5, May 2025
Francis’s popemobile converted into clinic for Gazan children 0
The iconic open-sided vehicle, designed to allow the pontiff to greet crowds of well-wishers, has been transferred to Caritas Jerusalem and will head to Gaza if and when Israel opens a humanitarian corridor.
The car, a converted Mitsubishi, was used by the pope during a 2014 visit to Bethlehem and had since been on display, gathering dust and rust. It has now been repaired and refurbished as a mobile clinic.
“With the vehicle, we will be able to reach children who today have no access to healthcare — children who are injured and malnourished,” said Peter Brune, secretary general of Caritas Sweden.
Brune told AFP that Sweden’s Cardinal Anders Arborelius had asked the late pope, who died on April 21 aged 88, that the spare vehicle be put to use providing essential frontline healthcare to Palestinian children.
It will be fitted with medical equipment and a fridge for medicines and be assigned a driver and a team of doctors.

“This vehicle represents the love, care and closeness shown by His Holiness for the most vulnerable, which he expressed throughout the crisis,” said Anton Asfar, secretary general of Caritas Jerusalem.
It was not clear, however, if or when the aid agency’s hoped-for humanitarian corridor would open.
Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid political deadlock over how to build on a two-month ceasefire in its war against Hamas, which was sparked by the militants’ October 2023 attack.
On Monday, Israel’s security cabinet approved an expansion of military operations that would lead to what an official described as the “conquest” of the Palestinian territory.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday that at least 2,436 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign on March 18, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,535.
Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Source: AFP




























5, May 2025
Archbishop Nkea re-elected to lead Cameroon Bishops 0
The bishops of Cameroon, convening last weekend in Yaoundé, have reappointed Archbishop Andrew Nkea to lead the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (CENC). As he begins his new three-year term, the archbishop of the Diocese of Bamenda, located in the Northwest Region, has outlined his priorities, with restoring peace to the troubled Northwest and Southwest (NOSO) regions at the forefront.
This is not Archbishop Nkea’s first foray into this critical issue. The prelate has frequently voiced his hopes for peace to return to the NOSO during his homilies. In March 2024, just before Easter, he delivered a widely noted message analyzing the root causes of the persistent sociopolitical crisis, which began in 2014. “If this crisis persists, it is because people trust diabolical processes more than they trust God,” he stated.
The Archbishop of Bamenda then proposed a path to ending this human tragedy. “We must pray together. Whether we are Christians, Muslims, or followers of traditional religion, we must unite in prayer, for God is one, He hears our prayers and will give us the solution to this problem,” Archbishop Nkea declared.
One year later, it remains to be seen if this stance has evolved, particularly given Archbishop Nkea’s reputation as a “pilgrim of peace“, a cause to which he dedicates a significant portion of his prayer life. Earlier this year, during the 48th annual seminar of Cameroonian bishops, he urged his fellow prelates to always “promote peace, through which nothing is lost, and without which everything can be lost.”
This likely explains why, beyond the NOSO, where separatist groups clash with the military, Archbishop Nkea also intends to focus on restoring peace in the Far North region, which continues to be plagued by attacks from the Boko Haram terrorist sect.
As he embarks on his second term leading the CENC, the Archbishop of Bamenda is not limiting his efforts to conflict zones. His roadmap also includes a commitment to strengthening unity within the episcopal family. “Our vocation as a Church is to continue walking together in bonds of love and unity, so that the world may believe in the One who sent us,” he reminded the press during a recent gathering of bishops.
By expressing his concern for closer bonds among bishops, Archbishop Nkea indirectly suggests that divisions threaten the cohesion of the CENC. The local press corroborates this, with tensions having regularly made headlines, notably in 2017 during the funeral of Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît Bala, the former bishop of the Diocese of Bafia, who was found dead under suspicious circumstances. While the judicial investigation concluded suicide, some members of the Cameroonian episcopate continue to assert that the prelate was assassinated.
Source: Sbbc