June 20, 2021 is World Refugee Day. As the world celebrates the progress made to advance refugee protection polices and acknowledges the contributions that refugees have made in their host countries, it is important to remember that the need to continue to advance humane policies is now more critical than ever.
Our missionary experience has taught as that all creation forms one earth community. All are necessary and important. We need an economic and social order that collaborates mutually with the whole of God's creation as well as a spirituality of care and relationship.
The Missionary Society of St. Columban joins with Catholic congregations around the world to raise our voices in protest to the government's use of violence and express our deep concern for the safety and well-being of the people of Myanmar. We join Pope Francis in calling for a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict, and an immediate end to the violence.
Our understanding of Christian Discipleship leads us to condemn in strongest terms defense policies that every day make life more insecure. The most blatant of these are present policies of nuclear armament which threaten all life. These policies are themselves a form of killing since they consume resources desperately needed to meet basic human needs.
In response to the ruling by a federal judge that all children currently held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody for more than 20 days must be released by July 17, the organizers of the Catholic Campaign to End Immigrant Child Detention, offer a joint statement as well as the following individual responses.
These killings display a pattern of silence and unwillingness by white Americans to end the grave injustice of racism. Racism is not only morally wrong; it is deeply sinful.
From the Americas to Asia, from Oceania to Europe, Columbans around the world celebrate the 5th anniversary and the Laudato Si’ message, especially in its call for integral ecology which is a holistic approach to care for our common home that draws on faith, science, education, advocacy, and lifestyle transformation. Columban eco-theologian Sean McDonagh and author of The Death of Life (2005) on biodiversity describes this encyclical as, “the single most important piece of Catholic Social Teaching each of the last 100 years and essential to every Catholic’s formation for the next 100 years.”
We need a comprehensive plan that moves all sectors of our economy toward a clean energy economy by achieving net-zero carbon pollution by 2050. The “100% Clean Economy Act of 2019” provides a robust framework for such a plan.
This afternoon while attending an oil and gas conference in Pittsburgh, PA, President Trump announced that the United States will officially begin the process of withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. On June 1, 2017, the President first announced his intent to withdrawal from the agreement. At the time, the Columban Center released a statement which strongly opposed the President's intentions. Unfortunately, today we must re-release that statement.
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