CUBA “The chapel may have collapsed, but not the Church”   In a message to ACN, Archbishop Wilfredo Pino Estevez of Camagüey tells of his visit to the most badly damaged areas of his diocese. According to the local municipal emergency services, Hurricane Irma lashed the town of Esmeralda in the eastern province of Camaguey...

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC “Reconstruction will be very difficult” – Interview with Bishop Aguirre   Last week Bishop Juan José Aguirre of Bangassou denounced an attack by an Islamist group on a mission station in Gambo. The station is located in his diocese in the south-eastern part of the Central African Republic. It is estimated that...

BURKINA FASO:   “No creed can justify violence“   “No creed can justify violence, and still less can invoke its faith in order to perpetrate violence”  Rafael D’Aquí, the project section head with responsibility for Burkina Faso in the international Catholic pastoral charity ACN International, recently visited this African country to study the needs of...

Pope Francis urges United Nations to help in Venezuela crisis   Pope Francis was thinking about Venezuela throughout his visit to Colombia. As his plane took off for Bogota, Francis told journalists that they were going to fly over Venezuela and asked them “to pray so there can be dialogue, that there will be stability,...

YEMEN Fr Tom has been released and is on his way home to India    Fr Tom Uzhunnalil has finally been set free after more than 18 months of speculation and uncertainty following his abduction by militants in Yemen. Many reports claimed that IS abducted  Fr. Tom but the rumors remain unconfirmed and it is...

God’s special weapon against Evil: Spiritual Mothers   There is a most beautiful, vital vocation within a vocation that is “largely unknown, scarcely understood and, consequently, rarely lived, notwithstanding its fundamental importance”: spiritual motherhood for priests. “It is a vocation that is frequently hidden, invisible to the naked eye, but meant to transmit spiritual life.”...

CAMEROON Grave of bishop who died under suspicious circumstances is desecrated   The grave of Bishop Jean Marie Benoît Bala of Bafia, whom the Cameroonian bishops’ conference claims were murdered, was desecrated with traces of blood. San Sebastian Cathedral where his body rests has been temporarily closed as a result. “There was a clear act...