Malawi. Discovering Mount Mulanje
In southern Malawi, on the border with Mozambique, an imposing granite massif with sheer walls, Mount Mulanje, captures the humidity of the winds coming from the Indian Ocean, creating mists and rains that nourish lush forests and green tea plantations. With an altitude of 3,002 meters, Mount Mulanje is the highest mountain in southern Africa. […]
Mission Diary. Working Together
Missionary life calls for witness to collaboration. Sr Ida Colombo, a Comboni missionary from Italy, shares her own experience. Working together to achieve ‘something better’. From the beginning of my vocation, I have always been convinced that mission should be done together. For nearly 30 years of Comboni missionary life, in different contexts, I have […]
The Declaration of Human Rights is for all
December 10, 2023, marks the 75th anniversary of the universal promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly through resolution 217A during its third session in Paris on December 10, 1948. It was a torn and destroyed world after WWII, that was reeling after the destruction, […]
Advocacy & People. Patricia Gualinga. Defending Amazon Rainforest
A Kichwa Indigenous leader of the Sarayaku people in Ecuador tells her story. The Amazonian ecosystem is one of the most important freshwater sources in the world. I come from a land of waterfalls, lakes and rivers that flow from the Amazon, and it is water that gives us food sovereignty. There are no markets […]
Oral Literature. The Treasure of Friendship
A man had two sons. Their names were Rafiki and Tambu. One day he decided to teach them a lesson. He called them early in the morning and sent them to a village some distance away. “Go and visit the people”, he said, “But be careful: along the way, you will occasionally pull a bundle […]
Kenya. Keram. The Board Game
People living on the coasts of the Indian Ocean have long been connected by trade. Indian, Persian and Arab merchants sailed along the coasts to buy and sell their wares. They also founded a string of outposts, some surviving to this day. It goes without saying that, through the centuries, there have been intermarriages and […]
Mission Diary. Ecuador. Sharing life with our people
Father João Mponda, a young Comboni missionary from Mozambique, shares his vocational experience and the evangelization work he is carrying out in Ecuador, the country in Latin America where he has been for a year. I was born into a Catholic family, but it had never crossed my mind to dedicate my life to the […]
Reflection. The Green Pope: Francis & The Ethic of Responsibility
We have become accustomed to warnings that TV news reports from war zones may be disturbing. They usually are distressing. But so are reports on the consequences of climate change. And they come without such warnings despite the dire implications of further global warming. On 4 October, St. Francis of Assisi’s feast day, Pope Francis […]
Advocacy & People. Delima Silalahi. Defending traditional forests
She has led a campaign to secure legal stewardship of 17,824 acres of tropical forest land for six Indigenous communities in North Sumatra. Her community’s activism reclaimed this territory from a pulp and paper company that had partially converted it into a monoculture, non-native, industrial eucalyptus plantation. The six communities have begun restoring the forests, […]
Oral Literature. Cheetah and the Rock Dassie
The world was a very pleasant place in which to live. All the animals were friends and although they occasionally had disagreements, they would never think of fighting, or harming one another. Indeed, there was only one thing to be feared – and that was fire. Not the safe, warm fire that Man kept in […]