A judge for 25 years, he is the first top leader from mainland China and not from local business families. As the only candidate, he was chosen yesterday with 394 votes out of 398 by the local election committee. Beijing has long urged Macau to develop sectors other than gambling, a challenge that Hou Fai will have to face.
67-year-old Ho Iat Seng has announced that for health reasons he will not run again. On October 13, the 400 members of the Election Committee will choose a strictly patriotic successor. Meanwhile, the resumption of casinos has started to boost revenue again in the former Portuguese colony, since 1999 a Special Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, like Hong Kong.
The debate at the event promoted at the University of St Joseph on the occasion of the centenary of the Council of Shanghai. Leopold Leeb: In many Chinese there is interest in the newness of the Gospel and this is the precondition for any inculturation. The decisive role of the "sensum fidelium" of Chinese Catholic families in keeping the faith alive in the years of persecution.
A hundred scholars from “greater China" met at the University of Saint Joseph to share thoughts from an ecclesial perspective. Archbishop Savio Hon praised the encounter with the local culture, which owes a lot to the work of Card Celso Costantini a century ago. Prof Wang Meixiu expressed concerns over today's restrictions on the access of children and minors to places of worship. She wonders whether the “number of Catholics is decreasing”.
About one hundred young people from Macau will participate in the world meeting with Pope Francis. The delegations of the diocesan youth pastoral ministries and of the Portuguese-speaking parishes at the sanctuary of the apparitions, deeply linked due to the history of the former Lusitanian colony that returned to China in 1999.
Today's headlines: OSCE says Erdogan had 'unfair advantage' in presidential run-off; UN special rapporteur terms Rohingya in Bangladesh are 'the new Palestinians'; Beijing deploys hundreds of police to quell the protest of the Hui Muslims in Yunnan; Nepalese experts say climate change is behind the continuing deaths in the Himalayas; Birth rate plummets in Russia down to 31% with second child.
