The angel of Berlin
The street girls called her the angel of Berlin. But now they’ll miss Patricia Green walking the shady streets where the girls ply their trade, with her smile and a basket of give-aways. Last week, she lost her battle against…
A day to celebrate
Wherever the Irish are in this world, they’ll be painting the town green tomorrow, St Patrick’s Day–if they haven’t already started. Even in the Netherlands, green will dominate the Grote Markt in the centre of The Hague, where there’ll be…
Not Facts and Figures
Facts and figures were not the essence of education; norms and values were. That was the core belief of the inspiring fourteenth-century educational pioneer, Johan Cele, whom my wife and I revisited on an evening walk through a 600-year old…
The Virgin and the Divorcee
Europe, the nursery of world Christianity, has itself become a most challenging and strategic mission field. Late last century, Lesslie Newbigin signalled this development when he compared the difference between the pre-Christian pagan and the post-Christian pagan to that between…
A wistful emptiness
A documentary exploring the ‘ambient emptiness of post-modern society’, rated in the top ten films of the Montreal Film Festival, will be premiered next week in Brussels and Paris. Three young film-makers from Quebec set out to incite a society-wide…
