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Blogs and Articles

Blogs and articles written by Columban missionaries covering the broad range of Columban mission.

Blogs and Articles relating to Justice and Peace

• 21st October 2011

  Westminster Archdiocese to “build peace with the 2012 Games”.

  by Ellen Teague

  Days before the United Nations in New York passed a resolution on Monday supporting an Olympic truce for next year’s London 2012 Games, Westminster Archdiocese launched its own peace initiative for parishes linked to the Games. Columban Justice and Peace was represented by Ellen Teague, who ran a Columban stall.

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• 19th October 2011

  Anti-mining priest murdered in the Philippines

  by Fr Frank Nally

  The Columban Solidarity Desk laments the killing of an Italian missionary priest in Mindanao on 17 October.

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• 17th October 2011

  We Can’t Live on the Internet – a Reflection for World Food Day

  by Ellen Teague

  The following talk was given by Ellen Teague during the evensong service for World Food Day – 16 October – in the Chapel of Hertford College, Oxford University at the invitation of the chaplain, Revd Gareth Hughes.

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• 14th December 2010

  Catholics at Copenhagen

  by Fr Sean McDonagh

  Every since my first meeting of the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC), I have been interested in a “Catholic presence” at these conferences.

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• 16th December 2009

  Monsanto Awarded the Angry Mermaid Award as the worst corporate climate lobbyist

  by Fr Sean McDonagh

  Monsanto are everywhere, peddling their wares and lobbying for pole position. You expect to find Monsanto at food and agricultural conferences, claiming that its products will feed the world while and at the same time rid the world of pesticides. Their representatives were to the fore at a Conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences in Rome in May 2006, pushing the leadership of the Catholic Church into giving its blessing to GM crops, and then using that endorsement to undermine local Bishops‟ Conferences in Asia, Africa and Latin American that might be opposed to GM technology. You expect to find them at the UN Convention of Biodiversity (CDB) rolling out Dr. Peter Raven, President of the Missouri Botanical Garden, to tell everyone that GM crops are great for biodiversity as he did in a seminar organized by the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences and the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See at the Aula Maxima of the Gregorian University, a few years ago.

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• 9th December 2009

  How Robust is the Science of Climate Change?

  by Fr Sean McDonagh

  In the run up to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, hackers broke into computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Centre and got access to many private emails exchanged between climate scientists who have worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This ignited a global controversy about the reliability of the IPCC’s data and methodology. It forced the chief scientist at the centre of the row, Professor Phil Jones, to step down temporarily as head of the university’s climate research centre, while an independent enquiry into the matter was being conducted.

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• 1st September 2009

  The well-being of the Earth; an after thought in Catholic Social Teaching

  by Fr Sean McDonagh

  In this week‟s column I will continue my critique of Catholic Social Teaching from an ecological perspective. My intention is not to denigrate Catholic teaching but to help us realise that there has been little sensitivity to the Earth and other creatures in Catholic teaching in recent centuries. Unless we truly understand our past, with both its good and bad aspects, we will not be able to experience the “ecological conversion” which Pope John Paul II called for in 2001. The reason is to be found in the quotation from Lord Acton that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

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• 20th February 2009

  Golden Rice

  by Fr Sean McDonagh

  How could anyone oppose crop that promises to deliver untold benefits to poor people? This the cri de coer (cry from heart) will be voiced by Dr. Igno Potrykus during the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Study-Week on Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development (151-19 May).

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