(ANS - Salvador) - The 2016 Olympic Games will begin in a few months’ time. Rio de Janeiro will be the host city for the most important sporting event in the world, which is being held in South America for the first time. About 10,500 athletes from 206 countries are expected. About 6,500 direct employees will be involved plus 85,000 indirect employees and 45,000 volunteers. The beach volleyball competitions will be played on the beaches of Copacabana, Barra, Deodoro and Maracanã. One of the people involved there will be a Salesian Cooperator who is a teacher at the Nazaré Salesian School in Salvador. Her name is Edilene Batista de Andrade, and she has been selected in the group of official referees for the beach volleyball competitions.

(ANS - Montevideo) - Uruguay is the most secularized country in Latin America. Controversy has arisen over a proposal to put a statue of Our Lady in the "Rambla de Buceo", one of the central streets of Montevideo. The Salesian Cardinal Daniel Sturla, Archbishop of Montevideo, has intervened, first in an interview with the newspaper El Pais, then with a statement in which he said he thought the arguments of those who oppose it are "unusual" and "anachronistic". He added: "the Church does everything in full view of the people, not inside a closed temple."

(ANS - Bangalore) - The Church "travels the same journey as all of humanity and shares the same earthly lot with the world, (...) which is to be renewed in Christ and transformed into the family of God" (Gaudium et Spes, 40). The Indian Church is showing these days how to live this commitment to sharing the fate of the world and to see all its members as part of God's family. After the diplomatic initiatives and the many appeals for Fr Uzhunnalil, another witness was the prayer vigil celebrated last Monday in Bangalore, to ask the Lord for the release of the kidnapped Salesian and to entrust to the Lord all the victims of violence in Yemen.