Lay Timorese, even very simple Catholics living in villages, have been talking intensively for nearly a year about a Church in crisis. The crisis was caused by clergy sexual abuse, which led to some priests and nuns abandoning their vocations or Religious commitments during the past year. The bishops of Dili and ...

The participation of a Filipina Muslim in the recent major interreligious seminar in Rome is an opportunity to stop violence in the southern Philippines as well as a breakthrough for Muslim women in general. This is how Father Eliseo Mercado Jr., an expert on Islam, regards Amina Rasul-Bernardo, lead convener of ...

Catholics and Muslims "are called to be instruments of love and harmony," renouncing oppression and violence, "especially that committed in the name of religion," the newly created Catholic-Muslim Forum says. The final declaration it issued on Oct. 6 at the end of the forum's first seminar, on Love of God, Love ...

Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) and other Church workers in the southern Philippines have organized an independent cooperative for a castor oil enterprise, hoping to improve parishioners' lives. The general manager of Philippine Castor Industries Multi-Purpose Cooperative (PHILCIMCO), Vivencio Apatan, spoke at the recent BEC national congress here about the cooperative. It ...

Anti-Christian violence in eastern India's Orissa state is now at a lull, but how many people were killed or women raped there in recent months is still unknown. Nor does anyone know how many Christian houses were destroyed in the brutality that erupted on Aug. 24 and continued for seven weeks. The ...