Redazione

The legislative elections in Russia, followed a day later by the kamikaze attacks at the heart of Moscow, monopolise the attention of the main international dailies. Steve Lee Myers, writing in the Herald Tribune (10/12), links the two events, and observes: “In Sunday’s elections, the Russian voters gave a convincing victory to the party in […]

The EU Centre for monitoring racism and xenophobia (EUMC) has announced the publication of the draft of the controversial “Report on anti-Semitism in Europe”, “censured” by the Centre itself two weeks ago because considered “unreliable”, but nonetheless published on various Internet sites in recent days. The EUMC in Vienna had been severely criticised for its […]

The European Conference on volunteer service (Rome, 29/11) was the occasion to review the national legislation on the matter and confirm the project of the Union to establish a European volunteer service, probably from 2005. With a view to structuring and rendering permanent the European volunteer service, the Commission intends to organise “new forms of […]

Christmas 2003 " "

“The Catholic Church. Old or young? Dead or alive? Interesting or irritating?” These are the provocative questions that open the editorial of the December number of the French review of contemporary culture “Etudes”. Françoise Le Corre , deputy editor, focuses his reflections on the superfluity of “images, sociological surveys, inquiries, enthusiasms and reservations, questions and […]

Ucraina" "

On 4 December John Paul II, recalling the 70th anniversary of the famine (Holomodor) – deliberately engineered by Stalin to bend the Ukraine to his will – appealed for pacification, concord and cooperation. The persecution of the Communist regime, with millions of victims, lasted for many decades, but now the country is looking with hope […]

“Peace on earth!”. It is with this invocation that Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, begins his Christmas message this year. The Evangelic pastor refers in his message to the situations of war and violence that exist in the planet and asks Christians to become “promoters of peace and justice”, just […]

“Once again we affirm that terrorism cannot be justified by any religion”. The religious leaders of Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia make this declaration in a joint appeal issued at the end of a meeting recently held in Moscow and attended by the Patriarch of Moscow Alexis II, Patriarch Aliya II of Georgia, Patriarch Garegin […]

ecumenism" "

The next plenary session of the “International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission” (IARCCUM), and the task assigned to it of preparing the publication of a common document on faith, will be deferred due to the problems recently raised in the USA by the consecration of a gay bishop. But in spite of the […]

The liturgy is a treasure: the German bishops remind the faithful of this in a pastoral letter read out in all parishes at the end of November. The document calls the liturgy “a precious treasure”, since it is a “festivity that interrupts our daily life”: it is the “celebration of our salvation”. It “inflames our […]

“We must not resign ourselves to the dictatorship of an idea of freedom that is imposed on us by the deviant ideology of self-development, of a misconceived autonomy that fetters the confines of our having been created in the image of God. Only God can have the last word on freedom”. So declares Cardinal Simonis, […]