The volume María - Iglesia. Madre del pueblo misionero[1] is a “summa of popular Mariology,”[2] as the Argentinean theologian Carlos Galli states in his preface. Its author, Fr. Alexandre Awi Mello, was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 17, 1971. Ordained priest in 2001, he was one of the two editorial secretaries of the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, held at the Marian shrine of Aparecida in 2007. There he met...
On December 17, 2016, Pope Francis turned eighty. Despite the weight of his responsibility, he continues to show boundless energy as he carries out the Petrine ministry he was called to exercise three and a half years ago. This milestone in his life offers us a fitting occasion to reflect on his moral authority as Supreme Pontiff. The fact is that in today’s world there are many – not only Catholics, Christians, and believers, but also many non-believers beyond the...
Four hundred years have passed since the death of Justus Takayama Ukon, remembered and revered in Japan not only as a martyr, but also as a great witness to the Christian faith, which he practiced in connection with the mission of the Society of Jesus. He was the greatest Japanese missionary of the sixteenth century because of how he lived the Christian faith with the tenacity, rigor and loyalty that were typical of the Japanese people, promoting the inculturation of...
About 50 years ago George H. Dunne, SJ wrote a successful book on the story of the Jesuits in China in the early seventeenth century, which he entitled Generation of Giants. Like many mission histories he focused on well-known missionaries, such as Matteo Ricci, and showed how they influenced the development of Christianity in China. But who are the giants in mission history and what influence did they exercise? In this article I will focus on a neglected aspect of...
One of the most influential architects today, the Japanese autodidact Tadao Ando (1941, Osaka) is a master of paradox. His works intermingle simplicity with mystery, globalization with roots, dead matter with personality, rationality with wild nature. No wonder that many of the most recent monographs on contemporary sacred space include references to his oeuvre.[1] His four modest chapels (1986-1993) belong to the United Church of Christ in Japan, founded in 1942 in order to integrate Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist...
The Protestant Reformation began five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517. According to historiographical accounts, on that day, the eve of the Feast of All Saints, Martin Luther, a young Augustinian professor of the convent at Wittenberg, is said to have nailed his 95 Theses on indulgences to the door of the castle church.[1] This event is only attested to in a single document, redacted by Melanchthon in 1546, several months after the death of the reformer: “Luther wrote...
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