Pope Francis has cleared the way for Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran priest who championed the struggles of poor and dispossessed people and was murdered by a rightwing death squad, to be made a saint. The Vatican announced on Wednesday that Francis had approved a miracle attributed to Romero, meaning the former archbishop of San Salvador could be canonised early next year. The move follows longstanding efforts to block Romero’s canonisation from conservatives within the church who opposed his association with liberation theology.

Francis began the process of declaring Romero a saint soon after becoming pope. About 250,000 people attended Romero’s beatification ceremony in San Salvador in May 2015. Romero was shot through the heart by a sniper while celebrating mass in a hospital chapel on 24 March 1980, a day after he called on the military to stop killing innocent civilians in El Salvador’s dirty war. Numerous death threats had been made against him. In his final sermon, he said: “In the name of God and this suffering population, whose cries reach to the heavens more tumultuous each day, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you, in the name of God, cease the repression.” In his diaries, he wrote: “Between the powerful and the wealthy, and the poor and vulnerable, who should a pastor side with? I have no doubts. A pastor should stay with his people.”(theguardian)…[+]

The TV anchor was rattling off Italy’s general election results in the early hours of Monday morning and Zak could not fall asleep. He had been restless and sick with worry for weeks, ever since a neo-fascist had shot six Africans in the city of Macerata and the leaders of rightwing parties had vowed to kick 600,000 migrants out of the country if elected.

Zak, 17, comes from the Gambia and lives in a community for minors in Catenanuova, in the heart of Sicily. He made the perilous sea crossing from Libya in a wooden boat and has been waiting for months for a decision on his refugee status. He bears the scars of torture from eight months of beatings in Libya. His father is Gambian, his mother Senegalese. In Senegal he had been forced to attend Islamic schools. Feeling deprived of his liberty, he had decided to flee.

As the hours went by on Monday, his worst nightmare became a reality: an anti-immigrant coalition of rightwing parties took 37% of the vote. It was not enough to govern, but it gives them a powerful hand in the coalition horse-trading that has already begun. Zak now fears he will never get his papers and that he will soon be deported.(theguardian)…[+]

Montego Bay– The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Monday signed an agreement to strengthen their partnership to help countries in the Region achieve key development goals in agriculture. The Framework Cooperation Agreement makes provisions for CDB to partner with FAO to provide technical assistance for projects financed by the Bank. It will also allow countries with common membership in both organisations to directly engage FAO using loan or grant funds provided by CDB.

For more than three decades, CDB and FAO have partnered on several interventions, including the development of an Agricultural Water Investment Plan for Belize; a study on the Feasibility of Rainwater Harvesting in the Caribbean; an Evaluation of Greenhouse Technology in Crop Production; and studies in support of CDB’s preparation and appraisal of agricultural development projects in Jamaica. During the signing ceremony, Best also announced that CDB and FAO are collaborating on a study, “The State of Agriculture in the Caribbean”, scheduled for completion in May. It will detail key trends in agriculture in the Bank’s borrowing member countries, and highlight related opportunities for investments to support social and economic growth, poverty reduction, and sustainability.(CDB)…[+]