SPECIAL REPORTS
(ANS - Brasilia) - The "Salesian Redeem Brasil de Ação Social" (RSB-Social) includes 109 Salesian works scattered throughout the country. In common, all of them have the commitment to transform the lives of socially vulnerable children, adolescents and young people and to contribute to the development of the communities that host them. But each center has its own story, its specific features of service to the most needy and its influence in the region in which it operates.
(ANS - Lima) - The Basilica of Mary Help of Christians, located in the Breña district, is one of the great jewels of the art of Lima. It marked a before and after in the Peruvian capital's religious architecture. Its facade features a large central tower - almost 60 meters high, the tallest structure in Lima until 1956 – which broke with the previous tradition of the era of the viceroys, with a retable facade and two large towers on the sides; its design decidedly influenced other temples in the city.
(ANS - Rome) - Who'd have thought? Don Bosco, a proto-ecologist? Don Bosco, pioneer of home waste collection 140 years ago? Seems so, according to at least one of the letters recovered in recent years and which will be included in the IX volume of the correspondence being prepared: a letter of 1885, which in the Turin of the time anticipates and, obviously in its own way, "solved" one of the great problems that today's society has to deal with, namely waste, over-consumption and throwaway goods.
(ANS - Puerto Ayachuco) - In a country agonizing from an economic and social point of view, one of the few activities that continues to grow is mining. In particular, in the territory of the so-called "Arco Minero dell'Orinoco", along the river of the same name, there is a flourishing of mining activities: but they are in the hands of criminal groups. The result is a place of violence, of deforestation, of uncontrolled exploitation. Salesian Msgr. José Ángel Divasson Cilveti, bishop emeritus of Puerto Ayacucho and President of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), narrates the Church's inexhaustible efforts to protect the local population and the environment.