10 December 2009 - Human Rights Day

“Discrimination lies at the root of many of the world’s most pressing human rights problems. No country is immune from this scourge. Eliminating discrimination is a duty of thehighest order.”

Navi Pillay - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Human Rights Day 2009 on 10 December will focus on non-discrimination. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe.
“Our main objective is to help promote discrimination-free societies and a world of equal treatment for all,” says the High Commissioner who this year will mark Human Rights Day in South Africa.
She encourages people everywhere - including the UN family, governments, civil society, national human rights institutions, the media, educators, and individuals - to seize the opportunity of Human Rights Day 2009 to join hands to embrace diversity and end discrimination.
The realisation of all human rights - social, economic and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights – is hampered by discrimination. All too often, when faced with prejudice and discrimination, political leaders, governments and ordinary citizens are silent or complacent.
Yet everyone of us can make a difference. You are encouraged to celebrate Human Rights Day by advocating non-discrimination, organizing activities, raising awareness and reaching out to your local communities on 10 December and throughout 2010.

(for more information go to http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/HumanRightsDay2009.aspx)

Community Pastoral Placement

We began, today, our preparation for our 3 month Community Pastoral Placement beginning on the 5th of January 2010.
There will be three communities this year. Paul, Peter Ndivo, Frank and Brian will reside and minister in Shekinah actively involved with the Clinic and the Feeding Program. Jordaan, Likisi, Chris and James will teach at St Monica's and form community in Nyankpala. Sunday, Nicholas, Peter Kabia, Cornelius, Sydney and Otieno will form community in Kanivilli and do thier ministry at Kanvilli RC School and at Yumba School for children with special needs.
We began by spending time reflecting and sharing on the document that outlines the rationale for ministry in the Novitiate experience. This led us into the process of naming our hopes, expectations and fears, and drawing our individual and community goals for the three month experience.
Over the next few days we will look at models of leadership in community, get familiar with budgetting and keeping of accounts, put together what we will need for our three month of experience, and do sessions in the evenings on teacher training and classroom management. This will be an intensive week of preparation that will lead us into the 6 days of reflection beginning on Sunday the 13th.

COP 15 (7 - 18 Dec 2009)

The United Nations Climate Change Conference - Copenhagen, 2009 kicked off today with a strong sense of confidence that countries can seal a comprehensive, ambitious and effective international climate change deal in Demark and with an unprecedented sense of urgency to act on climate change.
The highly anticipated conference marks an historic turning point on how the world confronts climate change, an issue with profound implications for the health and prosperity of all people.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen announced that 110 heads of state and government will attend the conference at its conclusion. The Prime Minister pointed to the fact that climate change knows no borders. It does not discriminate, it affects us all, he said, and we are here today because we are all committed to take action.

The two-week meeting, the fifteenth Conference of the 193 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fifth meeting of the 189 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is the culmination of a process set in motion in Bali, where Parties to the UNFCCC agreed to conclude negotiations on a new global deal in Denmark in 2009.
The urgency to act was underscored by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who told the conference that global emissions would need to peak by 2015 for the world to stay below a two degrees Celsius temperature rise.
The costs of responding to climate change will become progressively higher as time goes on, therefore we must take action now, he said.

We have reached the deadline and there is no going back., said newly elected COP President and Danish COP 15 Minister Connie Hedegaard. Copenhagen will be the city of the three C.s: Cooperation, Commitment and Consensus. Now is the time to capture the moment and conclude a truly ambitious global deal. This is our chance. If we miss this opportunity, we will not get a better one, she said.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said there was unprecedented political momentum for a deal. Yvo de Boer spoke of three layers of action that governments must agree to by the end of the conference: fast and effective implementation of immediate action on climate change; ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, including start-up funding and a long-term funding commitment; and a long-term shared vision on a low-emissions future for all.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an aggregate emission reduction by industrialised countries of between minus 25% and 40% over 1990 levels would be required by 2020 in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change, with global emissions falling by at least 50% by 2050. Even under this scenario, there would be an only a 50% chance of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences.

(For more information on this Conference go to http://unfccc.int/2860.php )

Social Analysis Workshop

We were joined by the novices of the Presentation Brothers for a four day workshop on Social Analysis facilitated by Br Pious Conteh from Sierra Leone. It was a fruitful and enjoyable experience for all.

We were delighted to have our Presentation Brothers with us and share life with them.

How am I waiting this Advent?

On the feast of Christ the King; a king of truth, justice, peace, reconciliation and of the cosmos was born. I joined the local parish where the singing was vigorous, and the tempo moved many gifted parishioners to move to the rhythm.
In the opening word, the celebrant who preached eloquently not on Christ the Universal King but on vocations, urged the youths to be open to the call to partner with God in the work of creating the world, of redeeming and renewing the people and becoming instruments to spread the gospel wherever we are.
The liturgy went on beautifully until that loathed time for announcements when a steady stream of people moved forward to explain notices which can be done by the announcer in few words and minutes. The thing I hate is waiting. And the nastiest thing about waiting that I always curse is the further waiting for some inexplicable reason I have to endure and have no control over. I feel like my precious time is being wasted.
Little did I comprehend that as the year ends, we begin Advent which has the same concept of waiting, a time of awareness of the three-fold coming of Christ; who came at Bethlehem, who constantly knocks at the door of our hearts and who is to come in glory.
For most of our lives we are waiting.
The Gospels have many instances where waiting occurs. The Jews waited for many ages for the coming of the Saviour. The disciples waited in the upper room afraid and apprehensive. When Jesus ascended into the heavens he instructed his faithful to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus never told his followers how to fill in that period of waiting. But we know we have to be prepared. Our lamps have to be ready well before waiting occurs. During waiting the lamps need to be glowing and topped up. For many of us our period of waiting looks wasteful. Sadly we do not know how to wait.
Waiting can be a very rewarding and rich experience.
My wish is that this Advent, in our waiting, we will let the power of God overshadow us as mist covers the mountains. Let it be an invitation to letting impossibilities become possible and may we have a blessed time of waiting.
(Sydney)

The New Creation

The greatest challenge I have received from the cosmology work shop is the awareness that each being in the Universe is a product of that original small tiny particle that existed over 15 billion years ago and exploded with tremendous force and energy, and is still expanding forth today. Creation continues! It has been a totally new scientific story for me different from what I ever knew from school, not to mention the creation story that first taught me about the origin of the Earth.
However, the question that is left hanging for me is ‘where did this original matter and the enormous energy come from?’ This is where I feel that the journey made by the scientists to this point of discovery is not yet complete and therefore it gives me room to think that God existed even before the Universe. The existence of this substantial energy is the divine that shaped the stars and galaxies, the sun and the earth, and eventually shaped me and the things around me. This God have I discovered in the workshop - the Source of all Being
(Chris)

The New Universe Story

To me it was time of being turned upside down and inside out and have some nonsense shaken out of me. It was an opportunity to reflect on the wonder of the mystery of creation.

What remained with me is that I am part of the universe, and all other living organisms have a equal right to peaceful co-existence. All these thoughts have never been awakened in me.

It is therefore a reality that irrespective of the fact that I am a rational thinking being, there is also a bigger percentage of ignorance amongst the human race. It was this ignorance that was being reduced in me and pointed me in the direction to start thinking and looking at things in a different way.
(Otieno)

St Francis Xavier (1506 - 1552)

Born in the family castle of Xavier, near Pamplona in the Basque area of Spanish Navarre on April 7, he met Ignatius Loyola and became one of the seven who in 1534, at Montmartre founded the Society of Jesus. In 1536 he left Paris to join Ignatius in Venice, from whence they all in tended to go as missionaries to Palestine (a trip which never materialized), was ordained there in 1537, went to Rome in 1538, and in 1540, when the pope formally recognized the Society, was ordered, with Fr. Simon Rodriguez, to the Far East as the first Jesuit missionaries.

Francis, after a year's voyage, six months of which were spent at Mozambique where he preached and gave aid to the sick eventually arrived in Goa in 1542 with Fr. Paul of Camerino an Italian, and Francis Mansihas, a Portuguese. There he began preaching to the people and attempted to reform his fellow Europeans, living among the local people and adopting their customs on his travels.

During the next decade he converted tens of thousands to Christianity. He visited the Palavas at the tip of India near Cape Comorin, Tuticorin (1542), Malacca (1545), the Moluccas near New Guinea and Morotai near the Philippines (1546-47), and Japan (1549- 51).

In 1551, India and the East were set up as a separate province and Ignatius made Francis its first provincial. The next year he set out for China, landed on the island of Sancian within sight of his goal, but died before he reached the mainland.

He was first buried on a beach of Shangchuan Island. His incorrupt body was taken from the island in February 1553 and was temporarily buried in St. Paul's church in Malacca on 22 March 1553. On 11 December 1553 Xavier's body was shipped to Goa. The body is now in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, where it was placed in a glass container encased in a silver casket on 2 December 1637.

Working against great difficulties, language problems, inadequate funds, and lack of cooperation, often actual resistance, from European officials, he left the mark of his missionary zeal and energy on areas which clung to Christianity for centuries. He was canonized in 1622 and proclaimed patron of all foreign missions by Pope Pius X.

World AIDS Day

Eid Al Adha

Today all our Muslim brethren celebrate Eid Al Adha. All around town there is a festive spirit with children and adults dressed in their best flowing gowns. The town is aburst with colour. The morning air reverberated with the call for prayer from the many mosques in town reminding all of us of that moment when the Prophet Ibrahim(Abraham) did not hesitate to sacrifice his only son as an offerening in obedience to God.

According to the Holy Quran, God appeared in Prophet Ibrahim's dream and asked him to sacrifice something that was most dear to him. Prophet Ibrahim decided to sacrifice his own son, Ismail. However, when he put a knife on Ismail's throat, God replaced his son with a goat through a miracle. Consequently, it has become a tradition to slaughter livestock and feed the poor to mark the occasion.

The Bible relates a similar story telling us how God called on Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. And just as Abraham was about to slaughter his only son a voice from the heavens called out saying, "Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son." We are then told that Abraham sacrificed instead a ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket.