Edmund Rice International

So disturbed by ruin of the region, Alberta’s Catholic bishop has written a lengthy letter arguing that the tar sands development “cannot be morally justified.” David Ebner, January 27, 2009, The Globe and Mail — The oil sands, hated by environmentalists and buffeted by plunging oil prices, now face the opposition of a representative of [...]

  One of the most frightening things I have heard this year, the Year of the Forests, was a statement by Brian Swimme, at the District Assembly of our Brothers in Zambia. The African Province Renewal Team, who facilitated the Assembly, showed a video clip of Brian saying that, “Every wild cheetah is now in [...]

Johnstone Shisanya, the ERN co-ordinator in East Africa, has reported on the support of the Edmund Rice Justice and Advocacy group for initiatives around the issues of education, children’s rights and the environment – the three issues of particular focus for Edmund Rice international. In the following article Andrew S. Lumati, the founder of Malava [...]

This month we are urging members of the Edmund Rice Network to support Earth Hour.

Sometimes an email will arrive on my screen like a breath of fresh air. Daniel Devincenzi, from the City of Beautiful Breezes (Buenos Aires), sent me one with the refreshing title you see above. Isn’t that an idea to move the Edmund Rice Network to work? Colegio Cardenal Newman (yes, he who is moving towards [...]

On a flying visit to Auckland, in late May 2009, I had six energising encounters – Hayden Kingdon (religious studies, St Peter’s), Damaris Kingdon (Edmund Rice Network), Sam Drumm (social justice), all at St Peter’s, and the two dynamic communities in Queen Mary Road, the Brothers and the young lay community. The St Peter’s visit [...]

In 2006, when I first visited the site of the present novitiate in Bhopal, it was an empty soggy field, with one huge mango tree and a line of magnificent mohu’a trees across it, like shaggy green elephants. Whatever plans I heard, preserving those trees were part of them. It was as if they were [...]

Dum Dum Road is one of the most choked arteries in Kolkata’s network, struggling with the traffic running between Dum Dum Station (north end of the Metro) and the airport, plus the usual vendors and commercial centres that line its narrow strip of bitumen. Yet immediately to the west of Dum Dum Road, behind a [...]

Chandigarh, capital of two states (Haryana and the Punjab), is a planned city – designed by Le Corbusier, no less, in the 1950s. St John’s College, Chandigarh, shares this inheritance – spacious grounds, tall trees, thoughtful buildings. Fifty years on, we can ask – how far can we plan? The footpaths are so wide the [...]

St Mary’s High School, Mt Abu, in Rajasthan, is one of the most beautiful sites for a school in the world, between a deep lake and forested hills (also a Wildlife Sanctuary). Yet, daily, the forest is being pillaged by local villagers, who are chopping it down and selling the firewood in the town below. [...]