The eastern part of the African nation is being convulsed by a second wave of violence and spreading hunger, leading the Pope to describe the suffering in Congo as "worrying news".

"A large part of the population lack the primary means of subsistence and thousands of residents were forced to flee their homes to seek refuge elsewhere," he added.

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The main office of the Pontifical Mission Society of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome decides where the Mission Collection should go says Fr Bernard Espiritu, National Director of Missionz.

This year, says Fr Espiritu, New Zealand has been requested for "support to go to the missionary work of Fr Alpha Mazenga SVD, a Divine Word Missionary, who works with street kids in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and the work of Fr Eugene Docoy and other Divine Word Missionaries who work with him in the rubbish tip and with the street kids of Cebu City in the Philippines."

"We also would like to help a community in Kiribati. The community would like to renovate their maneaba. It is a traditional meeting place of people especially the youth and children. It is used for various activities including their catechism and other faith formation activities," says Fr Espiritu.

Missionz is the New Zealand national office of the worldwide Pontifical Mission Societies. The three societies are:

• Propagation of the Faith - supporting Bishops in Missionary Dioceses
• St Peter the Apostle - to fund seminarians and religious in mission territories
• Holy Childhood - to support health and religious formation needs of mission children

The objective of Missionz is to promote awareness of the mission of the Catholic Church - to present the good news of Jesus Christ to all peoples, and to generate spiritual, material and financial support for those working in mission and third world territories.

The Pontifical Mission Societies have the common aim of assisting the Holy Father in spreading missionary awareness among priests, religious, adults and children; encouraging aid to the poor, and gathering financial support for different projects in third world countries. The funds collected during the year by the Pontifical Mission Societies are sent directly to mission dioceses in need, as decided at Council in Rome each May.

Source

• New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference
• Image: The Guardian

The book Tintin in the Congo, has been placed in the adult section of British bookstores after being branded racist for its depiction of Africans.

The book, published by Egmont, has a protective band around it and warns that its portrayal of Africans as wide-eyed simpletons would offend some readers and was based on "the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period."

However, the idea that Tintin, the fearless journalist with the funny hair, could be racist is merely the imagining of an "integralist political correctness," says the Holy See's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

The paper called the boy reporter, a creator of Belgian artist Herge, a Catholic hero.

This new figure is 26 times more than the 15,000 women that the United Nations has reported were raped there during the same 12 months.

The figures were published in a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

"Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC," Amber Peterman, lead author of the study says.

"Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men," she said.

There is still part of this horrific story that is not being reported. The study did not record sexual violence among girls younger than 15 years or women older than 49 years — and did not include sexual violence among boys and men.

"Although the burden of sexual violence among these groups is uncertain, a review of the records of 4,133 women attending Panzi Hospital in Sud Kivu showed that six per cent were younger than 16 years and 10 per cent were older than 65 years," the study said.

"In addition, Human Rights Watch reported that sexual violence in 2009 doubled in comparison with 2008. If this assessment is accurate, then the current prevalence of sexual violence is likely to be even higher than our estimates suggest."

Approximately 1.69 to 1.80 million women reported having been raped in their lifetime and approximately 3.07 to 3.37 million women reported experiencing intimate partner sexual violence.

Sources

• Reuters
• Catholic.com
• Image: Femina: The Greatest Silence