jurkowitz, executive director of the Ohio Catholic Conference, said Dec. 9.  Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati sent a letter to the Ohio governor Nov. 18 asking him to ‘stop this lethal form of punishment,’ referring to the one-drug method.  ‘Ohio has spent the past several months figuring out how to kill another person more efficiently,’ he wrote, noting that the state ‘will lead the country in experimenting with the new one-drug method of lethal injection. What a shameful legacy for our state: pursuing the slippery slope of ‘humane’ death,’ he added. …Archbishop Pilarczyk noted that the state’s bishops have consistently advocated for an end to the death penalty, saying they believe this form of punishment is unnecessary and systematically flawed….”

(From The Catholic Telegraph, Dec. 18, 2009)

Bishops Urge Abortion Ban in Health Reform: “The U.S. bishops again have urged U.S. senators to put Hyde amendment language into proposed health care reform legislation to prohibit federal funds from being used for elective abortion coverage.  Such a step, they said, would align the legislation with policies now governing all other federal health programs and with the just-passed appropriations bill…. In a separate letter” the bishops “urged the Senate to accept an amendment that would allow states to lift the five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to obtain Medicaid coverage.  On abortion, the bishops noted that senators voted overwhelmingly Dec. 13 for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which contains Hyde language banning federal funding for health coverage that includes elective abortion and maintains laws protecting conscience rights.  A major problem with the current health care reform legislation in the Senate…is that it ‘explicitly authorizes the use of federal funds to subsidize health plans covering elective abortions for the first time in history.’”

(From The Catholic Telegraph, Dec. 25, 2009)

Pope Has Lunch With Rome’s Poor: “Benedict XVI does more than proclaim the message of Christmas; he also lives it, visiting a Roman soup kitchen to lunch with the poor and hand out gifts to the children there.  After the Pope prayed the midday Angelus on Dec. 27, he visited the traditional Roman neighborhood of Trastevere, the location of a soup kitchen and education center run by the Catholic lay Community of San’ Egidio.  Twelve representatives of the poor sat at the Holy Father’s table, including a four-person Gypsy family, a 34-year old political refugee from Afghanistan, a 90-year-old Italian widower, and a 25-year old man in a wheelchair who was abandoned by his family because of his handicap.” Also at his table were a Somali Muslim woman, a Nigerian Catholic who crossed the desert of Libya to reach Italy, a homeless man and an ex-circus worker. Around 200 poor people ate with the Pope, who brought candies for part of the dessert.

“After eating, Benedict XVI distributed gifts to the 31 children present….The Holy Father told them that he came to visit ‘precisely on the feast of the Holy Family because in a certain way, that family is similar to you. In fact,’ he explained, ‘Jesus’ family, from the very beginning, also ran into difficulties: It endured the worry of not finding hospitality, it found itself obligated to emigrate to Egypt because of the violence of King Herod. You know well what difficulty means…’”

(From Zenit, Jan. 6, 2010)

Pope Says Environment is Moral Issue: “The degradation of the environment is a pressing moral problem that threatens peace and human life itself, Pope Benedict XVI said.  ‘We cannot remain indifferent to what is happening around us, for the deterioration of any one part of the planet affects us all,’ the pope said in his message for World Peace Day, Jan. 1, 2010.  Pope Benedict’s message, which was delivered to world leaders by Vatican ambassadors, was released at the Vatican Dec. 15.  Government policies, the activity of multinational corporations and the day-to-day behavior of individuals all have an impact on the environment, the pope said.  While the future of the world hangs in the balance because of what people are doing today, the negative effects of pollution and environmental exploitation already can be seen, he said. ‘Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural catastrophes and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical regions?’ the pope asked.  Already, he said, the word is seeing the ‘growing phenomenon of ‘environmental refugees,’ people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat’ to migrate in search of food, water and unpolluted air.”

(From The Catholic Telegraph, Dec. 25, 2009)

U.S. Bishops Weigh in on Afghanistan Strategy: “President Barack Obama’s goal of a ‘responsible transition’ in Afghanistan must serve as the ‘overall ethical framework for U.S. actions’ there, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace told the U.S. national security adviser. In a Dec. 18 letter to retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., called for the development of ‘specific criteria’ for troop withdrawal, as well as efforts to help the Afghanis ‘secure an adequate basis for future political and economic stability.’  He urged that ‘each course of action taken by the U.S.’ in Afghanistan be ‘weighed in light of the traditional moral principle of ‘probability of success.’ In other words, will this action contribute to a ‘responsible transition’ and withdrawal as soon as appropriate and possible?’ the bishop said.  ‘Will it improve Afghan security and minimize loss of life?  Will it provide an adequate foundation for long-term development?’… ‘In the face of terrorist threats, our nation must respond to indiscriminate attacks against innocent civilians in ways that combine a resolve to do what is necessary, the restraint to ensure that we act justly, and the vision to focus on broader issues of poverty and injustice that are unscrupulously exploited by terrorists in gaining recruits,’ Hubbard wrote.”

(From National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 8, 2010)

SJB Friars Commit to Refugees, Migrants and Victims of Human Trafficking: The Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province based in Cincinnati, Ohio, held their 2008 Chapter at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana May 19-23. Of the many proposals passed, the Chapter delegates affirmed a resolution to learn more about the issues of migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking in order to better be able to respond to their needs. The resolution says:
 “We, the Franciscans of St. John the Baptist Province, commit ourselves to increase our awareness of issues surrounding refugees, migrants and victims of human trafficking in order to develop more proactive Franciscan responses on the provincial, friary and personal level.”

SJB Friars Commit to Non-violence: The Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province based in Cincinnati, Ohio, held their 2005 Chapter at the University of Dayton, May 23-27. Among the many proposals that were passed, the Chapter delegates affirmed a resolution introduced by their JPIC Office in which they committed themselves to “continued conversion to a life of Franciscan non-violence in support of a consistent ethic of life.” The complete resolution follows.

“As Franciscans, we affirm the sacredness of all human life and the inherent value of all creation. In a world where violence is rampant, we wish to be a sign of hope, actively promoting the preservation of life, peace among people and nations, justice for all and reconciliation. We commit ourselves to continued conversion to a life of Franciscan non-violence in support of a consistent ethic of life.”