A Scottish artist says he was “extremely proud” when he received a medal from Pope Francis for his work. The pope was given a print of “Throwaway Peo-ple” by Michael McVeigh by members of the Church of Scotland in the Vatican Nov. 4.
McVeigh is regarded as a modern-day folk artist whose work depicts everyday life in Scotland, and ‘Throwaway People’ is an expression of the plight of those on the margins of society. The artist was born in Dundee, where he studied Drawing and Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from 1977–1982.
Rt. Rev. Sally Foster-Fulton, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, told the artist that ‘Throwaway Peo-ple’ is an “expression of the fragility of life and how easy it is to fall through the cra-cks, and it is a print that I have bought myself.”
“I presented it to Pope Francis and explained the story behind it to him,” she said. “He turned it over and wrote on the back in Italian and said ‘I don’t want to forget what you just said’. You have shared your gift with the pope, it really resonated with him, and in return he asked me to give you this Papal medal as a token of his appreciation,” Foster-Fulton said. ‘Throwaway People’ by Michael McVeigh. The Moderator presented a print to Pope Francis at the Vatican earlier this month.

Scotland’s leading Catholic charity got an unusual fundraiser from an orthopedic surgeon in northern England, who literally made some waves to help Ethio-pians in need.
Consultant Orthopedic Sur-geon Matthew Cartwright-Terry is a supporter of SCIAF, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, and recently raised money by swimming the Mersey River in North West England.
“I was inspired to support SCIAF through a flier I was sent concerning the distress of the Ethiopian people. The swim was a bucket list activity, with the timing [providing] the perfect opportunity to provide some support,” he said.
Michael Hamilton, the Community Manager Office of SCIAF, said the surgeon’s fund-raising will go towards an Emer-gency Appeal for Ethiopia that was launched this summer.
“Ethiopia is experiencing its worst drought in recent history and there is no sign of the situa-tion improving. With support like Matthew’s, we are working to help alleviate people’s suffering in the south of the country,” he told.
“We can ensure families can survive by providing immediate access to critical food supplies and financial support. We work with partners in Ethiopia to deliver this support,” Hamilton said.
The Catholic charity notes that millions of people are experiencing an extreme hunger crisis after the worst drought in recent history, with rivers dried up, crops withering, and livestock dying.
It reports that in March, SCIAF received $154,000 from the Scottish Government’s Humanitarian Emergency Fund to provide food supplies and access to safe water affected by the crisis.
“We can ensure families can survive by providing immediate access to critical food supplies and financial support,” Hamilton told Crux. “We work with partners in Ethiopia to deliver this support.”
Cartwright-Terry said the September swim couldn’t have been on a better day.
“Finally, we set off trying to remain in our group, the 58 society, as per safety instructions. The six of us managed to remain together for the entire crossing with a couple of stops to admire the view from the middle of the river and even take some selfies,” the surgeon said.

In the pope’s home nation of Argentina, encompassing both Jewish and Muslim populations which are among the largest in South America, the strains of the war between Israel and Hamas are increasingly taking a toll.
A meeting between the Catholic Church and the leading Muslim organization in Argentina on Nov. 14 signaled that interfaith dialogue may still be possible, but also highlighted the challenges.
In Argentina a large Jewish community estimated at 300,000 people coexists with one of the greatest Muslim populations in Latin America, thought to encompass at least 700,000 people.
According to some Muslim leaders in the country, since the Hamas attacks on October 7, the Argentine media has been covering the issue with considerable doses of Islamophobia. They complain that most TV shows fail to invite Muslims to debates, and that the views expressed in most of them tend to be pro-Israel and anti-Islam.
The effects of that alleged biased coverage, they say, are being felt by people in their daily lives. Human rights organizations and Muslim entities have been reporting an increasing number of incidents in which individuals perceived as Muslims, especially women wearing headscarves, have been verbally or physically attacked on the street or other public locations.

A leading bishop in the Republic of the Congo has warned that an exponential rise in Christian Pentecostalism in the country is posing a stiff challenge to the Catholic Church, drawing people away amid what he described as “guerilla warfare” in the spiritual realm.
“They disrupt the faith of Catholics by offering quick and easy solutions to their problems,” said Archbishop Bienvenu Manamika Bafouakouahou of Brazzaville, in a wide-ranging interview with the Fides news agency.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Catholics constituted 33.3 % of the population of Congo-Brazzaville in 2019, closely followed by the Awakening/Revival churches with 22.3 percent and other Protestants making up 19.9 % .
Manamika said the promise of quick fixes from the revival churches seems to be hemorrhaging the Catholic Church.
“There are so-called “revival churches” or Pentecostal communities that wage a kind of “guerrilla warfare” on spiritual terrain, in the sense that they bitterly fight the Catholic Church,” he said.
He said the Pentecostals have been effective in exploiting the poverty of the people to promise miraculous solutions to their “pressing problems,” and often, people find comfort in such promises.

Pope Francis has expressed deep reservations about the direction of the Catholic Church in Germany, warning that concrete steps currently being taken “threaten” to undermine unity with the universal Church.
In a striking personal intervention, the pope wrote a letter to four German Catholic laywomen that was published in the German newspaper Welt on Nov. 21.
“I, too, share concerns about the numerous concrete steps that large parts of this local church are now taking that threaten to move further and further away from the common path of the universal Church,” the pope wrote in his letter, which was written in German and signed “Francis.”
Chief among the pope’s concerns is a push to establish a permanent “Synodal Council,” a mixed body of laity and bishops that would govern the Catholic Church in Germany. The pope underscored that this kind of “advisory and decision-making body … cannot be reconciled with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church,” and referenced a previous prohibition the Vatican had issued on the topic.
Leadership of the controversial German Synodal Way recently met in Essen on November 10. They aim to establish a Synodal Council in Germany no later than 2026.