Tag: Vatican

The Amazon

Peru moves to protect new swath of Amazon

Peru's creation of Yaguas National Park—covering nearly 870,000 hectares of rainforest along the remote border with Colombia—is being hailed as a critical advance for protection of global biodiversity. The territory in the Putumayo river basin is roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park, but with more than 10 times the diversity of flora and fauna. Despite new areas brought under protection, forest is still being rapidly lost in Peru. A recent analysis of satellite images by th Andean Amazon Monitoring Project (MAAP) found 143,425 hectares of forest were lost across the Peruvian Amazon during 2017. (Image: Inhabit.com)

The Andes

FARC demobilization back on after court ruling

Colombia's Constitutional Court approved the government's plan for "fast track" authority to expedite congressional approval of terms for a peace deal with the FARC rebels.

Palestine

Palestine and Vatican in UN flag fracas

Two months after formally recognizing Palestine, the Vatican objected to a Palestinian request for the two observer states to be allowed to raise their flags at UN headquarters.

Southern Cone

Cardinal Bergoglio and Argentina’s Dirty War

The election of Buenos Aires’ Cardinal Bergoglio as Pope Francis deepens growing concerns about the complicity of the Catholic Church in Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s.

Watching the Shadows

Catholic sex scandal Jewish plot: papal hopeful

Alan Dershowitz calls out papal hopeful Cardinal Maradiaga of Honduras as floating conspiracy theories about how the Vatican sex scandal was instrumented by the Jews. 

Watching the Shadows

Papal poop-out propels apocalyptoids

The eschatologically obsessed are fixating on the 12th century Prophecy of Malachy, which supposedly foretells Pope Benedict's resignation as a sign of imminent doom. 

Central America
gaza5

gaza5

Days after the Catholic Church declared El Salvador's martyred Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero a saint, a judge in the Central American country issued an arrest order for a former military captain long suspected of ordering the killing of the religious leader. Judge Rigoberto Chicas issued the order for national and international authorities to apprehend Alvaro Rafael Saravia,  78. He remains at large and is believed to be in hiding. Saravia had been arrested for the crime in 1987, but the case against him was dropped when El Salvador passed its amnesty law in 1993. The case was re-opened after El Salvador's Supreme Court struck down the amnesty law in 2016. (Photo via Catholic News Agency)

The Amazon
IraqStrike

Iraq Strike

Peru's creation of Yaguas National Park—covering nearly 870,000 hectares of rainforest along the remote border with Colombia—is being hailed as a critical advance for protection of global biodiversity. The territory in the Putumayo river basin is roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park, but with more than 10 times the diversity of flora and fauna. Despite new areas brought under protection, forest is still being rapidly lost in Peru. A recent analysis of satellite images by th Andean Amazon Monitoring Project (MAAP) found 143,425 hectares of forest were lost across the Peruvian Amazon during 2017. (Image: Inhabit.com)