On Human Rights Day, Pope Francis makes an appeal to “place human rights at the heart of all policies, including development cooperation policies, even when this means going against the tide.”

Equal human dignity in every person

These words came in a message to the International Conference: entitled “Human Rights in the Contemporary World: Achievements, Omissions, Negations” promoted by the Dicastery for Integral Human Development and the Pontifical Gregorian University…

This year’s Sand Nativity scene and the Christmas tree of Rome’s St. Peter’s Square was inaugurated Friday evening during an impressive ceremony that included Christmas carols, folk dances and band music.  

Hundreds of people, including Church dignitaries applauded as curtains were pulled down revealing the 16-meter wide depiction of the birth of Jesus made entirely of sand and dubbed the “Sand Nativity.”

The bas-relief sand sculpture of the Nativity scene is a gift of the Italian seaside resort town of Jesolo, north of Venice, and the Patriarchate of Venice.   Over 700 tons of sand from the beach of Jesolo was compacted to create the 16-meter wide and 5-meter tall Nativity sculpture covering 25 square meters…

70 years ago, on the 10th of December 1948 in Paris the member States of the United Nations signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights existed before this date and only several decades later did the Human Rights movement introduce them into the larger political debate. However, in 1948 Human Rights were declared universal and, thus, became a gift to all humankind…