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Prayer Vigil with the young people
Posted in Soul Brother Presents
Tagged Brazil, Copacabana Beach, faith, God, Pope Francis, prayer, Rio de Janiero, vigil
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Pope Francis Defends Amazon And Environment In Brazil
By Bradley Brooks
Pope Francis took on the defense of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.
The pontiff met with a few thousand of Brazil’s political, business and cultural elite in Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Theater, where he also shook hands with Indians who said they were from a tribe that has been battling ranchers and farmers trying to invade their land in northeastern Bahia state.
In a separate speech to bishops, the pope called for “respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be indiscriminately exploited but rather made into a garden.”
He also urged attention to a 2007 document by Latin American and Caribbean bishops that he was in charge of drafting, which underscored dangers facing the Amazon environment and the native people living there. The document also called for new evangelization efforts to halt a steep decline in Catholics leaving for other faiths or secularism.
“The traditional communities have been practically excluded from decisions on the wealth of biodiversity and nature. Nature has been, and continues to be, assaulted,” the document reads.
Several of the indigenous people in the audience hailed from the Amazon and said they hoped the pope would help them protect land designated by the government as indigenous reserves but that farmers and ranchers illegally invade for timber and to graze cattle. In fact, grazing has been the top recent cause of deforestation in Brazil.
“We got credentials for his speech and attended so we could tell the pope what’s happening to our people,” said Levi Xerente, a 22-year-old member of the Xerente tribe in Tocantins state in the Amazon, after he attended the pope’s speech. “We hope that he will help intervene with the government and stop all the big public works projects that are happening in the region.”
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Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged Amazon, Brazil, environment, Pope, Pope Francis, Rio de Janeiro
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Christ is the true answer
Posted in Soul Brother Presents
Tagged Brazil, Catholic, Copacabana Beach, faith, God, Pope Francis, Rio de Janiero, Stations of the Cross, Via Crucis, World Youth Day
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‘Fruitvale Station’ Is More Than a Movie, It’s a Landmark
By Julianne Hing
Oscar Grant III(1986-2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When audiences see actor Michael B. Jordan get pulled off the BART train in “Fruitvale Station,” they’ll see the dramatized last moments of Oscar Grant’s life, filmed at the actual station where BART police officer Johannes Mehserle killed him on New Year’s Eve 2009. The feature film premieres nationally on July 12 to plenty of early buzz and rave reviews for director Ryan Coogler’s debut effort, and for performances from actors like Jordan and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer, who plays Grant’s mother. But for many in the Bay Area who lived through Grant’s death and the national outrage that followed, the real-life sets will be just as arresting.
Fruitvale Station became a landmark in the community almost immediately after Mehserle gunned Grant down there. Situated in the middle of a bustling Latino immigrant neighborhood, Fruitvale is a popular starting point for protests and marches for a range of issues. But it will forever be tied to Grant’s death. “Anyone in our community can point to other locations where somebody was killed or brutalized by the police,” says Dereca Blackmon, an organizer and co-founder of the Coalition Against Police Executions, which was formed after Grant’s death. “What Fruitvale actually memorializes is, ‘Here is where a cop was actually caught and held accountable.’ “
The film opens with the cell phone footage that lit up the Internet in the days after Grant was killed. Fruitvale’s cement walls and faded beams are there in the grainy cell phone vidoes. So are the glass windows looking out onto the street below, turned into mirrors in the night; the staggered brown tile floors; the fluorescent lighting and cream interior walls of the BART train. Today many people wait for their trains exactly in the spot where Grant was killed. And that same cement wall and those same dark windows are there in the movie, when Grant and his friends and Mehserle are replaced by actors.
Read More ‘Fruitvale Station’ Is More Than a Movie, It’s a Landmark – COLORLINES.
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The Trayvon Martin Case and the Law, But Whose Law?
By Rosemarie Pace
These commandments of love can seem so pleasant, so up-lifting, so acceptable, but one thing they are not is easy. Jesus showed us what it takes to live them every time he reached out to the outcasts in his culture: the sick and disabled, the laborer and the tax collector, the prostitute and the thief, the widow and the child. He also showed what it takes each time he encountered the officials of his time and place, restoring life to the child of an officer of the army that occupied his homeland and healing the severed ear of a soldier who came to arrest him. He kept living the laws of love no matter how much he was ridiculed or threatened. He kept living the laws of love all the way to the cross where he forgave his torturers and executioners who found such laws a threat to their own.
Today, God’s laws continue to conflict with human laws. After all, if we gave precedent to God’s laws over human laws, how could we invest our God-given talents and resources in the creation and development of nuclear weapons? How could we justify torture? How could we allow people to go without adequate food, clean water, affordable housing, living wages, high-quality education, universal health care, and a sustainable environment? How could we tolerate racism, sexism, ageism, classism, or any other type of discriminatory ism? How could we permit people to be imprisoned for nonviolent protests against the deaths of innocent civilians in war and allow their killers to go free?
If God’s law superseded human law, could someone aggressively pursue an unarmed teenager and kill him, claiming self-defense, and be acquitted? Could “stand your ground” apply to the perpetrator, but not the accosted? Could “stand your ground” be law at all?
Many like to describe our country as a country of laws and a Christian country, but is it possible to be both when civil law so badly contradicts the laws that Christ taught us? Jesus was renowned for putting God first. If he were in George Zimmerman’s shoes, Trayvon Martin would most likely be alive today. Hard as it is, when we face any dilemma between God’s laws and human law, let us make sure that God’s laws of LOVE win out.
via The Trayvon Martin Case and the Law, But Whose Law? | Rosemarie Pace.