Social

There are people who love animals; we see them often, offering scraps of food to stray dogs or pigeons in public squares and parks, gazing at them affectionately, touching them, speaking to them tenderly. Rarely, however, does any of that reserve of sympathy find its way into the silence, indifference, or reproach with which people respond to a request for help from someone...

Rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, and starvation are common practices in the North Korean prison system, dehumanising detainees to the point where they believe they deserve this treatment, according to a report published by a human rights monitoring body.

What is left of me after I shut down my computer, turn off my phone, or wipe away my makeup? What about after I quit my job, after I move, after I lose my health, after I get older? What if no one knew me—would I still be someone?

It is said that time makes us wiser. How wise have we become after a global pandemic with millions of deaths, a war on our borders, economic problems, and many personal tragedies in which we are caught as if in the grip of a great storm?

We love people for who they are. But there is a kind of love that is too high for us to truly comprehend in all its nuances, a love that manifests itself towards people no matter who they are or what they become. We find a love such as this in the beautiful story of Ian and Larissa.

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

Changing habits is like tightrope walking: an exercise in which the balance is always fragile, but it is the small changes that pave the way to truly remarkable results.

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

"One Thousand Gifts" describes the beautiful revolt of a soul that does not want to be crippled by what it has lost, but to pierce its own suffering like an arrow springing from the bow of grace, a leitmotif of the whole book.

There have always been people who relish a debate—though all too often, even when the subject hardly matters, the whole exercise amounts to little more than intellectual gymnastics in a thimble and scholarly squabbles over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

It has been more than ten years since my first job interview ended with the classic: You did a great job, but we have chosen someone else. Since this memorable moment, other closed doors have followed: employers rejecting my application, people not sharing my interests, groups giving me the feeling of not being accepted.

We often associate divorce with the unhappiness of adults who reprehensibly decide to go their separate ways. For under-age brides Noora and Nujood, however, divorce was their escape from a nightmare of domestic violence and abuse, into which they were thrown at a young age by their own families.