Monday 22 December 2008

China to celebrate Matteo Ricci

Jesuit forged the first real ties between the two countries

(ANSA) - Rome, December 19 - Italy and China are joining forces to prepare a major show celebrating the man who forged the first real ties between their countries over four centuries ago. The exhibition will focus on Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a Jesuit priest and academic who spent most of his adult life in China and eventually became a member of the court of Ming Emperor Wanli.


Officials from Italy's Marche region, where Ricci was born, and representatives from the Culture Ministry have travelled to China to meet with their local counterparts and Italian diplomatic staff.

The goal is to stage the exhibition in 2010, the 400th anniversary of Ricci's death, at several locations, starting with Beijing. It will then move onto Nanjing, followed by two stops in Shanghai: one in a former Jesuit orphanage that is being renovated and one in the Expo 2010.

Ricci studied mathematics and astronomy for several years in Rome, where he entered the Jesuit order, before setting out for the Far East in 1578 at the age of 26. He spent four years in Goa on the west coast of India before travelling to China where he settled in Zhao Qing in the southernmost Guangdong Province and began studying Chinese.

It was during this period that the Jesuit priest produced his first global Great Map of Ten Thousand Countries, which revolutionized Chinese understanding of the rest of the world.

In 1589 he moved to Zhao Zhou and began sharing European mathematical ideas with Chinese scholars, winning renown for his extraordinary memory and knowledge of astronomy.

The reputation of Li Madou - as he was known in China - spread, and in 1601 he was finally allowed into the Forbidden City of Beijing, where he worked until his death in 1610. During his life, the Jesuit sought to bridge the gap between Chinese and Italian cultures more by discussion of ethical and philosophical questions than by focusing on religion.

''Matteo Ricci and Marco Polo are now the two best-known Italian figures in China,'' said Italian Consul Massimo Roscigno at the meeting of officials. But while Ricci's work is today familiar to Chinese schoolchildren of all ages, only university-level students learn about Italian explorer Marco Polo, who also travelled to China.

In Italy, Ricci has only recently become a familiar name. Despite his reputation in China, the Catholic Church condemned him for heresy 100 years after his death and he was only rehabilitated by Pope Pius XII in 1939.

His memory has largely been neglected since then but a recent documentary and a successful exhibition in Rome have sparked a revival of popular interest in his extraordinary life. photo: portrait of Matteo Ricci painted in 1610 by Yu Wen-hui.

Wednesday 10 December 2008

FAO WARNS OF WORLD HUNGER INCREASE

Rome- based UN agency says 40 mln more hungry in 2008

(ANSA) - Rome, December 9 - The number of people suffering from hunger has increased by 40 million this year, the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Tuesday.

Some 963 million people are now affected, taking the 1996 World Food Summit goal to reduce hunger by half by 2015 almost out of reach, according to FAO's latest report on the state of food insecurity in the world.

''It will require an enormous and resolute global effort and concrete actions to reduce the number of hungry by 500 million by 2015,'' said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem.

He added that reaching the target would need an investment of 30 billion dollars annually for agriculture and social protection in poor countries.

The FAO report said higher food prices were the primary cause of the increase in people suffering from hunger, despite the fact that these have now dropped since the beginning of the year.

While prices of major cereals fell by 50% from early 2008, they remained 20% higher than in October 2006, according to the report.

''Lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries,'' Ghanem said.

''The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality,'' he added.

Ghanem warned that lower prices and the credit crunch could meanwhile force farmers to plant fewer crops this year, ''unleashing another round of dramatic food prices next year''.

Nearly two thirds of the world's hungry live in Asia (583 million), although sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population (236 million, or one in three people), according to the report.