Pope Francis auctioned it at Sotheby's in London, and the proceeds of $800,000 ) went to charitable causes. Read more

It is the driving force behind a plan to build module eco homes for families in need.

The Ahuru Mowai Housing Project has the twofold aim of increasing ownership of energy-efficient homes and boosting employment.

Ahuru Mowai plans to build seven module homes in Ida Road (Kaiti) and two others in Wainui.

"We're still about heart but doing that in a different way,'' said Minister Tom Crawford from the Oasis Community Church, (formerly the Mega Life Church). "We are rising again as Oasis Community Church and one of our projects is the Ahuru Mowai Housing Project."

"It is also a time to show our humanity," says project director Lizz Crawford. "Poverty Bay has the highest rate of whanau or families in need of healthy, affordable housing to rent or own.

"Our vision is for everyone to have a place to call home in Aotearoa."

A Wainui Road house owned by the church will be sold to co-fund the project.

The project will feature Green Magic Homes from Mexico. Research into Earthcube houses from Vietnam is also being carried out.

Green Magic Homes structures are covered by soil and rich greenery, making them energy-efficient and energy-saving while keeping a temperature-balanced interior. Earthcube houses are made of single-use containers.

"The foreign homes are cheaper, especially if whanau are trained to do some aspects themselves."

A New Zealand Green Magic house had been built in Horokiwi, Lower Hutt and in the next few months, people would be undergoing training to build them.

In Napier and Hastings there are 615 people on Housing New Zealand's waiting list and a shortage of 1800 homes.

About 440 children and their families will spend this winter in a motel in Hawke's Bay - one of the country's least affordable places to live.

Source

• gisborneherald.co.nz
• greenmagichomes.com
• radionz.co.nz

He is calling for a more mission-focused church.

In an extended interview, posted on Stuff about two recent memos he has recently circulated, Dew said there should be "fewer conversations about 'the colour of the walls' and more time working with those in need around the region".

In the memos, the archbishop said the archdiocese should be, as Pope Francis says, "a poor church for the poor".

He asked church members to be "radical" in their thinking and to let go of the "established order" of doing things.

He envisages the unused church buildings being turned into soup kitchens or opened up to the homeless, refugees or the elderly.

"We have got a mission, we are meant to be out there serving the poor, those who are struggling, and give them hope, and caring for the environment."

He told the interviewer, Tommy Livingston, that he is not fazed by accusations that he is being autocratic and too progressive.

"The reason I am not nervous is that a lot of people in our parishes don't fully grasp that the church is here to be at the service of the world, not just to be looking inwards.

"I see the potential which is there and I get anxious we are not using what we have to its fullest potential.

"We need to ask how do we continue to involve people and inspire people."

The Wellington South pastoral council was thinking about the future, chairman Stephen Neal says.

Although they had started implementing changes, he said that did not make it any easier telling people their childhood church may close.

Neal anticipates the proposed changes will have a considerable impact on some people and their sense of identity.

He hopes the parishes will be listened to, and that Dew keeps an open mind on how to move forward.

However, Neal believes the archbishop is right to frame the proposed changes as about far more than buildings.

"I think what Pope Francis is doing is giving the Catholic Church a deeper sense of purpose in turning its focus to the poor and needy.

"John is quite right to frame that current challenge in that context."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: facebook

The Methodist Church is the second biggest land owner in Fiji.

"We want people to utilise the land and make a living for themselves, especially farmers," says the Church's newly-elected president Reverend Tevita Nawadra.

He said the next land development the church would be focusing on was the housing development in Davuilevu where the church had vacant pieces of land it had agreed to be used for housing.

Source

• The Fiji Times
• Image: lh5.googleusercontent.com

But much less attention was given to another of the pope's actions, one that underscores a significant shift inside the Vatican under the first Latin American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Archbishop Romero was assassinated after speaking out in favor of the poor during an era when right-wing death squads stalked El Salvador under an American-backed, military-led government in the 1970s and '80s.

For three decades Rome blocked his path to sainthood for fear that it would give succor to the proponents of liberation theology, the revolutionary movement that insists that the Catholic Church should work to bring economic and social — as well as spiritual — liberation to the poor.

Under Pope Francis that obstacle has been removed.

The pope now says it is important that Archbishop Romero's beatification — the precursor to becoming a saint — "be done quickly."

Conservative Catholics have tried to minimize the political significance of the pope's stance by asserting that the archbishop, though a champion of the poor, never fully embraced liberation theology.

But another move by Pope Francis undermines such revisionism.

This month he also lifted a ban from saying Mass imposed nearly 30 years ago upon Rev. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, who had been suspended as a priest for serving as foreign minister in Nicaragua's revolutionary Sandinista government in the same era.

There is no ambiguity about the position on liberation theology of Father d'Escoto, who once called President Ronald Reagan a "butcher" and an "international outlaw."

Later, as president of the United Nations General Assembly, Father d'Escoto condemned American "acts of aggression" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Continue reading

Source

• Paul Vallely in The New York Times

Paul Vallely is a director of The Tablet and the author of "Pope Francis: Untying the Knots."