The World and Nation in Brief
World
Victims of human trafficking
MIAMI (CNS) — At a Miami conference on human trafficking, victims told tales of forced labor and torture, of beatings and threats, of people who preyed on their dreams and trampled their psyches. One spoke from behind a screen, still fearful that her former master would find her. Another revealed her face but not her current hiding place; her slave master — a woman — had threatened her children back in Mexico. A third individual, reed thin and elegant in a pinstriped suit, stood tall — 6 feet 5 inches tall to be exact. Fearful no more, he challenged the world to free his people. "I know how a slave looks, how you feel, because I was a slave for 10 years. My people are still there," said Francis Bok, 25. "What is good, your freedom, if you don’t use it to help other people live in freedom?"
Death penalty rally
ROME (CNS) — A Pennsylvania man freed from death row and a mother from Uzbekistan whose son was executed in 2000 sat with their arms around each other, talking and quietly crying. Later, as the mother, Tamara Chikunova, told her story at a Nov. 30 conference in Rome, Nick Yarris — the former death-row inmate — pulled a baseball cap low over his head so the cameras would not capture his tears. The Nov. 30 conference was part of Rome’s celebration of "Cities for Life: Cities Against the Death Penalty," an initiative begun by the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Conferences and seminars about the death penalty were planned in more than 300 participating cities around the world.
Film festival fosters debate
ROME (CNS) — Representatives from the Vatican, the film world and academia met Dec. 1-2 to debate cinematic visions of people, their creations and their spirituality. The Vatican’s eighth International Festival of Spiritual Cinema was to explore people’s relationship with the technology they have created. The theme was "Man-Machine Hybridization, Identity and Conscience in Post-Modern Cinema." Fifteen films — from "I, Robot" to "Men in Black" to "2001: A Space Odyssey" — will be shown at a Rome movie theater Dec. 14-19.
Nation
Project helps thirsty soldiers
DUBUQUE, Iowa (CNS) — When Sandra Arensdorf’s son David, a Marine reservist stationed in Iraq, complained about the 140-degree heat and drinking water that tasted like bleach, the concerned mother decided to take action. "One of his biggest complaints was about how bad the water was and how he missed the ‘good Dubuque water,’" she said, recalling that he asked he to "please send lots of Gatorade to kill the taste!" The Arensdorfs, members of St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Dubuque, decided to enlist the help of the students and faculty of St. Joseph School, where David’s brother Ryan is a sixth-grader. The project, "With Love, From Home," began with participants collecting powdered Gatorade to send to the troops in Fallujah, Iraq, but soon word spread throughout the parish. Shannon Zimmerman, a young mother whose husband is also stationed in Iraq and who had been collecting food donations to send to her husband and his comrades, joined forces with Arensdorf.
CRS left Iraq last summer
BALTIMORE (CNS) — Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. Catholic overseas relief and development agency, quietly pulled its foreign personnel out of Iraq last June because the situation had become too dangerous for them. Sean Callahan, CRS vice president of overseas operations, said in November that the agency did not announce its decision at the time because it pulled its people out one at a time to avoid bringing dangerous attention to them or to other foreign humanitarian workers in the country. Callahan said it was a sad and difficult decision to remove CRS personnel from the country, "but the threat was too great. It wasn’t worth the risk."
Pastor reports for duty
CHICAGO (CNS) — Two months after completing his Army chaplaincy training, Father John H. Barkemeyer headed to Baghdad, Iraq. Father Barkemeyer, pastor of Chicago’s St. Cajetan Parish for six years, said his rapid deployment demonstrated the urgent need for Catholic priests to serve men and women in the U.S. military. "They say they need at least 300 Catholic priests, and they’ve got about 100," he told The Catholic New World, Chicago’s archdiocesan newspaper. The 40-year-old priest received his orders Nov. 3 to report for duty 10 days later.