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Hong Kong’s Cardinal Zen pens letter “begging on knees” for Church to tackle religious oppression in China…
Hong Kong bishop Joseph Zen (Facebook photo) Hong Kong bishop Joseph Zen (Facebook photo) TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former Hong Kong bishop and human rights campaigner, Joseph Zen (陳日君), has sent a letter to the College of Cardinals seeking protection for churches in China from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution. On Wednesday (Jan. 8), Rome’s largest newspaper agency, Il Messaggero, revealed Zen’s letter, which was dated Sept. 27, 2019. In his letter, the 87-year-old bishop emeritus protested that Pope Francis has stayed silent despite promising to tackle religious oppression in China. Zen said he was “begging on his knees” for help from his fellow cardinals and criticized the Vatican for inking agreements with the Beijing government. He pointed out a document s...
Pope Francis Golden Knights bobblehead has tragic backstory…
When Tyge O’Donnell found out he would have the opportunity to meet Pope Francis, he knew he had to present him with a gift he’d remember. Then the Las Vegas resident remembered that the pope, known to be a lover of team sports, had been given a Vegas Golden Knights jersey with his name on it last season by the team’s investor and legal consultant Tim Busch. So O’Donnell went out and bought two bobbleheads — one of Golden Knights forward William Karlsson and one of the pope. With a bit of careful prying and gluing, he managed to swap their heads and created a custom bobblehead of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church wearing a “zucchetto” — the conical clerical cap he favors — but clad in a Golden Knights jersey, holding a hockey stick in his hands and standing on a puck. Then, with the ...
Do-gooder or ‘Devil’? A Capuchin friar’s work (and clashes with socialist officials) divides a Venezuelan village…
EL TUKUKO, Venezuela — The Rev. Nelson Sandoval’s repeated clashes with Socialist officials, Marxist rebels and tribal chiefs have earned him both loyal followers and bitter enemies in a remote and neglected Indigenous village in the rainforest of western Venezuela. To some of the community’s 3,500 residents, he is “the Devil.” His supporters know him as their “second father.” For the last 15 years, Father Sandoval has been working to bring education and health care to the village, El Tukuko. His allies say this has made him the main lifeline keeping El Tukuko afloat amid Venezuela’s unprecedented economic crisis, underlining how the fortunes of entire communities can hinge on single individuals in a disintegrating country. His detractors, however, “tell me I will go to hell,” said Father ...
Iranian missile attack stirs fears of Erbil’s Christians…
The Harir air base as seen on Sept. 21, 2016. (Edward Pentin photo) The region, which was targeted by one of the pair of missile attacks launched yesterday as retaliation against the U.S., is home to several thousand Christians who have been trying to rebuild their lives. ROME — Christians in northern Iraq are increasingly concerned about tensions in the region after Iranian forces launched five missiles overnight on an air base in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil that houses U.S.-led coalition troops. The Nineveh Plain just north of Erbil is home to several thousand Christians who have been trying to rebuild their lives following the trauma of the Islamic State group (ISIS) occupying many once predominantly Christian towns north of the capital from 2014 to 2017. Iraq’s military said the...
Maps of cities worldwide, overlaid with tourists’s impressions of each neighborhood…
The aim of this project is to map tourists’ perceptions of different urban areas through data retrieved from vacation rental platform Airbnb. After their stay, Airbnb guests score their feeling about the neighbourhood using a star-based rating system. The aggregated rating of each Airbnb listing is publicly accessible, and given the widespread expansion of this platform, a large amount of data is available for the most visited cities. When overlaid on a map of the city, the data reveals interesting geographic patterns and exposes subjective perceptions on safety, upkeep or convenience. This project has been featured in Inverse, Lifehack, Next City, Geoawesomeness, Maps Mania, newspapers El País and Tages Anzeiger, and articles by Peter Murray and Florence Broderick...
Maps of cities worldwide, overlaid with tourists’s impressions of each neighborhood…
The aim of this project is to map tourists’ perceptions of different urban areas through data retrieved from vacation rental platform Airbnb. After their stay, Airbnb guests score their feeling about the neighbourhood using a star-based rating system. The aggregated rating of each Airbnb listing is publicly accessible, and given the widespread expansion of this platform, a large amount of data is available for the most visited cities. When overlaid on a map of the city, the data reveals interesting geographic patterns and exposes subjective perceptions on safety, upkeep or convenience. This project has been featured in Inverse, Lifehack, Next City, Geoawesomeness, Maps Mania, newspapers El País and Tages Anzeiger, and articles by Peter Murray and Florence Broderick...
Don’t be fooled by China’s morality play…
Barely reported outside China, in late October the country’s ruling Communist Party published a 10,000-character document on social mores or, more simply put, morality. It was the latest shot to be fired in leader Xi Jinping’s war against religion that has seen repression, especially against Christianity and Islam, amped up to levels not seen since the dark days of Mao Zedong which culminated in the bloody, murderous and disastrous Cultural Revolution from 1966 until the dictator’s 1976 death. But the new paper, as we will discover, is also a long overdue de-facto recognition of the spiritual vacuum that has been wrought by the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose legitimacy now rests precariously, not on its original aims of creating an equal society but on the continua...
Don’t be fooled by China’s morality play…
Barely reported outside China, in late October the country’s ruling Communist Party published a 10,000-character document on social mores or, more simply put, morality. It was the latest shot to be fired in leader Xi Jinping’s war against religion that has seen repression, especially against Christianity and Islam, amped up to levels not seen since the dark days of Mao Zedong which culminated in the bloody, murderous and disastrous Cultural Revolution from 1966 until the dictator’s 1976 death. But the new paper, as we will discover, is also a long overdue de-facto recognition of the spiritual vacuum that has been wrought by the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose legitimacy now rests precariously, not on its original aims of creating an equal society but on the continua...
New documentary offers rare glimpse of “noticeably frailer” Benedict XVI’s life in Vatican Gardens…
The half-hour documentary, which aired Jan. 3 on German television, is dignified and respectful of the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus. Benedict XVI appears mentally alert but noticeably frailer and almost unable to speak in a new German television documentary providing a rare glimpse into his daily life. In the half-hour film aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian state television) on Jan. 3, the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus speaks only three times but in a barely audible voice. “I used to have a great voice, now it doesn’t work anymore,” Benedict says in the program, which was filmed at his Mater Ecclesiae monastery residence in the Vatican. “One sees that his strength isn’t there anymore,” his personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein says in the program. “His voice is simply broken, we...
New documentary offers rare glimpse of “noticeably frailer” Benedict XVI’s life in Vatican Gardens…
The half-hour documentary, which aired Jan. 3 on German television, is dignified and respectful of the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus. Benedict XVI appears mentally alert but noticeably frailer and almost unable to speak in a new German television documentary providing a rare glimpse into his daily life. In the half-hour film aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian state television) on Jan. 3, the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus speaks only three times but in a barely audible voice. “I used to have a great voice, now it doesn’t work anymore,” Benedict says in the program, which was filmed at his Mater Ecclesiae monastery residence in the Vatican. “One sees that his strength isn’t there anymore,” his personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein says in the program. “His voice is simply broken, we...
Secular leftist discovers natural advantages of NFP, says liberals who discredit it are “cruel and paternalistic”…
(Bortonia / Getty Images) Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue. Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue. Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? The first time I had sex without a condom, I cried. It wasn’t that I regretted having condomless sex; I regretted not realizing I could have been doing it all along. Ad Policy I’d opted myself out of hormonal birth ...
Silence, conscience, freedom: Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life”…
Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” does not drag. Its deliberate pace describing why its protagonist—a Catholic who defied Hitler’s Reich by refusing military service—died is a moving icon, a window into that mystery of why and how silence and conscience lead to true freedom. “There isn’t any twirling, is there?” I asked my former student Emily and her mother. They were emerging from the 4:30 showing of Terrence Malick’s powerful new film about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian villager who decided to defy the Reich by refusing military service or even service as a medical orderly if it involved swearing allegiance to Hitler. I was there at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis for the 8 P.M. showing with my three oldest sons and was a bit nervous since one of my boys kept asking me, “Is this an ...
