Redazione

“No to the secularization of nursery schools”. The alarm was sounded in recent days by German Caritas and the federation of Catholic nursery schools in response to the debate now going on in Germany on the reform of education. The issue returned to the top of the political agenda after the results of an OECD […]

A fast day, a minute’s silence, ecumenical celebrations and the collection of donations in all Spanish parishes, as a sign of solidarity with the populations throughout the world that have to endure situations of poverty, violations of human rights and conflicts. These are some of the initiatives of the national campaign “If you want peace, […]

“The projects of Caritas are important because they act as pillars of support for the stability of the European house”: with these words pronounced in recent days in Vienna, Franz Küberl, president of Austrian Caritas, presented its new aid programme “Donating for the future”, in favour of the countries of Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, […]

Poland is making every effort to achieve its “return to Europe”, together with the other nine candidate countries for EU enlargement. The timetable is fairly short, since the objective is to arrive at the European elections in 2004 with a group of candidate countries that have already concluded the membership procedure, and hence eligible to […]

44 dead, 334 injured, 340 houses destroyed, 246 places of work inaccessible: that is the provisional balance sheet of the earthquake that struck Turkey on Sunday, 3 February. The quake, magnitude six on the Richter scale, had its epicentre in the village of Bovadin, in the region of Afyon and was followed by some 500 […]

A joint letter to president Putin to raise the problem of tax on religious organizations and the preparation of a series of meetings and round tables on bioethics and the integrity of human life: these are just some of the major issues addressed by the interconfessional Christian committee that met in recent days at the […]

An historic agreement has been reached between Islam and the Church of England, the church founded by Henry VIII in 1532. Four months after the terrorist attacks on the USA, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has signed an agreement with Mohamed Sayed Tantawy, the grand imam of the Egyptian university of al-Azhar al-Sharif, which […]

The need to evaluate the possible threats to bio-diversity. The need to oblige producers to label genetically modified products with “transparency”. And the need to state as honestly as possible whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) represent “a remedy for world famine or are just another source of profit for the multinationals”. These are just some […]

Spain

The Spanish Church is intervening to help Argentina. In recent days Msgr. Luis Héctor Villalba , archbishop of Tucumán, had a meeting in Spain with Cardinal Rouco Varela, president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference. Concrete solidarity with Argentina was also expressed in the final communiqué of the permanent Episcopal Council (Madrid, 29-30 January). Spanish Caritas […]

bioethics" "

On 30 January the German Parliament voted in favour of the importation of embryonal stem cells for research purposes, and will in the near future be called to vote on the entire bill regulating the question. The German Churches, as indeed numerous deputies, opposed this decision (cf. SirEurope no. 4/2002). “The decision is contrary to […]