Kuwait: How does a multiethnic Catholic community live in a small stretch of land squeezed between giants like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia? What does a bishop do in such a place? Especially how does Old Europe appear to someone from faraway Kuwait at a time of challenges posed by the mixing of peoples and religions? H.E. Mgr Camillo Ballin, Vicar Apostolic in Kuwait, provides answers to these and other questions in a long interview with Oasis.
Oasis is also continuing its own research on the métissage of civilisations and cultures. Paolo Gomarasca for example, author of Meticciato, mescolanza o confusione? (Métissage, mixing or confusion?) (see the coverage of its launch in Rome last March), has found that Pope John Paul II’s magisterium is a rich storehouse from which Oasis can nurture its own reflections; for this reason he has selected for reprinting some excerpts from the Pope’s own speeches on the topic.
Engelbert Zefaj, head of the country’s largest youth centre in Peć/Peja, describes the impact of increasingly assertive Wahhabi Islamic groups, whose type of Islam is quite foreign to Kosovo.
From India – Fr Jacob Thekeparampil talks about the Syriac language research centre he founded, whose mission goes beyond the study of an ancient past but is meant instead to contribute to the present life of his Christian community.
Kuwait: How does a multiethnic Catholic community live in a small stretch of land squeezed between giants like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia? What does a bishop do in such a place? Especially how does Old Europe appear to someone from faraway Kuwait at a time of challenges posed by the mixing of peoples and religions? H.E. Mgr Camillo Ballin, Vicar Apostolic in Kuwait, provides answers to these and other questions in a 
David Novak, In Defence of Religious Liberty, ISI, Wilmington (Del.) 2009
