Missionaries of the World

His Holiness Pope Francis on Monday erected a Latin rite Diocese in the Kanniyakumari District of Tamil Nadu and appointed a Salesian priest as its first bishop. Fr. P. Jerome Dhas Varuvel will head Kuzhithurai diocese, which has been carved out of Kottar diocese in the southern extreme of mainland India. This was announced in the Vatican and in India on Monday evening. With this, India has 170 dioceses that belong to Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches.

The United Christmas Celebrations (UCC) held in Hyderabad on December 18, 2014 was organised by Federation of Telugu Churches (FTC). Chief Minister of Telangana State in India- Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao has participated the celebration and announced that he would issue Government Orders next day on some of the demands of the Christian Community. He also announced January 01 (New Year day) as a public holiday.

One of the most active lay movements in Italy - Italian Catholic Action is made up of both adults and children and it was to the children of this group that the Pope extended his Christmas greetings on Thursday. This year these boys and girls have been focusing on a particular theme "Everything to be discovered" and Pope Francis, reflecting on this slogan had some useful tips for the children present.

Following the massacre of dozens of students and staff in Army Public School, Peshawar in Pakistan on December 16, World Council of Churches (WCC) General Secretary Rev.Dr.Olav Fykse Tveit extended sympathies to those bereaved or wounded, offering prayers for the victims and their families, for their communities. He offered his comments in a statement issued on December 17 from the WCC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Catholic Church in Pakistan has condemned as barbaric and inhuman the attack on a school in Peshawar on Tuesday that killed at least 130 people, most of them children. “This is a barbaric, inhuman and cowardly act,” Cecil Chaudhry, Executive Director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said. “It is beyond imagination how innocent children of army personnel could be targeted like this.”

We are in the season of Christmas celebrations. Not just in Churches alone. We celebrate it among our own family and relatives. Christmas is not just to celebrate within our own family. If the purpose of Christmas is revealed to the friends of other faith, then it will be a real celebration for them also. We are also called by the Lord God to reveal the purpose of birth of Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ.

A pastor and group of church members were attacked by some unidentified mob on Saturday, December 13 for singing Christmas carols in the Indian City of Hyderabad. The mob accused that the pastor and 15 church members of trying to convert others to Christianity and violently attacked the group. In this regard, Pastor Bhim Nayak and four others were injured in the attack. The pastor remains in critical condition after being beaten unconscious and he was shifted to a private hospital for treatment.

A workshop with the aim of strengthening democratic governance and the electoral process in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was held at Kinshasa, capital of DRC on December 08 to 10, 2014 by the Church of Christ in Congo (ECC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) in partnership with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the All Africa Conference of Churches. The workshop encouraged and significant engagement from local churches in the nation.

Barbaric Islamic State militants have killed four Christian children in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam. Canon Andrew White, a British Vicar based in Baghdad, Iraq told that the killings happened in a Christian enclave close to Baghdad which has been taken over by ISIS. He spoke of how ISIS has "hounded" the Christians out of Iraq and how "they killed in huge numbers, they chopped their children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and it was so terrible what happened".

The establishment of two large congregations, to include many tasks formerly divided among several pontifical councils, is expected to be discussed in the meeting of the Council of Cardinals scheduled for December 09 to 11, 2014. The draft of reform was presented to the chiefs of dicasteries in the last of the periodic meetings they have with Pope Francis, which took place on November 24, 2014.

A Catholic Archbishop has demanded protection for all places of religious worship in Delhi after another Catholic church was attacked in the national capital Saturday evening. Some unidentified persons threw stones at Our Lady of Fatima Forane Church, Jasola, near Okhla in Delhi, India when some 200 people were attending Mass and novena inside the church. The one-year-old church belongs to the Faridabad Syro-Malabar diocese. The Church leaders are worried because the city has many churches. The congregation continued with the service that was about to end when the incident occurred.

His Holiness Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Ivan Pereira, Director of the Diocesan Education Board of Jammu-Srinagar as the new bishop of Jammu-Srinagar Diocese. He succeeds Bishop Peter Celestine Elampassery OFM Cap, who resigned from the pastoral care of the Diocese. From the same date, the Bishop-Elect is appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese until the date of his canonical taking possession. This was made public in Rome on Wednesday December 03, 2014, Feast of St. Francis Xavier, at noon local time.

Participants in a recent World Council of Churches (WCC) consultation in Myanmar have stressed the need to equip churches and ecumenical organizations to build peace, human security and human dignity in order to move beyond conflicts, towards a world of peace. They reiterated the concept of shalom as the basis of peace with justice. Though, the Asian continent, where 60 percent of the world’s population lives, is applauded as the centre of world economic development and growth, it still continues to struggle to overcome threats to peace, justice and human rights.