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Author: Stephen Minas

  • ENVIRONMENT

    Can Pope Francis shift the climate dialogue?

    • Stephen Minas
    • 07 February 2024

    Recently Pope Francis’ approach is to speak in direct – sometimes blunt – terms about the shortcomings of climate action in recent years, suggesting that we need a system of climate justice that is not built on the backs of the poor. 

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Vatican commits to Paris Agreement

    • Stephen Minas
    • 14 July 2022
    1 Comment

    Indicating the Vatican will be stepping up its climate diplomacy, the Holy See is now a formal party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and has declared it intends also to formally join the 2015 Paris Agreement. The Holy See announced that it would be acceding to the Paris Agreement as soon as that treaty’s ‘legal requirements’ allow.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Wanted: A liberal dose of climate action

    • Stephen Minas
    • 09 June 2022
    4 Comments

    The Liberal wipeout in inner-city electorates is without precedent in Australian politics. For the Liberal Party, ‘existential crisis’ is not an overstatement. As the party founded by Robert Menzies finds itself in the hall of mirrors, climate policy should be a major focus of critical self-appraisal.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Stalin’s patriarchate

    • Stephen Minas
    • 23 May 2022
    2 Comments

    ‘We removed him from the mausoleum’, wrote the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. ‘But how do we remove Stalin from Stalin’s heirs?’ The poem was published in 1962 but it’s still a good question. Today one of Stalin’s heirs commands a barbaric war against Ukraine with the enthusiastic cheerleading of another such heir – the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate reestablished by Stalin.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Salvaging the shipwreck

    • Stephen Minas
    • 18 January 2022
    14 Comments

    During his December journey to the eastern Mediterranean nations of Cyprus and Greece, Pope Francis drew attention to the conditions for irregular migration that result in thousands drowning at sea and many more languishing for years in camps. The International Organization for Migration records 23,150 missing migrants in the Mediterranean since 2014.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate crisis, displacement and solidarity

    • Stephen Minas
    • 13 April 2021
    2 Comments

    On 30 March, the Holy See engaged with an important aspect of displacement with the publication of its ‘Pastoral Orientations on Climate Displaced People’. The intersection between climate change and human displacement is a still emerging area of concern. Nevertheless, we know that climate change is already a factor in various forms of human mobility.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Halki Summit highlights care for creation amid pandemic

    • Stephen Minas
    • 18 February 2021
    2 Comments

    The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked difficult questions about the links between the simultaneous health and ecological crises. These questions were examined in late January at the virtual Halki Summit, the latest in a long series of environment-focused events convened by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Getting to know Indonesia

    • Stephen Minas
    • 10 November 2010
    10 Comments

    How many foreign heads of state could be depicted in a cartoon in an Australian newspaper, as Indonesian President Yudhoyono was, in an act of sodomy? Despite widespread negative perceptions, Australia's neighbour is achieving many positive changes, quickly.

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