A former New Zealand High Commissioner to the Cook Islands says a new mobile health clinic for Rarotonga has been designed for use in disasters. Kaveinga Ora will begin replacing the island’s 27 medical centres this week as it starts service for the island’s 13,000 people. The project is the result of two years’ work Read more
In March, Clodagh Kilcoyne, a Reuters photographer, spent time in the Shamlapur refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to approximately 10,000 of the 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled the violence in neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Unable to legally work in Bangladesh, refugees support themselves with help from charitable organizations, extended family, and informal jobs such as Read more
His Grace Bishop Suriel, bishop of the archdiocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Melbourne, recently conducted a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Saint Mina Children’s Home at Legalega in Nadi. He was assisted by His Grace Bishop Youssef of the diocese of the Southern USA. The Home will accommodate 80 children. It will include Read more
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte called God “stupid” because of the concept of “original sin” in the Bible’s creation story. Addressing a summit in Davao City last Friday, the president began by saying that he found it foolish for God to create something “perfect” and then allow the first humans, Adam and Eve, to ruin it Read more
On Monday, the Philippine justice secretary revoked an immigration expulsion order for an Australian nun who had irked the president by joining political rallies but who said she still faces possible deportation. “What the (immigration service) did, in this case, is beyond what the law provides, that is why it has to be struck down,” Read more
The director of the Pasifika Centre at Massey University, Malakai Koloamatangi, said new curbs on free speech were just the latest in a series of draconian legal steps Nauru had taken. Dr Koloamatangi said in the absence of criticism from Australia, whose offshore detainees are held on Nauru, New Zealand, the Forum and the UN Read more
A new document focused on guiding the American Church in addressing the pastoral needs of Asian and Pacific Island Catholics was approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops during their annual spring assembly. It is described as a “pastoral response” meant to provide support and to offer ideas for ministry to the nation’s nearly Read more
Anthony Apuron, the former archbishop of Agaña (Guam), has appealed a Vatican tribunal’s ruling that found him guilty of “certain accusations” involving the sexual abuse of minors. Michael Byrnes, the current archbishop of Agaña, says it has been very detrimental to the Church on Guam to have the matter hanging over their heads for so Read more
Following the killing of a third priest in the Philippines, Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan, Socrates Villegas and other leaders of his archdiocese released a strongly-worded statement. They called on President Rodrigo Duterte “to stop the verbal persecution of the Catholic Church because such attacks can wittingly embolden more crimes against priests.” The church leaders have declared June Read more
The Catholic Church and the Methodist Church in Samoa have said that they accept a new law requiring their ministers to pay tax. But at a recent general assembly, the leaders of the Congregational Christian Church (CCCS) said they would ignore the law. In a speech in parliament, the prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi praised the Read more