SPECIAL REPORTS
(ANS - Rome) - Opening the pages of the newspapers and seeing the plight of children around the world creates a sense of hopelessness. The news is depressing for those who care about the world of children. "The child population as a whole is the subject of serious violations: abduction, sexual violence, child marriages and forced recruitment." If we stop to think, a second thought comes immediately. What is happening? How can we tolerate such suffering? Indifference has globalized, said Pope Francis, becoming a "selfish attitude of indifference that has achieved a global dimension."
(ANS - Adwa) - In the Salesian mission in Adwa, the most depressed region of Ethiopia, Christians and Muslims are working together to overcome poverty.
(ANS - Seville) - They were seven dizzy days for the Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, in the Spanish Province of Mary Help of Christians (SMX). His visit lasted from Saturday 7 May to Friday 13 May. He did a marathon of almost 1,500 kilometres by road and this tested his stamina. The result: a Gold Medal for fatherliness, friendliness and fraternity.
(ANS – Rome) – Although in his lifetime Don Bosco accepted 7 parishes, he was always considered the parish priest of poor and abandoned boys who were parishless. In fact, the Oratory in Valdocco was “a parish which evangelises”. It is no surprise that in not too distant past the parish apostolate was not seen as a typical Salesian apostolate. It was the 19th General Chapter which acknowledged the parish as the place for “an exemplary care for the youth community” (GC19, IX, 3).