Darfur: a prison with no walls

Two million people are refugees in Darfur, fleeing the fighting that has tainted their country for years. With numbers increasing and a shortage of food, reports Cafod?s director, aid agencies are struggling. There will be no solution and no ceasefire unless all the parties come to the table...

A conflict in need of fresh thinking

Kaltouma Musa walked home a few weeks ago with her baby on her back, writes Julie Flint. She was exchanging a camp where she had been receiving aid for a rebel-controlled area with no aid ? an area marked on UN maps as a no-go zone....

?We need more thought and fewer thunderbolts to bring about change?

I've had the great pleasure of meeting Cardinal Keith O'Brien and found him to be a warm and humane man with a deep generosity of spirit. But in the past week I began to wonder whether I had misread the man, given the coverage of his Edinburgh homily on abortion....

Speaking for the Church in a new language

Pablo Richard?s lecture at the CELAM conference at Aparecida, on the subject of a Church dominated by fear, must have made uncomfortable listening for the gathered bishops. He tells Margaret Hebblethwaite how he sees the future of liberation Theology...

Reaching towards mystery

The big questions of Creation were discussed at a conference organised by the Newman Association last week. Chief among them was the compatability between scientific understanding and our understanding of the nature of God...

The channel that lost its way

It began as a publicly funded network for alternative perspectives and became a byword for quality television. But now Channel 4 is in the firing line from many quarters for puerile and offensive programmes. If it is sold off, what will happen to the original ethos of television for minority views?...

Sarkozy?s wild card

The appointment of maverick left-winger Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister in the new French administration took Right and Left by surprise. It brings a man with extensive experience of international development into the heart of government. But how long can the experiment last?...

Through veneration to redemption

The Corpus Christi celebration in England and Wales has moved from the Thursday after Trinity to the following Sunday. Daniel McCarthy examines the prayer for the feast, uncovering the depth of its appreciation of the mystery of the Eucharist...

First steps to belonging

On the feast of Corpus Christi, a priest reflects on how preparation for First Communion has developed in his parish over the last seven years...

Up the Rh?ne

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