“ At Monterrey, the delegates wish to speak about the poor but not see them“. That’s the title of an editorial signed by Bebette Stern that appeared on the front page of the French daily Le Monde ( 19/3). Stern speaks of the UN Conference on the funding of development that opened in the Mexican town on Monday, 18 March. “ At Monterrey writes Stern five days are being devoted exclusively to the campaign against poverty and the efforts that the rich countries ought to make to contribute more, and more effectively, to reducing the gap between North and South. Some 300 non-governmental organizations have gone there to make their voice heard and to protest against the maintenance of a liberal economic model“. Yet, notes Stern, a curious fact occurred last Sunday: workmen hastened to finish the construction of a wall, “ a fine wall writes Stern solid, 2 metres high and 200 metres long that the inhabitants of Monterrey have already nicknamed the ‘wall of poverty”“. The wall was not in fact erected to protect the heads of State and the participants in the UN Conference from the attacks of antiglobal activists, but to conceal from sight a shantytown situated on the road that the heads of State have to take to reach the conference centre and the venue where they are due to “ debate the world’s poverty“. Aid to the developing countries is also critically discussed in an article by Gerd Rosenkranz (“ Relapse into the optional“) published in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel of 18/3 in which the author claims that “the government is failing in its attempt to make a ‘new policy of the South’ work. Gerhard Schröder stays far away from the world summit for the campaign against poverty” and “ the groups that deal with development policy and the ecclesiastical organizations unanimously deplore a relapse into the optional” of aid to the developing countries. Just how wide is the gulf between words and deeds “ was demonstrated last week when, with a struggle, just before the Monterrey summit, the countries of the EU laboriously succeeding in resolving to increase to 0.39% of GDP their average aid allocation to the poor countries up till 2006, a sector in which Germany ought to contribute at least 0.33 %. That would still mean 1.2 billion euros more than the sum she allocates today.” The Spanish papers reflect on the assassination of the archbishop of Cali in Colombia, Msgr. Isaías Duarte Cancino. ABC of 18/3 carries the headline: “a life dedicated to the search for peace and the denunciation of Colombia’s ills” and draws a parallel with the fate of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of San Salvador, gunned down in 1981: “ Symbol of the communion between church and people, Archbishop Duarte says the paper was not a liberation theologian, but fought at the side of the people his whole life“. In the same paper Salud Hernández describes Archbishop Duarte as “the first to denounce what no one else dared to say. He didn’t care from which side the violence came, and this impartiality and this courage earned him the respect of all his fellow-citizens”. El Mundo of 18/3 believes that “ the archbishop was right” because “ his death confirms the accusations he made a month ago about the fact that some candidates in the recent Colombian election were bankrolled by the proceeds of drug trafficking“. According to El Pais of 19/3 this assassination “ is added to the official statistic of 8,078 political assassinations of civilians committed in Colombia over the last seven years. But it’s not just one more statistic. His voice was heard especially in a country dominated by fear and he never remained silent when confronted by crimes“. “ The ranks of papal soldiers in Russia” is the title of an article by Markus Wehner in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 19/3 which comments: “The Russian Orthodox Church launches a spiritual attack on the Vatican on its own territory“. The author points out: “The relation of the Russian Orthodox Church with the temporal power that, in the course of its history, it has tried to attract to its side, has always been difficult “and today “ President Putin presents himself as an Orthodox believer and fosters the best possible relations with the ecclesiastical hierarchy“.
