Congo Basin: Illegal Timber Exploitation
After the Amazon, the Congo Basin is the second largest tropical mass on our planet. Covering six African states, its intensive exploitation has become a source of revenue but also a source of conflict. Four African wood-producing countries have committed themselves through the Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) to ensure the traceability of timber exported to […]
Brazil: Its Prisons – From Crime To Rebirth
In a country like Brazil, where prison conditions are amongst the worst in the world, where corruption and violence are the order of the day, the alternative experience of detention, called APAC (Association for the Protection and Assistance of the Detained), is becoming the alternative method for the rehabilitation of prisoners by considering them as […]
Mexico: Catholic Priests Target of Violence
Mexico remains the most dangerous country in the world for Catholic priests. In the last five years, 17 priests have been assassinated, 2 are still missing and 2 suffered attempted abduction. Still on the danger list but slowly improving, Father Juan Antonio Zambrano García was attacked and wounded on 9th June, in the parish of […]
Kenya: Prisoners Are People Too
The Langata female prison is the largest female prison in Kenya. It hosts more than 800 inmates in all categories of offences. “An inmate is already condemned, by the majority of society and often by their own family members”. Lillian Wambui Waweru, the Kenya prisons’ Catholic chaplaincy coordinator for the Nairobi region, shares her experience […]
Kenya: The Missionary Dowser
He explores the sun-scorched savannah with a wooden stick in his hand. Silently, he listens for the vibrations of the water. He is a Comboni Missionary dowser who, for thirty-five years has sought the life that flows beneath the ground. He moves slowly with his forked stick in his hands, he stops, moves on again […]
Human Trafficking: Big Business
People smuggling represents the third-largest business for international criminals, after gun and drug trafficking. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), people smugglers make about $35 billion a year worldwide and they are driving the tragedy of migrants who die trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. Increasing numbers of desperate migrants fleeing […]
Comboni Missionaries: With Gratitude and Hope
The symposium organised in Rome from 25th May to 1st June 2017 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of the Comboni Missionaries has come to an end. The final message reminds us that “to celebrate means first and foremost to recall our origins and the history God has been writing […]
Uganda: The Human Costs Of The War
Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese people have escaped to refugee camps in Uganda. Among them, there are many children. Sitting outside a makeshift tent in the Bidi Bidi refugee camp in northern Uganda, 12-year-old Josephat Bieli was dusty and tired. He said he had trekked 80 miles by himself from Yei in South Sudan […]
Taiwan: Witnessing Among A Little Flock
Considered a mission territory for its tiny catholic presence – only one and a half percent of the population – Taiwan has been home to the Comboni Missionaries since 1997. An international community of four missionaries serves the spiritual needs of the few, yet devout faithful, in two parishes on the outskirts of the capital. […]
Central Africa – Thousands of Muslim Refugees In The Diocese of Bangassou: testimony of the Comboni Bishop Juan José Aguirre Muños
“Two thousand Muslims still find themselves in the Catholic missions. A part in the Minor Seminary, the others in the Cathedral and in the Bishop’s House”, says Mgr. Juan José Aguirre Muños, Bishop of Bangassou, the city in the south-east of the Central African Republic attacked in past weeks by a group of anti-Balaka militants. […]