Features John Maynard31 March 2012 As Somyot Pruksakasemsuk shuffled into the court room in central Thailand on January 16 dragging leg chains across the wooden floor, I saw the same warmth in the greeting that I had seen 30 years earlier. Somyot was the first Thai person I ever met – then he had been […]
Features Sue Ryan31 March 2012 Four parishioners of St Patrick’s Masterton took part in the first of a series of workshops that are envisaged for the parish. The first workshop last month was a gentle introduction into the topics of:What is Children’s Liturgy of the Word?Why do we have it?How should we celebrate it?How often […]
Features Michele Lafferty31 March 2012 Before Christmas we went to visit our friend Veronica Williams who is in the Taita cemetery. She always was a great one for celebrations and I didn’t want her to miss this one. I laid the flowers on the headstone and noticed that her grave was in a state of […]
Features Mgr John Broadbent5 April 2012 Papal reputations are often shaped by the era in which they lived. As seen in the series the Borgias screened on television last year, standards of morals and behaviour were at times quite different in the history of the church from those that guide today’s society. According to the […]
Features Martin de Jong5 April 2012 Halfway through her visit to Aotearoa New Zealand, Claudette Habesch, chief executive of Caritas Jerusalem, visited heartland territory: Hiruharama – or Jerusalem on the Whanganui River. This pilgrimage with Caritas staff from the Holy City to one of our own wāhi tapu gave Claudette an insight into some of […]
Features Msgr John Broadbent4 May 2012 During the second period of the first thousand years, the popes became political leaders in Rome. The emperor Diocletian had divided the vast Roman Empire in two because with Rome as the only centre it was difficult to move troops from the Persian to the German border. The emperors […]
Features 4 May 2012 The Caritas aid network is responding across five countries in West Africa where millions of people are at risk from drought and poor harvests in the Sahel region south of the Sahara. A May update on the situation says ‘we’re on the brink of a serious humanitarian crisis’. Around 15 million […]
Features Suzanne Manning4 May 2012 The image of Mary as ‘ideal mother’ that the Church presents seems a long way from the reality of life for many of today’s mothers. The words of a well-known hymn show Mary as a ‘gentle mother, peaceful dove’; in homilies and readings she is usually described as ‘meek’, ‘mild’ […]
Features Fr Kevin Neal4 May 2012 There’s something about a mobility scooter that has been putting me off. I had one when I first left the hospital after the stroke six years ago. This was a motorised wheelchair and I certainly got my money’s worth out of it. When my legs started working again, I […]
Features Margaret Orange4 May 2012 She pours a cup of tea taking it to her comfortable chair in the lounge. It faces high, wide windows that open onto the garden. Beyond the fence distant roof tops rise to vast blue sky where, today, early morning puffs of cloud drift lazily eastwards. As she sips her […]