ROME
Vatican in joint conference on adult stem-cell research
THE PONTIFICAL Council for Culture and a US-based biotechnology company with operations in China has announced plans for an international conference next autumn at the Vatican to promote adult stem-cell research, writes Robert Mickens. The 9-11 November gathering – titled “Science and the Future of Man and Culture” – hopes to draw some 350 representatives from governments, business, the Church and the medical field. “It aims to explore the cultural impact of research on adult stem cells and of regenerative medicine in the long and medium terms,” said Fr Tomasz Trafny of the pontifical council. The conference’s co-sponsor, NeoStem, holds the worldwide rights to VSELs (very small adult stem cells) that appear to have some of the regenerative properties of embryonic stem cells. “This research has the potential to alleviate human suffering … without destroying another human life,” NeoStem’s CEO, Dr Robin L. Smith, said at a 16 June news briefing.
SUDAN
Refugee crisis escalates on north-south borderlands
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
A SUDANESE bishop speaking in Germany has said that the situation of hundreds of thousands of people in South Kordofan, an oil-rich region between North and South Sudan that includes the disputed region of Abyei, is increasingly precarious. In a referendum in January this year 98.8 per cent of South Sudanese voters – 3,837,406 people – voted to secede from rule by Khartoum. However, the vote did not resolve the future of Abyei, and the Khartoum Government now stands accused of driving the population from their homes. Although South Kordofan is north of what will soon be the international border, it is home to many pro-south communities, especially in the Nuba Mountains, some of whom fought with southern rebels during the long civil war that ended in 2005. Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid in
central Sudan said around 150,000 people were on the move in the border region between North and South Sudan, which was a part of his Diocese of El Obeid. Nuba people, Muslims and Christians were all affected by the national army operations. Earlier this month, the Sudanese army bombed the capital Kadugli, targeting churches and community centres, and destroying the Anglican cathedral. At the moment it was proving exceedingly
difficult to help the refugees from South Kordofan as the roads were blocked by the North Sudanese military, a spokesman for the German aid organisation Miserior said. The only way to get bare essentials to the refugees was by air. Leaders of North and South Sudan signed a peace deal in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Monday that would make Abyei a demilitarised zone under the supervision of 4,000 Ethiopian peacekeepers. South Sudan is to become independent on 9 July.
Pope’s Mass moved to Olympic stadium GERMANY
THE POPE will celebrate an open-air Mass in Berlin on 22 September at the Olympic Stadium instead of in front of Charlottenburg Palace as originally planned, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. The general coordinator of the Pope’s visit, Fr Hans Langendörfer SJ, who is also secretary of the German bishops’ conference, said the decision in favour of the Olympic Stadium had been made jointly by the Vatican, the German bishops’ conference and the archdiocese of Berlin. The elderly, the disabled and families with small children in Berlin parishes had felt that their concerns that there would be standing room only for the long celebration were “not being taken seriously”, the Berlin Archdiocese
VENEZUELA Bishops blame state for prison deaths
IN A STINGING rebuke, the bishops of Venezuela (CEV) have held the Government responsible for the “unspeakable” violence that has claimed the lives of at least 22 inmates of El Rodeo prison since 12 June, writes Jon Stibbs. In a statement dated 17 June, the bish- ops said the Government allowed “gangs and mafias to operate freely and unpunished in jails, with weapons, and with complicity of the authorities of the country”. On 20 June, troops were still involved in gunfights with
30 | THE TABLET | 25 June 2011
inmates in an effort to quell rioting between rival gangs and reclaim control of the state institution, 30 miles east of Caracas. Signed by Mgr Roberto Luckert León, pres- ident of the Justice and Peace Bureau of the CEV, the letter said the state “has relinquished its responsibility to guarantee the life and physical integrity of convicted people and those facing trial”. It called on the Government “to fulfil their mission to watch over the con- stitutional rights of our brothers”.
said. The Olympic Stadium seats 75,000 and is roofed in; 50,000 people have already applied for tickets. ■Professor Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkowitz, emeritus professor of religious philosophy at the Technical University at Dresden, will be one of the guest speakers at this year’s Schülerkreis at Castel Gandolfo from 27 to 28 August. Professor Gerl-Falkovitz chaired the faculty of religious philosophy and com- parative religions at the TU Dresden from 1993 to January this year, when she retired. Her main field of research was the religious philosophy of nineteenth- and twentieth-cen- tury philosophers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Romano Guardini.
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