Yousaf Adnan remembers retiring as principal of a Pakistani high school in 2011 due to a shortage of funds.
“After serving for two decades in the Catholic school, my salary was only 5,700 rupees [US$36]. The teachers used to get half of that amount. The ceiling fans were as old as our careers,” Adnan, 56, told.
“Summers were especially tough for the students amid frequent power cuts. There was no generator. Our parish priest had lost interest in the building.”
St Paul High School was located in Hajvery Town, a Christian neighbourhood of Faisalabad Diocese with more than 400 families. Students, most of them from poor families, paid 150-300 rupees in monthly fees.
The school officially closed in 2014. One of the remaining teachers is now running the facility on a self-help basis with only 60 children.
“It is one of the 63 schools that closed in Faisalabad Diocese in recent years. Most of them were primary schools [up to grade 5],” said Adnan, who now runs an organization for minority rights.

Churches in Bangladesh are struggling to provide the faithful with spiritual and pastoral care and to assist marginalized communities amid a drop in donations during the worsening Covid-19 situation.
A deadly third wave of the pandemic hit the country in June as the more contagious Delta variant caused a massive spike in infections and deaths. The country registered its highest daily total of 11,651 cases on July 8, a day after its daily death toll passed 200 for the first time since Bangladesh recorded its first three cases in March last year. Data suggests the virus has spread to rural heartlands as districts close to the Indian border record more infections and deaths amid an acute shortage of beds, oxygen and medical staff.

The pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily will be shutting down on June 24 , one week after the arrest of five of its editors and executives under a year-old national security law.
As The Associated Press reports, the board of directors for the newspaper’s parent company Next Media, said in a statement that its online and print editions would cease production due to ”the current circumstances prevailing in Hong Kong.”
The newspaper had initially said it would continue its reporting. It printed 500,000 copies the day after the arrests, five times more than it usually does. However, Apple Daily reported that management made the decision to shut down out of concern for employee safety as well as staffing issues.
Last week, five editors and executives for Apple Daily were arrested on charges of colluding with a foreign country, with authorities citing over 30 articles that they claimed played a ”crucial part” in foreign countries issuing sanctions against China.
This is the first time that the national security law has been used against journalists for something they published, the AP notes. Under this law, much of the company’s assets were also frozen, with the company’s board of directors requesting that some of its assets be released in order to pay wages earlier this week.
The New York Times notes that Apple Daily’s criticism of authorities has sparked concerns from the Communist Party of China for several decades. Shortly after the new national security law was passed last year, the newspaper’s founder, Jimmy Lai, was arrested at his home.
Lai, 73, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in April on charges of attending and organizing an unlawful protest.

Catholic and Buddhist leaders in northern Thailand have been engaging in dialogue seeking to strengthen unity and harmony among followers of both faiths for the common good.
Interfaith dialogue is an integral part of the Catholic Church’s pastoral plan, said Archbishop Anthony Weradet Chaiseri of Tharae and Nonseng Arch-diocese that covers the four northern provinces of Kalasin, Mukdahan, Nakhon Phanom and Sakon Nakhon. Dialogue with Buddhists is vital for Christians in a nation shaped by the strong cultural and religious legacies of Buddhism, he said.
Archbishop Chaiseri made the observations after recently meeting with Sutham Suthammo, a promi-nent Buddhist monk and abbot of the Forest Monastery in Kesetsrikhun in Nong Phai.
“The Church wants to promote and strengthen relations with the representatives of the local Buddhist community,” Archbishop Chaiseri told the Vatican’s Fides news agency.
“A stronger collaboration with the Buddhist community can help us work together for the common good, peace, harmony and development.”  Buddhists make up about 95% of Thailand’s more than 69 million people. Christians are a small minority accounting for about 1%.

A Catholic archdiocese in South Korea will hold a musical contest with an aim to revitalize church music and to provide the faithful with an opportunity to reflect and practice pastoral priorities of the Church.
The Archdiocese of Daegu, which covers the third largest metropolitan area after capital Seoul and Busan, is launching the Creative Artist Contest that focuses on a 10-year pastoral plan recently adopted by the arch-diocese.
The pastoral plan announced by Archbishop Thaddeus Hwanki Cho is based on the theme “Community living the joy of the Gospel together.”
Any faithful can participate in the contest and all have been asked to submit traditional church music and music on Catholic life with core values of the pastoral plan such as the Word of God, fellowship, liturgy, love of neighbours and missions.
In cases of church music, both single-voice and mixed choral songs with three or more voices that can be used in liturgy are acceptable, while music on Catholic life should be in single-voice form that anyone can sing easily.
The deadline for submissions is Sept. 30 and results of the contest screening will be announced in December. The prizes will be conferred during a grand ceremony next January.
A total of 20 million won (US$17,600) will be awarded to winners — 3 million won for the first prize, 2 million won for second, and 1 million won for others.

Catholics in Indonesia’s Ruteng Diocese are mourning the death of a Dutch-born nun who spent more than half of her life doing family pastoral work in their diocese.
Sister Robertilde Wihelmina van Der Meer from the Congregation of Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSpS) died on June 18 at 87 and was buried at the congregation’s cemetery in Ruteng on June 21.
News of her death prompted many Catholics, including the district government, to express their condolences on social media for the friendly nun.
Sister Natalia Maria Naki, director of SSpS-run St. Raphael Hospital in Cancar, 15 kilometers west of Ruteng, who had lived with Sister Robertilde since 2012, said the nun showed “total devotion to the people she served.”

Cardinal Jose Advincula was installed as the new archbishop of Manila in a ceremony at the Philippine capital’s historic cathedral on June 24.
The 69-year-old cardinal from Capiz became the 33rd archbishop of the country’s largest diocese, succeeding Cardinal Luis Tagle, now prefect of the Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome.
The installation was attended by the papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, along with another former Manila arch-bishop, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, and apostolic administrator Bishop Broderick Pabillo.
Several other bishops were also present as were a limited number of priests and civic officials in a ceremony that was scaled down to avoid the spread of Covid-19.
Cardinal Advincula, who is the sixth Filipino to hold the office, promised to fulfill his new mission by listening and knowing his sheep — Manila’s poor and marginalized.

Pope Francis has appealed for aid for thousands of displaced people who are facing starvation in Myanmar after fleeing from their homes as fighting escalates in the beleaguered country.
During his Sunday Angelus on June 20, the pope joined bishops in Myanmar who have appealed for humanitarian corridors to allow safe passage for those fleeing.
He said Myanmar bishops last week launched an appeal “calling to the attention of the entire world, the heart-wrenching experience of thousands of persons in that country who are displaced and are dying of hunger.”
Echoing the bishops, the pope pleaded for respecting religious sites as places of sanctuary. “Churches, pagodas, monasteries, mosques, temples, just as schools and hospitals, are respected as neutral places of refuge.”

The communist regime of China, the world’s most populous country of 1.4 billion people, announced on May 31 that it will allow married couples to have up to three children.
The decision came from the Politburo, the highest policy-making body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), chaired by President Xi Jinping. It signals a major shift in demographic policy of a country where everything from life to death is strictly controlled by the state.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that the government seeks “to ensure continued economic growth, national security and social stability” with the policy.
However, the main driving force behind the change is a worrying decline in the birth rate that poses serious threats to China’s economy from an aging population.
Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics released in May showed the country recorded 12 million births in 2020, the lowest number since the 1960s. It was a significant decrease from 18 million births in 2016.
China now has a below-replacement-level fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, way down from the replacement level of 2.1. China is on a par with aging societies in Japan and Italy.
That is evident in China’s genocidal treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, where many men and women are subject to forced sterilizations and forced abortions, resulting in a significant fall in birth rates. On the flipside, the authorities are encouraging educated Han Chinese women to have more babies.
China’s so-called “inclusive family planning policy” is no guarantee of basic human rights such as sexual and reproductive rights for all citizens and is just a flimsy attempt to cover up rising economic shortfalls that pose a serious threat to the communists’ grip on power in the long run.

Caritas Pakistan Karachi under its Smallholder Adaptive Project launched its “Acre for Women” campaign to empower smallholder female farmers in the remote villages of Gharo and Gadap on the city’s outskirts.
The female farmers are owners of one-acre plots where they grow vegetables for their self-sufficiency to fight against malnutrition and hunger.
Caritas Karachi formed women’s farming groups in Gharo and Gadap and distributed kitchen gardening kits including summer vegetable seeds, organic manure and tools as well as offering training on climate change adaptation.
“Our main objective is train women farmers to build their capacity in view of climate change and grow different vegetables for their own consumption and to fight against malnutrition and hunger,” regional coordinator Amir Robin said.
Mansha Noor, executive secretary of Caritas Pakistan Karachi, said the project was aimed at promoting healthy and organic produce for self-sufficiency and to improve nutrition among women and children. He further highlighted the importance and benefits of growing different vegetables as a group.