A Moment with Mary: the holy rosary prayed live from St. Peter’s Square. This new initiative has been made possible thanks to the traditional instruments of social communication and the new social networks. The rosary, which is recited Monday-Friday, from 4:00-4:30 p.m. (Rome time), uses the social networks, TV channels and the Internet to connect… Read more »
“Happiness can be measured,” says John Helliwell, co-author of the first-ever “World Happiness Report”–a document measuring this state of soul in 150 countries throughout the world. The fruit of 30 years of research, the report reveals that happiness varies according to cultures and individuals. According to its findings, the world’s happiest people live in northern… Read more »
Two significant events recently took place in the Republic of Georgia (an ex-member of the Soviet Union): the consecration of the Church of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, set on a hilltop outside the town of Akhaltsikhe, and the inauguration of a nearby Benedictine monastery. The latter, the country’s first Catholic monastery, was founded… Read more »
UNICEF is one of the 5 humanitarian organizations that receive financial support from the UE for various programs. This year, the European Union is adding to its annual donation of €930,000, 2 million euros deriving from its 2012 Nobel Peace Prize money to fund 4 projects under its Children of Peace Initiative. The program will… Read more »
Half of the food produced in the world (about 2 billion tons) winds up in the trash, even though a large part of it is still edible. This troubling information emerged in a report by Great Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers. According to the report, one of the causes of this waste is the failure… Read more »
According to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), the World Giving Index–the largest study of charitable behavior across the globe–registered a 2% drop in financial donations to charity in 2007-2012, a fact in part influenced by the current world economic crisis. The Index is based on an average of three measures of giving behavior: the percentage… Read more »
The Pope sent out his first twitter message at the end of his general audience on Wednesday, 12 December 2012. To underscore the universality of the gesture, he was flanked by 5 children representing the world’s continents.Immediately after blessing the crowd the Pope pressed a tablet screen and sent out the message: “Dear friends, I… Read more »
To make missionary work known to everyone via the press and to incite collaboration with the missions through vocations, spiritual solidarity and economic means: this is the purpose Fides New Agency, established by the Pontifical Office for the Propagation of the Faith in 1927. Fides is an important center of information concerning the Church’s missionaries… Read more »
Promulgated on 4 December 1963, Vatican Council II’s Decree Inter Mirifica sets forth important principles concerning the relationship between the Church and the means of communication, starting with the fact that the Church has a right to use these means for her ministry and that she must ensure that they are used according her moral… Read more »
The Fifth Mother Teresa International Award for Social Justice was conferred this year on Sima Samar, the former vice-president of Afghanistan, and on Mala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban for defending the rights of women. In bestowing the award, Abraham Mathai, president of the Harmony Foundation, which organizes this annual… Read more »
