South Asia floods: ‘Everything is coming to a complete standstill’

Seoul, South Korea, Sep 20, 2018 / 03:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As nuclear negotiations with North Korea continue, Catholics in South Korea are encouraging devotion to their martyr saints and renewing prayers for peace on the peninsula.

South Korea’s bishops applauded the successful completion of the third inter-Korean summit of Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, North Korea earlier this week. The meeting resulted in Kim promising to take steps towards denuclearization in exchange for concessions from the United States.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded with a statement that the U.S. is prepared to “engage immediately in negotiations” with North Korea, and invited North Korea’s foreign minister to meet with him at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City next week, where Moon will also meet with US President Donald Trump.

“This will mark the beginning of negotiations to transform U.S.-DPRK relations through the process of rapid denuclearization of North Korea, to be completed by January 2021, as committed by Chairman Kim, and to construct a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” Pompeo said Sept. 19.

Before heading to Pyongyang the First Lady of South Korea, Kim Jung-sook, attended Mass with Korean bishops in Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral and asked for prayers for the upcoming diplomatic negotiations.

The Mass was part of a week-long celebration of Korea’s martyr saints. On Sept. 14, the Vatican approved ‘Seoul’s Catholic Pilgrimage Routes’ as a World Pilgrimage Site.

Monsignor Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, traveled to Seoul for the pilgrimage route’s dedication ceremony.

“These routes can help not only pilgrims coming from Asia and all over the world, but whoever else chooses to walk them, to reflect on the fact that human life laid down out of love and to open their hearts to the transforming power of God’s grace which bestows the gift of faith,” said Fisichella at the Seosomun Martyrs Shrine.

More than 100 Koreans were martyred at Seosomun Park, where Pope Francis prayed before celebrating their beatification Mass in his visit to South Korea in 2014.

“Stained in the blood and sweat of the martyrs, these pilgrimage routes are not just a legacy of the Church in Korea alone,” said Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung of Seoul. They are a “sacred patrimony … for all citizens on the Korean Peninsula.”

Along the pilgrimage route is Jeoldusan Martyrs’ Shrine, where Korea’s first priest, Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, was tortured and beheaded at age 25.

Saint Andrew Kim was born 1821 into an aristocratic Korean family that eventually included three generations of Catholic martyrs.

Kim traveled over 1,000 miles to attend seminary in Macau. While Kim was away at seminary, his father, Ignatius Kim Chae-jun, was martyred in 1839.

After Kim was ordained in Shanghai in 1845, he returned to his homeland to begin catechising Koreans in secret. Only 13 months later, he was arrested.

In his final letter from prison before his execution, Kim wrote to Catholics in Korea: “When he was in the world, the Lord Jesus bore countless sorrows and by his own passion and death founded his Church; now he gives it increase through the sufferings of his faithful … I urge you to remain steadfast in faith, so that at last we will all reach heaven and there rejoice together. I embrace you all in love.”

The feast of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon and his companions is celebrated Sept. 20.

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Melbourne, Australia, Mar 15, 2018 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Alleged victims of abuse of Cardinal George Pell gave testimonies this week during a hearing in an Australian court which will determine if he will face a trial.

The committal hearing for the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy took place at the Melbourne Magistrate Court, and will allow prosecutors to determine whether there is enough evidence for a jury trial. The hearing began last week and is expected to take about a month to complete.

This week, the hearing was closed to media and the public while alleged victims gave testimony to the court through a video link. The courtroom reopened to the public Wednesday afternoon.

The total number of charges brought against Pell are not public, although some of the charges previously brought against Pell date as far back as 1961. In January, a key charge against Pell was dropped after the complainant died of leukemia.

Pell, 76, is being represented by four lawyers and intends to plead not guilty if his case goes to trial. He has said that “the whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”

Last summer, Pope Francis granted Pell a leave of absence from his duties as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy while the claims are investigated. Pell is also a member of the Pope’s council of nine cardinal advisers.

On Thursday, a father of one of the alleged victims, both of whom cannot be identified for legal reasons, said he found out his son had been abused by Pell from his other son. The alleged victim was so traumatized by the event that he would not talk about it, the father noted.

“He would not talk about it. He was just abused,” he said, according to court reporters. “That’s all he told me.”

Pell’s lawyer, Robert Richter QC, questioned the father as to why he did not mention Cardinal Pell by name in the initial police reports about the incident, and accused him of making up the accusation.

The father of the alleged victim called the accusation an “insult” and said he had not made it up. In the initial police report, the father stated that his son had been abused by “multiple priests.”

Other accusations brought against Pell included those from Broken Rites, an advocacy group for victims of clerical abuse. According to the Associated Press, a volunteer from the group testified against Pell based on statements made from the mother of an alleged victim to the group.

The Vatican has refrained from stating a judgement or opinion on the Pell case, pending the outcome of the investigations by the Australian court.

The hearing for Cardinal Pell is ongoing and will resume next week.

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Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference at the presidential office in Taipei on Dec. 27, 2022. / Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Jan 31, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).

President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen sent a letter to Pope Francis on Wednesday joining the pontiff in calling for greater regulation of artificial intelligence, reaffirming what Ing-wen said was Taiwan’s commitment “to promote peace and improve the quality of life of all humanity.” 

Noting that Taiwan “is eager to work with the international community to build a more stable society,” the Jan. 31 letter reflected on the country’s position as a “​​world leader in the semiconductor industry.”

“As the wave of AI sweeps across the world, Taiwan will continue in its endeavor to be a highly reliable, effective, and secure partner in the international community,” the president continued. 

Taiwan is a vital player in the global development of AI. The growth in demand for accelerator chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the country’s largest company — and the world’s second-most-valuable semiconductor company — has helped fuel an economic rebound for the island, according to Bloomberg. 

Investing and developing AI tools also plays a critical role in maintaining Taiwan’s national security apparatus amid growing threats of military intervention and economic sanctions from Beijing.

Tsai highlighted these themes and underscored the broader ethical considerations of developing emerging technologies in her letter to the pope. 

“As Your Holiness has warned, the growing scope of AI applications and its implications for human values engender grave ethical risks, such as invasion of privacy, data manipulation, and illegal surveillance, which all have serious consequences for free and democratic societies,” she wrote. 

“For Taiwan, as for other democracies, one major challenge has been disinformation campaigns,” the president continued. “Taiwan will deepen cooperation with the Holy See across many areas as we work toward exercising good technological governance, maintaining social harmony and stability, and jointly creating a peaceful future for humanity.”

Tsai sent the letter in response to the pope’s message marking the 57th World Day of Peace, a celebration that is observed by the Catholic Church on Jan. 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. 

The pope’s message for the 2024 World Day of Peace was titled “Artificial Intelligence and Peace.” In it, the pontiff called on policymakers and international stakeholders to direct the development of AI toward “the pursuit of peace and the common good.”

The pope in his Dec. 14 letter underscored the risks posed by AI with its usage in automated warfare as well as the bias it can effect when used in the job hiring process, mortgage applications, and even criminal recidivism. These “systemic errors can easily multiply,” the pope argued.

The Holy Father stressed that AI is a supplemental technology as it can only “imitate or reproduce certain functions of human intelligence,” adding that “the unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as ‘intelligent’ as it may be, remains a machine.” 

The ethical regulation and orientation of AI for the common good has been a common theme of Francis’ pontificate in recent years. In a Feb. 20, 2023, audience with the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope urged the academy to study emerging technologies in order to “ensure that scientific and technological growth is reconciled more and more with a parallel development … in responsibility, values, and conscience.”

The Holy See is a vital diplomatic partner for Taipei as it is the only sovereign European entity that maintains diplomatic relations with the democratically governed island. 

Formal diplomatic relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the Holy See were officially established in 1942. However, following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the government of the Republic of China relocated to the island of Taiwan, which sits 110 miles off mainland China’s Southeastern coast. The Holy See, at present, does not maintain official diplomatic relations with the PRC.

Taiwan, or the Republic of China, currently maintains diplomatic relations with 12 states after the Pacific island nation of Narua severed relations on Jan. 15, two days after presidential elections in Taiwan, which saw the election of Lai Ching-te, the current vice president and staunch advocate for Taiwanese sovereignty.

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