Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Australia and Jesuit Social Services have joined other Catholic organisations in expressing grave concern for the humanitarian crisis on Manus Island and calling for the Australian Government to resettle in Australia the refugees and asylum seekers … Continued
“Returning to Rerum Novarum Center is like coming home,” said Hanh. Hanh and many other migrant workers like her who had sought the comfort of the shelter consider Rerum Novarum Center, the Jesuit social work in Taipei, their “mother’s home” … Continued
The Centro de Saúde Daniel Ornelas (CSDO) health centre was inaugurated recently as part of the healthcare project of the Jesuits in Timor-Leste. Besides providing medical services to the students and staff of Colégio de Santo Inácio de Loiola (CSIL) … Continued
A dancing house. This is how many survivors of Typhoon Haiyan describe the substandard relocation houses that have been built. “If you shake them, they will move,” said one survivor. Four years after the disaster, building infrastructure that is able to withstand extreme weather conditions better remains a challenge in the Philippines.
The Jesuits have joined other Church voices in the Philippines in decrying the summary killings in the fight against drugs in the country. In a statement issued on August 24, Philippine Provincial Fr Antonio Moreno SJ said, “We cannot fight … Continued
“If you think climate change is bad, you’re not prepared to live in this world at all,” said Fr Pedro Walpole SJ in an interview recently, pointing out that climate change is but one of nine factors that can push the earth out of circulation. The other eight are ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, stratospheric ozone depletion, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution.
Australian Jesuit Provincial Fr Brian McCoy has announced a project to bring together the Jesuits’ concerns for Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers, which he describes as “the bookends of rejection” in Australian history.
The first bookend, Fr McCoy said, is the arrival of the First Fleet of convicts and military from Britain in what is now Sydney in 1788.
Once a year, the lilt of the t’rung and the rise and fall of the sounds of the danbau transport audiences at a charity concert in Tokyo to the mountain regions of Vietnam. The performers are Vietnamese migrant workers in Japan, and this year’s concert featured a choir called “Cecilia”, that usually serves at the Vietnamese Sunday masses at St Ignatius Church next to the Jesuit Tokyo Social Center.
“You name it – we have it. Jade, gold, gas, rivers, teak … But this nation is like a blind beggar begging with a golden plate.” With these words, Charles Cardinal Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, set the stage for the four-day Social Apostolate meeting of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific.
The picture drawn by Cardinal Bo in his keynote address was eye-opening for many of the 38 delegates and it made clear the need for reconciliation and justice in natural resource management, the theme of the meeting.
Justin Claravall SJ, a scholastic from the California Jesuit Province, now part of Jesuits West, spent a year as a prison chaplain with the Philippine Jesuit Prison Service Foundation as part of the Regency stage of his formation. He shares this reflection.