Abbé Pierre

France is mourning the passing of one of it’s most well loved, if not sometimes controversial, figures. L’Abbé Pierre est mort… Abbé Pierre, a Catholic priest who devoted much of his life to the care of the homeless poor, died on Monday, Jan. 22. He was 94. France is probably neck and neck with Italy in the saints department. Despite France’s secularized society it has continued to produce saintly icon to this day. The much-loved Brother Roger of Taize, also in his 90s, died last year in the hands of a knife-wielding deranged devotee. These modern-day...

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An inconvenient truth

All the Asean heads of state and their ministers who came for the recent Asean summit in Cebu were all gathered in one dark room for 100 minutes, listening to former US Vice President Al Gore in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Each one had a bucket of popcorn. And when it was over they all stood up, their faces flushed because they all felt a sudden energy surge. They all went out the door, walking briskly, ready to take on the world with great resolve. Wishful thinking. That was a what-if scenario that was running like a sidebar frame...

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Oprah’s $40-million school for girls

I made a mistake last week. Instead of writing $40 million, I wrote $40,000. That’s minus three zeroes or a staggering difference of $39,960,000. I wanted to show how big $40 million was so I wrote the numbers—zeroes and all—(instead of the word million) but was short of three zeroes. So how does $40,000,000 look now? That was how much US TV giant Oprah Winfrey spent to build a school for poor girls in South Africa. The Opra Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened last Jan. 2 with the first 75 students whom Opra herself had handpicked. I...

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‘Babaylan’ crossings

You have tampered with the women/ You have struck a rock/ You have dislodged a boulder/ You will be crushed. – from an Afrikaan freedom song That is a line from an Afrikaan freedom song sung at the historic women’s freedom march in 1956 in South Africa. The minister of education recalled those lines during the 2002 ground breaking of the Opra Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Soweto. The academy opened as 2007 was being ushered in and was ready to take in its first batch of girls. That school was Oprah’s promise to the revered former South...

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