I am off to Rome for meetings with the Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers CLTs. This is a very important meeting. A host of actions are coming together. At this meeting the ERI project will be formally established and given life. It will move from the drawing board to the arena of action.

A group of Brothers, both Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers, are then moving on to meetings with Franciscans International in Geneva. It is hoped that at the conclusion of this series of meetings that the formal draft Memorandum of Agreement will be signed by all the parties. So, by the end of this week, two actions will have joined hands, as it were, the establishment of ERI and the establishment of a new partnership with Franciscans International.

May we all work for God's dream for humanity, for which Francis, Clare and Edmund worked so passionately.

I will post updates to an external blog while I am away.

I regret that the website is currently not working well with Internet Explorer version 7. I don't use a Windows machine personally and don't have access to IE7. I hope to remedy this shortly. However, I have followed the discussion on the web in relation to IE7 and the ways in which bizarre display outcomes occur. The problem is particularly acute for any website that is designed in Rapidweaver which is the case for the ERI website. The particular theme in use is notoriously vulnerable under IE7. The Rapidweaver people have published a notice saying that they are trying to resolve the issue. As soon as a fix becomes available I will implement it. For the moment I would strongly advise people to access the ERI website either in IE6 or Firefox. For the inconvenience currently being caused I am very sorry. Such is the way of progress in the IT world!

Brother Eddie Coupe, Father John Quigley OFM, and Brother John Ledwidge

I have just returned from a three-day visit to Geneva. I was there with John Ledwidge and Eddie Coupe from the European Leadership. For them, it was a fact-finding visit. For me, it was a series of meetings with Franciscans International. ERI hopes to complete a partnership agreement with FI in January, if all goes well and if the finer details can be clarified successfully. Sometimes, as the politicians keep on reminding us, the devil is in the detail!

We met with the Marist Brothers and had the opportunity of a meeting with Dominic Pujia who was up from Rome. We entertained the Geneva Marist Community to dinner at Antonio's, a cheap and friendly Italian restaurant on the rue Lausanne. It was a very convivial occasion, cementing close relationships with the Marist Brothers and expressing the hope of even closer collaboration in the years ahead. Like ERI, the Marist Brothers are committed to strong advocacy action on behalf of children and young people around the world.

I sat beside Brother Jean-Claude, a councillor from the Hermitage Province. He was great company. Several times he laughed and joked about the fact that he was practically the executioner of the Swiss Province, having closed all six houses. "I have all the keys in my pocket," he said. He seemed pleased that the new Geneva house was in some ways compensating for his blitzkrieg through Switzerland.

John Quigley was in very resilient form, despite having buried his mother at the beginning of the month in Canada. John is a remarkable man, whose influence on the ethos of FI in Geneva is considerable. The gentle, calm and inclusive ethos of the office is in no small measure due to him, and to Jean-Louis Brusset, the equally calm and generous administrator and guest-master. FI is a happy ship. We were fortunate to participate in their office party and catch the spirit at first-hand. Everyone is excited about the possibility of ERI becoming part of the FI Geneva operation. Let's pray that the New Year will mark a major step forward in that direction.

Just this morning the Good Business newsletter from the Australian Edmund Rice Business Ethics Initiative popped into my mailbox. This initiative began in 1991 and has prospered ever since. It is a singular and quite effective linking of the core Edmund Rice values of compassion, justice and solidarity with the promotion of corporate social responsibility.

When you think about it, of course, the initiative makes total sense. It is a retrieval of the historical legacy of Edmund Rice himself. He was the Dermod Desmod, the Mohammed Yunus and the Bill Gates of his age, albeit on a much smaller scale. Yet, his significance in the Irish context of his day was considerable.

For this reason, while we might at first be puzzled by an Edmund Rice community involvement with the world of mammon, we can see that it has clear historical antecedents. The promotion of corporate social responsibility is one of the key tasks in the promotion of social justice.

John Sweeney's article in the current issue of the Good Business Newsletter will provide a taster to the overall thrust of the initiatiive.

What is this? A rave? A drug-fuelled nightclub orgy somewhere in Soho? No, this is the Cafe Vocation in Spain. Following on from the success of the CafeVocation.Com initiative at the World Youth Day in Cologne this year, the Spaniards opened a semi-permanent cafe for vocations in Valencia. I don't know what the response rate has been like. According to the Legionaries of Christ who sponsored the initiative, the response has been very encouraging. So, will Australia host a CafeVocation.Com for next years World Youth Day? Maybe!

My thanks to Michael Kavanagh cfc, Synge Street, Dublin, for bringing this to my attention (Yes, he does live with me or rather he has to put up with me!). Thank you, Michael!

One of the places I did not get to visit while I was in Australia during the year was Murgon, Queensland. Christian Brothers provide educational services up there in the northern part of the state to indigenous people. While I was in Australia the whole situation up in the Northern Territories, in Wadeye to be exact, erupted. It was a big media issue. I was lucky enough to have been in Perth at the time where Holy Spirit Province has invested heavily in raising awareness around the indigenous issue. I attended the Province Day on Indigenous issues in Fremantle at the Edmund Rice Centre. I was on a steep learning curve.

Today, I had an email from Martin Sanders, a Christian Brother, working in Murgon. He and I had met last year at the Kolkata Symposium. Working with indigenous people is ultimately about the rights of people to fulness of life, as the late Colm Keating used to say. It is a human rights issue and it is time that due recognition was given to that dimension of the question. Writing here in Ireland, I am only too well aware of how we in this country pretty much reject a rights-based approach to the question of the Irish Travellers. We all have a long road to travel together on these closely related questions of the Irish Travellers and Australia's First Peoples.

Yesterday evening I made my way to the Royal Irish Academy on Dublin's Dawson Street, negotiating my way through the first of the Christmas shopping madness. I attended the first inaugural lecture in Professor Michael Kelly series.

Michael Kelly is a Jesuit from Zambia and has been for many years the Professor of Education at the University of Zambia. He has a very distinguished record in the service of education in Zambia. In recent years he has become a passionate advocate for people who are stigmatised because they have been infected with the HIV virus.

Also speaking yesterday evening was the UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS for Africa, Stephen Lewis, a Candadian with an equally distinguished record in the service of humanity.
Both speakers were passionate and both held the audience rapt for over two hours.

Fr. Michael Kelly spoke about the layers of prejudice that feeds the community rejection of people with AIDS. He described all forms of stigmatisation and discrimination as immoral. They involve a profound rejection of our common humanity. He recalled poignantly Nkosi Johnson's courageous battle with AIDS. Nkosi Johnson was a young South African boy who died at the age of 12, having survived twelve years longer than was expected. He had spoken powerfully at the AIDS Conference in Durban some years ago. Michael recalled Nkosi's words on that occasion: "Care for us and accept us. We are normal. We are all the same."

I was delighted that Professor Kelly referred to the work of the Brothers in Africa and, in particular, to the recent conferences sponsored by the Christian Brothers in East Africa. It is a clear indication of the integrity and authenticity of the Edmund Rice charism that Brothers and lay colleagues in Africa have committed themselves to undertake advocacy and social justice actions to combat prejudice and stigmatisation.

Today, December 1st, is World AIDS day. A special lecture is taking place this evening in the Royal Irish Academy, Kildare Street, Dublin, on the issue from an African perspective. The disease is a reality for many suffering people today. But it is in Africa that its impact is felt most keenly. HIV/AIDS is a reality for 9 per cent of Africa's populations. According to a recent Hastings Center Report, in eleven African countries in 2010 will, on average, have a life expectancy of about thirty years. As the Report points out, this health outcome has not been seen in Africa since the nineteenth century.

And yet, it need not be like this. We feel powerless about the issue. We know that AIDS in Africa and its escalating tragic consequences is linked to pre-natal transmission of the virus. The Hastings Center Report concurs with those who argue that AIDS in Africa is largely preventable. There are models of success found in Uganda and Senegal, where HIV incidence among pregnant women and infants has significantly declined. "Research in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia has shown that less expensive short-course antiretroviral regimens diminish perinatal transmission by one-third to one-half. A trial in Uganda of a single oral dose of nevirapine given to the mother and newborn had similar benefits."

Despite this research evidence,Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, believes that HIV/AIDS in Africa involves institutionalized racism. It is a pandemic visited upon Africa by the West. He has resisted guaranteeing all pregnant women antiretroviral treatment; he made nevirapine available only at a number of limited pilot sites.

So what to do? A human rights organisation, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) took the South African Government to court to vindicate a human right to health for pregnant women and infants. The Court ruled that protecting the child against the transmission of HIV is essential; to prevent this or to obstruct this is to contravene the right to health and life of the child. The Constitutional Court of South Africa has ruled that mothers have a right to pre-natal clinical intervention, including access to the drug, nevirapine, a low-cost medicine. This has been a landmark decision, not only for Africa, but for the whole world.

Reference: Lawrence O. Gostin,
Aids in Africa among Women and Infants: A Human Rights Framework, Hastings Center, 2006.

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Lying awake in the early hours I chanced on a BBC World Service broadcast about the phenomenal investment India is making in science education. In contrast to the West, where the number of young people taking up science is dwindling dramatically year on year, India is now graduating 2 million science graduates per year. And that figure is rising. India intends to be the science powerhouse of the twenty-first century. It is well on its way to achieving that goal. Some students from a secondary school in New Delhi (could it have been St. Columba's?) were interviewed. They were forthright in their conviction that science education was their pathway to success. Interestingly, not all were motivated by the job security prospect. One young man, clearly passionate about science, said that he intended to be an Indian Nobel prize winner.

In stark contrast, but curiously in rather strange agreement, was the follow-up interview with a washerwoman on the streets of New Delhi. She was equally clear that investment in education was the way forward for her family. For those who are used to free education, the lengths to which this woman would go to educate her children were self-sacrificial to an extraordinary degrees. "I go without food", she said, "to pay for my son's education in a private school". Yesterday, I spoke of the martyrdom of the teacher in Afghanistan for the cause of girls' education. Here, indeed, is a life-long martyrdom of a different kind. And the cause is the same, education.

This morning I took time out at my favourite local coffee shop, the West Coast Coffee on Dublin's Camden Street, just a few meters down from the pub where Bill Clinton drank a pint during the summer of hope following the Good Friday Agreement. Almost ten years on we are still fitfully making progress towards the goal of establishing power-sharing structures in Northern Ireland supported by the community.

As I often do on these occasions, I purchased the London Independent, a newspaper that, in my view, is one of the most articulate and courageous on social justice issues, despite belonging to the O'Reilly stable. Today's issue had two stories that caught my eye, one an inspirational account of movement towards a truth and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland, the other, a chillng account of the martyrdom of a teacher in Afghanistan who dared to teach girls. One wonders where we are headed as human beings when we appear to be capable of the most heinous actions in the name of religious belief. What kind of world is being born and what kind of beast makes its way to Bethlehem this Christmas?

The story of the martyred teacher is not new. A few months ago a woman who organised education opportunities for women in one of the Afghanistan provinces was also martyred. In the West, we take the right to education for granted. Since the 1950s we have experienced ever-widening access to education. Women, in particular, have benefitted significantly from new education opportunities. Often excluded, girls now have equal access to schooling. Indeed, girls often out-perform boys in academic achievement.

And, yet, as we know, there are still approximately 100 million children and young people to whom access to education does not exist. In many instances, this lack of access is due to the absence of infrastructure, teachers and a functioning education system. Often, too, it is caused by war and social upheaval. But the most heinous and downright immoral exclusion of people from education consists in the denial of the right to education itself. This appears to be the case in contemporary Afghanistan, and, presumably, elsewhere also. This denial borders on being a crime against humanity.

Read the story in the London Independent

Finally, I have been able to complete an update of the website. It is not as thorough or as comprehensive as I would like but I am happy that is moving in the right direction. What is needed are more stories and direct reports from the field. I am convinced that the personal stories have a unique power all their own. Tomorrow, in Derry, the BBC documentary on Richard Moore, the man who was blinded by a rubber bullet on Bloody Sunday and is now the CEO of Children in Crossfire (www.childrenincrossfire.org), is being launched at a private function in the city. It will be attended by Mark Durkan of the SDLP and also by Bishop Edward Daly of white handkerchief fame. I had hoped to attend but the journey is just too difficult at this time of the year. Those of you who have access to BBC 1 television will be able to view the documentary on December 4th on BBC One Northern Ireland.

Richard Moore is an extraordinary man. I met him a few weeks ago in the company of Don Mullan, the author of the ground-breaking book on Bloody Sunday. Don is a graduate of Iona College in the USA. He is keenly interested in the Christian Brothers and in the work of Edmund Rice people. Richard came across as a very powerful presence. One of the most striking elements in his story is his forgiveness of the soldier who blinded him on that day. They have since met on a number of occasions. The meeting between the British officer in question and Richard is one of the more poignant moments in the film.

Richard now works with Children in Crossfire. This organisation is celebrating its 10th Anniversary in 2007. It now has an outreach far beyond Northern Ireland. There are tentative steps being taken for a link between Edmund Rice International and Children in Crossfire. We are all working for the most vulnerable in our society.