Displaying items by tag: Italy

Some European countries are cautiously coming out of lockdown. Italy is opening some factories and construction sites. Spain is allowing hairdressers and small businesses to reopen. Germany’s children are back at school. France is also easing lockdown. Political leaders now grapple with the economic and social shocks that lockdown has left behind, while trying to avoid large-scale second waves of infection. Italy is contending with a fresh rise in migrant arrivals from Libya, an ongoing economic crisis, and uneven support from Brussels. Spain is squabbling over spending as Catalan separatist leaders have seized on the pandemic to reignite the argument that their wealthy industrialised region would be better off independent from the devastated economy of the rest of Spain. Germany handled the coronavirus crisis better than other large European countries and favours cautious reopening, but business groups and local governments want to move faster.

Lockdown is the only solution to ending the pandemic, and Italy’s government has extended it beyond 3 April with no new deadline. In the south, hunger and hardship threaten to be even bigger problems than the virus, with regions beginning to feel the weight of the economic blow. Many residents are beginning to run out of food and money. An estimated 3.3 million Italians - one-third of whom are located in the south - work off-the-books for cash, making them unsure of when their next pay cheque will come. This concern has caused some southern Italians to plot raids against grocery stores, and authorities are worried the situation could become violent. Pray for the poorest southern regions - Sicily, Campania, Calabria, and Puglia - to know peace not violence as they begin to struggle for food and money. A private Facebook group, urging people to organise large raids on grocery stores and markets, is currently under investigation. One man addressing the government said, ‘You will regret this because we are going to have a revolution’. See

Over 250 million Europeans are in full or partial lockdown as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and France have closed schools and all non-essential shops and ordered people to stay at home. Italians in lockdown sing together from their balconies to boost morale and put candles in their windows in support of emergency workers, pharmacists, doctors, and all those putting their lives at risk. Pray for God’s protection over all these people. Italian children are making signs that say, ‘We will overcome this’. In France and Italy only one person from each household can go shopping. May God convict residents to comply with the government rules regardless of inconvenience. Intensive care in some regional care systems are ‘close to collapse’, despite efforts to free up hospital beds. Outside China, two-thirds of all cases and three-quarters of all deaths are in Europe. Europe has now recorded 600 more deaths than China.

In response to coronavirus, 60 million Italians have been told to stay at home until 3 April, except for work and emergencies. As Italy deals with a total lockdown, gospel opportunities are flourishing. The vice-chairman of Italy’s Evangelical Alliance said, ‘Often our challenges bring with them opportunities. We've never experienced a time of openness towards spiritual conversations as we have in the past few days.’ The Diocese of Rome has cancelled the celebration of all Catholic masses and announced a day of fasting and prayer with a special televised mass. People are struggling to handle fear, anxiety and despair. That, of course, is a pain, but it brings opportunities for the Gospel to be shared, and also to be lived out. Although we may not go around to homes, we can phone, we can use technology, we can try to stay close to people as much as possible’.

European Gospel Radio (EGR) is a non-denominational Christian radio touching any country in the world 24/7 on shortwave, streaming and satellite. It is a non-profit organisation, staffed by volunteers and professional broadcasters based in Milan. Since 1988 Christian broadcasters from around the world have trusted EGR to provide a radio link between their radio programmes and listeners globally. They cover Europe, Africa, Asia/Pacific, and the Middle East with daily Bible programmes, Christian news, and information both in English and in regional languages. There are still many places globally and millions of displaced people out of reach of modern communication - FM, AM, TV, satellite, Internet - and even without electricity. However, shortwave radio reaches anywhere.

The historical child abuse allegations against the Vatican continue after three former altar boys who were at a seminary in the Vatican in the 1980s have now accused two priests of sexually abusing them. They said they were between the ages of 10 and 14 at the time. The allegations will be explored in an investigative Italian TV show on 24 November.

Italy declared a state of emergency on 14 November after floods brought carnage to Venice. The prime minister described the flooding as 'a blow to the heart of our country'. The government took on 'exceptional powers' to respond to the damage, estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds, including millions in St Mark's Basilica alone. The mayor said the city was 'on its knees', and warned of 'widespread devastation' after an unprecedented combination of high spring tides and a storm surge of a 6ft 2in tide on the night of 13 November. The mayor has blamed climate change for the disaster, but there was also anger among Venetians at the corruption which has held up a flood barrier project.

An investigation has been launched by the Catholic Church after two missionary nuns became pregnant whilst working in Africa. One of the nuns, a mother superior, aged 34, only realised she was pregnant when she visited the hospital, complaining of stomach pains. The two women are nuns in Sicily, but belong to separate orders and are expecting children despite their vows of chastity, causing ‘consternation at this news’. They are believed to be originally from Africa and were posted to their home continent as part of their charity missions. They have now returned to Italy to prepare for the births of their children.

Indigenous tribes see the Catholic church as a key ally in the ecological fight – and an unprecedented synod is focused on how to stop the destruction.

by Dan Collyns in Puerto Maldonado

A hundred years ago the Harakmbut people were nearly wiped out.

Inhabitants of a vast jungle region where Peru intersects with Brazil and Bolivia, the tribespeople were enslaved by rubber barons and murdered en masse, only surviving thanks to the help of Dominican missionaries.

Now a new threat of extinction looms, and once again they are appealing to the Catholic church.

As wildfires and de-forestation drive the Amazon rainforest towards a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover, Yesica Patiachi, a Harakmbut leader from Peru, is heading to Rome to take part in an unprecedented synod of Catholic bishops from across the region.

Although she is not a practising Catholic, the 32-year-old schoolteacher sees the church as a key ally to save the rainforest.

“Eden is here in the Amazon and we are destroying it,” she said. “We cannot pray to God when we are destroying his creation.”

Starting on Sunday, bishops from the nine South American nations that share the Amazon will meet in the Vatican to try and muster the spiritual and earthly forces to pull the world’s largest rainforest back from the brink of destruction.

One of the synod’s organisers, Father Peter Hughes, said the three-week gathering would set out a new view of ecology based on Christian faith in God as the creator of a “common home”. Hughes said the Catholic church should firmly place itself alongside the region’s indigenous people and defending their territorial rights and way of life.

“The life of the [Amazon] people is intrinsically, inherently part of the territory. If the territory is injured, the people are injured,” he said.

Organizers insist that the church is not simply fighting for its share in the market of souls. Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the president of the synod, said this week that the Amazon was facing a crisis in which ecological problems were inseparable from social issues.

To find a solution, the world must hear “both the cry of the earth and that of the poor”, he said.

Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome

From https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/05/amazon-rainforest-catholic-church-synod-vatican

Pray: that the plundering and destruction of these natural resources will stop.

Pray: for the voices of the indigenous people to be heard and acted upon.

Pray: for the people of the Amazon region whose lives and livelihoods have been affected.

Italian authorities have closed roads and evacuated mountain huts after experts warned that part of a glacier on Mont Blanc could collapse. About 250,000 cubic metres of ice are in danger of breaking away from the Planpincieux glacier on the Grandes Jorasses peak. The mayor of the town of Courmayeur said global warming was changing the mountain. The Mont Blanc massif, with 11 peaks above 4,000m, is Western Europe's highest mountain range. Experts say it is impossible to predict when the glacier could collapse, as it goes through a period of major change due to climate factors. Earlier this month, dozens of people took part in a ‘funeral march’ to mark the disappearance of the Pizol glacier in north-east Switzerland. It has shrunk to a tiny fraction of its original size, losing 80% of its volume since 2006. See also ‘USA: UN general assembly’ in this week’s world section.