Mission World - NovemberDecember
- Catholic Foundation helps destitute parents face expenses to guarantee children a more dignified life
- Diocese launces centre for North Korean refugees
- Benedict XVI pleads for protection of creation
- Mission Intention for November
- Mission Intention for December
Catholic Foundation helps destitute parents face expenses to guarantee children a more dignified life
Manila (FIDES) - Poverty prevents the parents of 10 million children in the Philippines, the largest Catholic country in Asia, from having their children baptised, according to Hulog ng Langit Foundation (Sent from Heaven Foundation), a local Catholic NGO. Started in 2005 it collects money to help destitute families afford the expenses of a Baptism.
Mark Jimenez Crespo, who started the foundation, explains that poor parents are often too ashamed of their poverty to ask for baptism. This is also often the reason why slum children do not go to schools and grow up without any social, cultural and religious education. Hulog ng Langit Foundation also pays school expenses for the poorest children.
Recently in Manila over 8,500 infants received Baptism in a community celebration. An estimated 20,000 children have received Christian baptism thanks to the Hulog ng Langit Foundation and Caritas Manila.
According to government figures at least 30% of the population lived below the poverty line in 2003 and the figure has since increased.
Diocese launches centre for North Korean refugees
Korea (UCAN) - Incheon diocese has set up a centre to care for North Korean refugees and provide an education for their children.
Bishop Choi told UCA News that day that the opening of the centre is an effort to enhance the diocese's pastoral care for refugees, especially their children. "Their children's welfare depends on education, so better education is urgent," he explained.
Sr Stella Lim Sun-yun, the centre director, told UCA News that Incheon diocese receives an average of six refugees from Hanawon, the government-run institution that offers resettlement support for North Korean refugees. She and volunteers visit them to teach basic knowledge on how to live in South Korea, especially how to use public agencies, banks and other facilities.
The centre began operations on August 1, thanks to members and volunteers of Incheon diocese's Korea Reconciliation Committee, Sr Lim said. But the office is small to conduct some programmes. Next year she plans to lease larger space in a residential area in Incheon, where many North Korean refugees live.
She added their first priority is to provide a day-care programme for the children of working refugee couples and study rooms and counselling programmes for school students.
Luke Jeon Young-il, representative of North Korean refugees in the diocese explained that unemployment and financial difficulties are urgent and serious problems they face.
The 43-year-old, who became a Catholic in 1998, a year after he arrived in South Korea, estimated that around 800 North Korean refugees live in Incheon. "More than 80% of them are women who have gone through hunger and anxiety that they might be caught by police," he noted.
The government supports North Korean refugees with 20 million won (about US$21,300) per family for resettlement, plus 350,000 won a month for six months. However, "most of the money is spent on lease deposits and rent for apartments, and many refugees become broke soon," Jeon said.
He expressed hope that the centre would help refugees find jobs and extend special care to women refugees by carefully counselling them and promoting psychological stability.
In the first half of 2007, a monthly average of 200 refugees arrived in South Korea.
Benedict XVI pleads for protection of creation
Italy (ZENIT) - Pope Benedict XVI reiterated his plea that an alliance be re-created between humanity and the environment, urging that cooperation intensity in the promotion of the common good.
"I desire that, on the part of everyone, cooperation intensify to the end of promoting the common good, development, and the safeguarding of creation, returning to the alliance between man and the environment, which must be a mirror of God the Creator, from whom we come and toward whom we are journeying."
Mission Intention for November
That in the Korean Peninsula the spirit of reconciliation and peace may grow.
Mission Intention for December
That the incarnation of the Son of God, which the Church celebrates solemnly at Christmas, may help the peoples of the Asiatic Continent to recognise God's Envoy, the only Saviour of the world, in Jesus.
