In 2023, the greatest growth of the last decade was recorded in terms of global military spending, which reached its historic high for a total sum of 2.4 trillion dollars driven by Asia-Pacific tensions (Taiwan ) and the conflict between Israel and Hamas (as well as Iran).
This is the data from the latest report published on April 22 by Sipri (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), from which another interesting fact also emerges: the greatest increases at a geographical level concerned Asia, the Middle East and partly the Europe due to the war between Russia and Ukraine which has been dragging on for over two years.
“Total military spending is at an all-time high” senior researcher Sipri Nan Tian underlines to AFP, according to which “we have witnessed an increase in spending in all five geographical regions.”
In numerical terms, the in-crease in military spending is 6.8% and represents “the most significant on an annual basis since 2009” as the expert adds. “[This increase] is a reflection of the deterioration – he adds – of peace and security in the world,” also because “there is no region in which the situation has improved.” At country level, among the top five for military spending in the annual Sipri report are: United States, China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia.

Junko Kusanagi is a Japanese woman who for 49 years lived without having a significant experience that would lead her to have a deep faith. However, the illness of her husband, who is Catholic, led her to consider faith more than ever as a necessary element in her life. Junko says she attended a Catholic school and university, but never took much interest in the faith. When she was about to marry her current husband, he revealed to her that he was Catholic, and she mentions that perhaps if she had not had a previous experience with Catholicism, she would likely have reacted more hostilely to this statement. However, her previous contact with Catholicism allowed her to not have such a repulsive reaction to her husband’s faith.
Sometime later, when they had their son, Junko’s husband expressed his desire to have him baptized as a Catholic, to which she was at first a bit hesitant to do so. She decided to consult with her husband’s sister who told her that she had always felt God’s presence in her life because she had been baptized as a child, and this motivated Junko to accept the baptism of her son. The baptism took place and Junko remembers her husband telling her that he was very happy because even if something happened to them, their son would be in good hands because God would be with him. Junko mentions that her life went smoothly until October 2022 when her husband told her that he had just been diagnosed with cancer. At that time, she became so worried about the future of her husband and family that she went into shock.
In contrast, her husband was very composed, which impressed her. She asked him how he could be so calm, to which he replied, “I’m fine. God is always here”.
From that moment on she discovered something she had never seen in the person of her husband, a faith that she had interpreted simply as something that made her husband a “calm and ordinary” person, but at that moment she realized that his faith was so great even to be fearless, even though the future was uncertain. This began to make her rethink her position on faith. Upon realizing this situation and together with the desire to walk alongside her husband in this difficulty, she decided that she wanted to be baptized. She discussed this with her husband who was glad that he had become ill because it brought her to a deepening of the faith, he had always believed in.
Thus, Junko began her journey to the Church and among other things she is grateful to the parish community are the accompaniment and the availability to be with her and accompany her in this difficult time. Since they had moved house, she had no friends with whom she could talk or feel accompanied, but in the church community there is always someone to listen to her. Junko was baptized at the Easter Vigil at the Sekimac church.

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Easter attacks, the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka has organized various religious celebrations and is preparing to name martyrs the faithful killed in the attacks which targeted three churches and two hotels. According to the most recent investigation into the tragedy, over 300 people, including 40 foreigners and 45 children, lost their lives on 21 April 2019, the worst massacre to occur in Sri Lanka since the civil war.

Yet another attempt at forced conversion has occurred in Pa-kistan against a 13-year-old Chri-stian boy, forced to ingest a toxic substance after refusing to em-brace Islam.
The episode occurred in the city of Lahore on April 13: Saim had left home to go get a haircut, but was stopped by a Muslim se-curity guard who noticed that the boy had a cross around his neck. The guard, named Qadar Khan, snatched the necklace and forced Saim to recite an Islamic prayer, but the boy refused, saying he was Christian. The man then forced Saim to ingest a toxic substance in an attempt to poison him.
It was the young man’s parents who found their son’s body unconscious after several hours that Saim was missing from home. The father, Liyaqat Randhava, went to the police but said he had received unfair treatment.
The officers registered the complaint only after several in-sistences and a copy of the docu-ment was not released to Saim’s family, he said. Furthermore, se-veral parts of the story were not included in the complaint.
(also called first information report or FIR).
Joseph Johnson, president of Voice for Justice, expressed deep concern about the growing incidents of forced religious conversions in Pakistan and condemned what happened to Saim, adding that the police were showing extreme negligence in the case. “By failing to include crucial details in the FIR, the police subjected Saim and his family to further abuse,” Johnson said, calling for government intervention in an investigation.

More than 30 church workers from various bishops’ conferences in Asia on April 15 ended a three-day workshop on building climate-resilient communities.
The workshop, organized by the Office of Human Development – Climate Change Desk (OHD-CCD) of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), was hosted by Caritas Philippines in Tagaytay City, the Philippines. Participants engaged in thorough discussions on prevailing climate trends and the sustainability issues facing the region. They also shared best practices and action plans in battling the impacts of the climate crisis.
Bishop Allwyn D’Silva of Bombay, chairperson of the OHD-CCD, said the Catholic Church must get “more involved” in various environmental concerns because “Asia is a home to many of the countries that are vulner-able to climate change.” The prelate challenged churches in Asia to “build up a network” of advocates and “like-minded act-ors” to spearhead climate actions, all dedicated to fostering climate-resilient communities.
During the workshop, Dr. Benedict Alo D’Rozario, president of Caritas Asia, discussed how the Catholic Church’s social action and humanitarian arms are trying to collectively defend and empower communities against the impacts of the ecological crisis.

Pope Francis will undertake a long trip to Asia and Oceania at the end of the summer. The director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, issued an official statement to that effect, indicating dates and locations.
“Accepting the invitation of the respective Heads of State and Church Authorities,” reads the press release signed by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, “Pope Francis will undertake an Apostolic Journey to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore from 2 to 13 September. He will visit Jakarta from 3 to 6 September, Port Moresby and Vanimo from 6 to 9 September, Dili from 9 to 11 September and Singapore from 11 to 13 September.”
As is customary, the detailed schedule of each stop will be published in due course. Despite the pope’s recent health issues, this long and demanding 12-day journey confirms once again Pope Francis’s great consideration for Asia.
The pontiff had been scheduled to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste in 2020, but was forced to cancel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, Singapore was added. Like Mongolia last year, the great crossroads of Southeast Asia is another privileged place to speak and reach out to the Chinese and the Sinic world, given that three quarters of the city-state’s population is ethnic Chinese.
Vietnam is not on the pope’s travel list this time. Improving relations in the recent past between Hanoi and the Holy See and the great desire of Vietnamese Catholics to welcome the pontiff’s visit had raised hopes. For Pope Francis, the planned journey was already very challenging. The sudden departure of President Võ Vãn Thýßng, who had issued an official invitation to Pope Francis in December, probably weighed heavily on the decision not to include Vietnam this time. Nevertheless, as the recent visit to Vietnam by Vatican Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher shows, the door for a papal visit appears to be still open and the trip is probably only postponed.
The Catholic Church in the countries the pontiff will visit issued statements confirming the papal trip in September. The Archdiocese of Singapore has already launched a website dedicated to the event. “It has been 38 years since we had a visit from the Vicar of Christ to Singapore, when Pope St John Paul II honoured us with a visit on 20 November 1986,” writes Archbishop William Goh in a statement. “It is my hope that this visit of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, will bring renewed fervour to all Catholics in Singapore, uniting them in faith and mission, especially in these most challenging of times,” added the prelate, who was elevated to the cardinalship by Pope Francis himself. Along with official state engagements, the archdiocese expects that the highlight of Pope Francis’s stop in the Southeast Asian city-state will be a major Eucharistic celebration, likely on 12 September.
In Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, the Bishops’ Conference made the official announcement today in a press conference attended by Card Virgilio do Carmo da Silva and the Apostolic Nuncio, Rev Mgr Marco Sprizzi. Francis’s arrival will be a very important moment for the country (one of two Asian countries with a Catholic majority; the other one is the Philippines) which obtained its independence only in 2002, after much bloodshed and suffering. John Paul II had already made a stop in Dili in 1989, when Timor-Leste was still a province of Indonesia, but was demanding its independence. The Archbishop of Dili expressed the joy of the local Church for the September date, hoping the Timorese can “participate and be together with the Holy Father, who comes mainly to meet them and strengthen Timor-Leste’s Church in the faith and love of Christ.” “Let us prepare ourselves with an intense prayer to welcome the Holy Father,” added the secretary of the Timor-Leste Bishops’ Conference, Fr Carlos Miguel Pereira, “so that his visit will be the moment in which we reinvigorate our participation in building our ecclesial and civil community, in living our faith, and purifying our culture.”

The Vatican’s top envoy has arrived on a six-day visit to Vietnam, aiming at further fostering full diplomatic ties with the communist country.
Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states and inter-national organizations, was welcomed by Archbishop Marek Zalewski, resident ponti-fical representative to Vietnam, at Noi Bai International Airport on April 9.
Gallagher met his Vietnamese counterpart, Bui Thanh Son, upon arrival and affirmed that the Vatican and Vietnam have a good relationship. He hoped that “the bilateral relationship would continue to achieve important milestones” in the future. Son agreed and said that the Vatican envoy’s visit would further strengthen ties between both sides. Son proposed continuing high-level exchange activities and stated that the government would create conditions for Zalewski to fulfill his mission in the country. He appreciated the positive progress of their relations in recent years, especially the agreement on the working regulations of the pontifical resident representative and his office in Vietnam.
The deal was signed in July 2023, during former president Vo Van Thuong’s visit to the Holy See. Thuong also extended an invitation to Pope Francis to visit his country. Gallagher is the most senior official to visit the Southeast Asian country since diplomatic relations were broken off in 1975 when the northern communist forces took control of US-backed South Vietnam and expelled the apostolic delegate from the former capital, Saigon. Relations have improved since both sides started regular talks in the late 1990s.
Last December, the Vatican appointed Archbishop Zalewski as its first pontifical resident representative to Vietnam, while other communist nations in Asia – China, Laos and North Korea – have no relations with the Vatican.
Vietnam is home to about seven million Catholics out of a total population of 100 million, making it one of the largest communities in Asia.
“We pray for the Holy See and the government to reach full diplomatic relations soon so that we can live out our faith and have religious activities without any restrictions,” Francis Tran Thanh said. Thanh, a lay leader from Quang Tri province, said that “religious freedom is not an asking-and-granting mechanism run by the government, but a basic human right that all people must respect.” He said local people have had religious activities restricted for nearly half a century.
A great number of Church-run facilities were confiscated, Catholics were banned from partaking in public healthcare and education, and communities in remote areas were limited to holding services, building churches, and doing evangelization. Thanh said local people long for a papal visit, which they believed would strengthen their faith in a fast-changing society.

On the cusp of sunset, the sound of rumbling trains in the distance faded as they came to a standstill at Cantonment Railway Station in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on April 9. A group of volunteers rushed to hand out large jugs of ice-cold Rooh Afza, a fruity drink made of squash, and platters of aromatic biriyani to hundreds of Muslims as muezzins in nearby mosques announced through their sound systems it was time to break their Ramadan fast for the day.
From April 1-9, this was a regular scene when a group of young Hindus from the Mahesh-wari community started arranging iftar (the fast-breaking meal) for Muslims during the Islamic holy month which ends with Eid-ul-Fitr, one of the two major annual Islamic festivals.
“We were in a hurry to break the fast as we had missed our train and had no idea who had arranged it,” Ataullah Rehmat, who ate at the iftar event with his wife and child, told. “But we were really happy to see that the Ma-heshwari group organized it. Such acts help build better under-standing between people of the two faiths.”
The Maheshwaris hail from the desert region of Tharparkar in Sindh province and are known for their community mobilization initiatives. The organizers of the iftar drive, the Maheshwari Pre-mier League, started their initia-tives by organizing cricket tourna-ments in Sindh a few years ago and later conducted educational and healthcare campaigns. Bhe-vish Kumar, one of the organizers of the event, said the idea behind the drive was to promote interfaith harmony.
“We initiated it [the iftar drive] with a clear mindset to promote interfaith harmony,” Kumar told on April 9. “Once such a message starts becoming a trend then we can see an inclusive and plural Pakistan.”