By Gianfranco Nitti
 
ROME — Severe flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains has affected an estimated 15.4 million people (including at least 7.5 million children) across Pakistan. The floods have damaged standing crops as well as stored grain and seeds for planting, and destroyed or damaged an estimated 900,000 homes.
A number of programmes and projects funded [...]

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 Lady Carla Powell

 
 
By EDWARD PENTIN
 
 
 VATICAN CITY — The new British Government appears to be having difficulty choosing a Catholic successor to Francis Campbell as its next ambassador to the Holy See, diplomatic sources in the Eternal City say. Speculation over who might be appointed now is raging over a constellation of worthy celebrity figures know [...]

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Kanayo F. Nwanze. Photo: IFAD.

 
 By JAN FILIPOWICZ
 
ROME – Felix Kanayo Nwanze, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has exhorted staff to believe passionately in their mission and has cautioned that agency employees who treat their work as just a job will effectively be “mercenaries.”
Mr Nwanze, a native of OPEC-member Nigeria, was [...]

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ROME– Britain celebrated the second Armed Forces Day last week-end. The event took place in Cardiff and it was a chance for anyone to show support and sustain the British Army.
The Defense Section of the British Embassy in Rome supported the Armed Forces community last Saturday by organizing sports competitions and a barbecue on [...]

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 Papal nuncios frequently are unsung heros in conflicts around the world, writes Edward Pentin
 
VATICAN CITY – The Holy See’s diplomatic corps is the oldest in the world, yet bizzarely is perhaps one of the least known.
Its origins can be traced to the very first centuries of the Roman Catholic Church when popes sent legates (envoys) [...]

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Simulated feeding in WFP “poor children show” undermined agency leadership credibility 

By JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is considering a major re-shuffle of the top management at the U.N. World Food Programme including possible replacement of Executive Director Josette Sheeran after disclosures that up to half the agency’s aid to Somalia was diverted [...]

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EMBASSY ROW.
Italy-based British author Simon Mawer’s acclaimed novel about pre-war Czechoslovakia “The Glass Room” is on the shortlist for the brand-new £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The winner will be announced June 19 at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. The shortlist includes two other works which together with Mawer’s masterly opus, were [...]

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By GIORGIA GIGLIONI

 ROME – Hundreds of millions of euros being invested in Montenegro by the Italian Government evidently are being syphoned off into private bank accounts controlled by the Montenegrin Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, and his family, Italian opposition leaders say.
Italy decided to increase massively its investment in the tiny Balkan nation, a former Italian [...]

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  VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has received at an audience the winners of the Clericus Cup soccer championship which is held each year in the Holy See between 16 teams representing seminaries and holy orders in the Eternal City.
Davide Tisato, the captain of the powerful Redemptoris Mater eleven who won the Vatican football [...]

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By Insider reporters
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican slapped a virtual black-out on information about the ritual beheading of the Roman Catholic Church’s leader in Turkey, Bishop Luigi Padovese, which Holy See diplomats fear could herald a vicious new Jihad against the Middle East’s beleaguered Christians.
The Holy See at first accepted the version of the murder [...]

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