Yesterday, April 12, at the age of 88, Monsignor Gaillot, Bishop of Evreux (France) from 1982 to 1995, died. He was a peaceful and energetic man, passionate about justice for all the excluded, a prophet of the Good News of Jesus, of a fraternal world, of a human Church. He supported conscientious objection against military […]
Holy Week could make sense even for those who do not share the Christian myth, if it were a vindication, not of the brutal death of a single man two thousand years ago, but of the violated dignity of all those who were then victims of the viciousness of power, including those crucified with Jesus […]
Pope Nicholas V granted “full and free permission” to the Portuguese Crown to “capture and subjugate Saracens and pagans” in its African expansion (Bull Dum Diversas, 1452). Alexander VI Borgia blessed the arrival of the Spaniards in America and stipulated the division of dominions between Castile and Portugal (Bull Inter Caetera, 1493). These and other […]
“Take your hands off the Democratic Republic of Congo, do not touch Africa. Stop suffocating it, because Africa is not a mine to be exploited or a land to be plundered. Let Africa be the protagonist of its own destiny.” “The poison of greed has bloodied its diamonds.” “We cannot get used to the blood […]
People go to their temples to greet Me… How simple and ignorant are My children who think that I live in isolation. Why don’t they come and greet Me in the procession of life, where I always live, in the farms, the factories, and the market, where I encourage those who earn their living by […]
Life consists in opening cracks until finally understanding that that was the way to follow. And then I am again surprised by the capacity of life to find loopholes to let me continue creating. This is something that stuns me, as someone who well understands that life surpasses us and is beyond and above everything […]
One hand on the beauty of the world. The other one on the suffering of the people. Both feet jumping from the task to the party. And the heart on fire. (Matxalen Ojanguren Alonso) In the weakness of the human our deepest truth is revealed, because the heartbeat of the world is its frailty. (Pepa […]
I read in EL PAÍS: “Men are going to have trouble being fertile in barely a decade, if they continue at this rate: the number of spermatozoa per ejaculation has not stopped falling for almost a century. Their concentration has also fallen to less than half of what it was 50 years ago, approaching the […]
Don’t ask how many were killed, don’t ask how many were injured. “Hundreds, they say. A hundred up, a hundred down, who cares? Don’t ask how they died. Don’t ask if those deaths were avoidable. Don’t ask about responsibility for this crime against young Africans without rights and without bread. Don’t ask. The dead are […]
Parabole in memory of all those whose apparent presence we lost An Autumn afternoon I was in a park, contemplating a pretty and very small leaf shaped as a heart. It was reddish and it dangled from a branch, as if it were about to fall. I spent a long time with it and asked […]
