Eco Catholic

By Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A select group of young international designers will be submitting innovative mock-ups of what an eco-friendly popemobile should look like.

For the first time, the annual Autostyle Design Competition will have a special category for a popemobile, according to L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. The vehicle design must meet standards for low-emissions, as well as the Vatican's safety and security standards, it said.

From a pool of about 200 candidates, a commission will choose 12 student finalists who will then have seven to eight months to create a new popemobile design, said Sara Ferraccioli, marketing and communications officer for Berman, the Italian car-parts manufacturer sponsoring the competition.

Just in from the the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development:

WASHINGTON—“A new national standard to reduce mercury and toxic air pollution from power plants is an important step forward to protect the health of all people, especially unborn babies and young children, from harmful exposure to dangerous air pollutants,” said the U.S. bishops’ domestic policy chairman in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement of a new rule limiting hazardous air pollution.

By Catholic News Service

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines (CNS) -- Church agencies teamed with international aid groups and the Philippine government to assist tens of thousands of people left homeless in northern Mindanao by flash flooding caused by an intense tropical storm that left at least 650 people dead and hundreds more missing.

The country's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported that about 135,000 people in 13 provinces were affected by Tropical Storm Washi, which unleashed floods and landslides as people slept in their homes across northern Mindanao late Dec. 16.

The images of attendees you usually correspond to a United Nations conference are distinguished, veteran delegates, serious in stature and mood.

The recent U.N. climate conference in Durban, South Africa, hosted plenty of people fitting this description, but they were joined by a growing faction of passionate young activists.

Garnering much attention in the final days of the conference was Anjali Appadurai, a Canadian student at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Me., and a member of the youth delegation at the U.N. summit. A representative in Durban to COA student group Earth in Brackets, she was selected to address the climate summit at a plenary Dec. 9.