File photo of former Irish president Mary McAleese. (Credit: AP.)
EVIDENTLY IT'S NO LONGER A GAY OLD TIME AT THE VATICAN ALTHOUGH IRELAND AND THE JESUITS IN ROME ARE A DIFFERENT STORY:Read this from Crux by pressing title:
Former Irish president barred from speaking at Vatican
And read this from the Irish secular press:
6 comments:
Sorry that this is not related to your above post.
My youngest brother is a doctor, and a traditional Latin mass Catholic, and he recently spent 12 months working in the Congo.
In the past 20 years almost 6 million have died in the Congo, a nation the size of western Europe and a population of c. 80 million, an African "First World War" fought there, almost totally ignored by western media, as has the tragedy and suffering that has gone on there since then. Congo is "blessed" with mineral resources, including approx. 80% of world's COLTAN, a mineral essential for all our cell phones and computers etc in the west. If Congo had a strong central government and if law and order could be enforced billions could be made selling Coltan etc to the USA and western Europe etc at fair prices. Instead several hundred politicians and military generals in surrounding nations and 7 or 8 major western IT multi national companies make multi millions buying cheap COLTAN etc from rival militia, rebel groups and generals of foreign troops as they fight it out (with atrocities as bad and on a larger scale than the Balkan Wars or that by Mexican drug cartels etc) to see who can terrorize millions of Congolese the most and most effectively exploit child labor in suffering slave conditions mining minerals.
Please pray for these millions in the Congo, the most suffering people on the earth in our generation.
Please remember Congo week each October and "Cell Out Day" each October 21st when people around the world are asked to turn off cell phones for one hour to reflect on the millions of people in the Congo who have and are suffering and dying in large part as a result of an ultra violent scramble for Coltan and other key minerals key to all the functioning of our modern technology in the wealthy west.
Please maybe spend 10 minutes in reading after googling:
Congo tragedy ignored.
Congo hell on earth ignored.
Thank you.
Oh My God, the Vatican committed an Act of Faith. How horrible!!! Knowing the ethos of the current regime in the Vatican, this was definitely an error! What's next, barring pro abortion, fake catholics from participating?
Poor suffering Congo!
From late 19th to early 20th century they were then too probably the most suffering people on the planet. A cruel, violent scramble to make money from their rubber and ivory etc back then with the worst human rights abuses on the face of the earth. But back then, missionaries spoke out enough, many journalists listened, major writers like Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad etc wrote about the suffering and the worst kind of exploitation of human beings on earth and politicians like Theodore Roosevelt were compassionate and decent enough to use their influence and then from about 1920 to 1960 the worst abuses were reduced. But the suffering there in recent decades with the cruellest atrocities and the scale of it all! Almost totally ignored in the rest of the world by politicians and media organizations to all those big actors and musicians, who can often speak out about matters so trivial in comparison to the tragedy in Congo. The best brief summary I found was written by John le Carre found by a google search of: Congo Hell on earth.
KPK.
Congo has 35 to 40 million Catholics.
The Catholic Church there really is about the only properly functioning institution.
The Catholics in Congo joke: In a deep pit in hell, Hitler and Stalin are occasionally allowed by the devil and demons to make a quick phone call to Germany or Russia. But in a deeper pit of hell, Mobutu and other past rulers of Congo are allowed by demons to often call Congo for hours.
Why?
"We're in hell. Congo is just a local call."
CRS began operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1961 at the invitation of the country's Catholic Episcopal Conference. Since 1993, the agency has maintained a continuous presence due to permanence of the conflicts, in order to provide timely assistance to populations at risk.
With an initial focus on emergency response programming, CRS expanded to development operations to respond to the growing needs of the population. CRS since introduced innovative humanitarian approaches such as the voucher fair. We continue to use more efficient solutions with technology such as ICT4D for faster emergency response and more efficient monitoring and evaluation systems that provide evidenced-based data for improved programming. Many of the partners that benefited from capacity building from CRS these past 20 years are currently independently run entities.
Today, the DRC is among CRS’s top 12 priority countries, with a FY15 budget of nearly $25 million. CRS DRC currently has over 170 national and 25 international staff operating out of a national office in Kinshasa; four sub-offices in Goma (North Kivu), Bukavu (South Kivu), Kananga (Kasai Occidental), and Lubumbashi (Katanga); and several satellite offices. We count nearly 20 local partner organizations.
"Life is nasty, brutish and short" is the most famous line in English philosophy.
The full Hobbes quote and the context is:
Life can be nasty, brutish, short, solitary and poor and will inevitably be so when there is not a strong functioning and effective government and with no rule of law, and law and order not properly enforced.
There are nations and areas of Africa which have the best, fertile soil and important mineral resources in abundance but without stable, efficient government and internal peace and laws enforced........billions of $$ can be made from their resources while millions of its citizens can experience poverty and violence.
the life expectancy in Congo has gone down by 15 years in recent decades compared to c.1915 to 1960 when it was poorly ruled and greatly exploited by Belgium.
Chinese investments in Africa have increased 700% in a decade.
If a large number of economists are right and by 2050 to 2080 China becomes the worlds leading economic power and then increasing world wide political influence follow economic dominance then tens of millions of Africans may be better off....
By the way in my whole life I have only had dinner and a lengthy conversation with a Catholic bishop once. Talking of such books and films as "When China rules the World" and "When China met Africa" etc Bishop X said if in a 100 years China rules the world that may be a good thing as we may then have a Chinese Pope and my God! A Chinese bishop or cardinal ending up pope could easily be the sort of pope needed to restore discipline and law and order within the Catholic Church!!
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