Vatican City, Dec 6, 2019 / 07:58 am (CNA).- Pope Francis spoke Friday about how the Gospel message must be based in concrete reality, through which Christ himself communicates to the world.

“Listening is letting ourselves be struck by reality,” the pope said at the Vatican Dec. 6, in an address to staff of the Jesuit Italian-language magazine Aggiornamenti Sociali.

Washington D.C., Dec 6, 2019 / 07:30 am (CNA).- The House of Representatives this week passed legislation recognizing the mass detention of Uyghurs and other abuses committed by the Chinese government in the province of Xinjiang.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who sponsored the House version of the legislation, said on the House floor on Tuesday that “millions of stories” are “waiting to be told about the crimes against humanity being committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslims.”

Belfast, Northern Ireland, Dec 6, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Reports emerged this week of a third act of sectarian vandalism at a social housing development in Northern Ireland, into which a Catholic mother and her daughter were in the process of moving from a different part of the city.

According to the Irish News, vandals smashed windows and hung a UK flag— a symbol associated with the Protestant-majority Democratic Unionist Party— from a drainpipe at the property in north Belfast.