For Roberto Ramirez, serving God in missions has been one step of faith after another.

"A natural-born striker" according to his coach at Krasnodar, ex-USSR star Igor Shalimov, Ivan Ignatyev is top scorer in this season's UEFA Youth League.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

Fin24 took to the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg asking people to share their views on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's Budget Speech.

While there's a chance for SA to be downgraded to non-investment grade in November, rating firms may wait for the outcome of the ANC elective conference, says economist Kim Silberman.

Fin24 presenter Moeshfieka Botha talks to Abdulazeez Davids of Kagiso Asset Management about how ratings downgrades affect ordinary South Africans.

Raenette Taljaard, the Executive Director of Economic Research Southern, talks to Fin24 about the implications of S&P Global's downgrade of SA debt.

With Ramaphosa sworn in as president, the SA public will be watching closely to see if, and when, he reshuffles Jacob Zuma's last Cabinet.

The start of a good financial plan is not to react to tax hike announcements, but to match our income and our expenditure, says Errol Meyer, Head Advisory Propositions at Standard Bank.

Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has raised important issues about state-owned enerprises - the governance of which ratings agencies are watching closely, says George Sebulela, chair of the Black Business Council.

Budget 2018 initiatives to stimulate industrialisation in various sectors of the economy is a welcome issue, says Zweli Mkhize, former ANC treasurer general.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is delivering his mini budget, just days after being appointed to the post. What his speech live.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher who lived four centuries before Christ, proposed the scientific theory of horror vacui. Based on his observations, he concluded that nature fills every empty space with something, even if it is only air. In his works Gargantua and Pantagruel, the Renaissance priest, doctor and scientist Rabelais popularized this idea with the phrase Natura abhorret vacuum (“nature abhors a vacuum”). Where there is a void, either mass or energy rushes in to occupy the empty space. In truth, this theory applies not merely to physics, but to life.

For the last thirty years, the secularization of culture and the banishing of God from the public forum have created a great religious void. More and more Americans have been abandoning the practice of religion. Since 1990, the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has tripled from eight percent to twenty-two percent. 

Today there are about five million fewer mainline Protestants and three million fewer Catholics than there were ten years ago. For every new convert to Catholicism, six others leave the Church. Young people between the ages of 18 and 30 are much less interested in religion than their parents. As Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research for the Pew Research Center, has observed, “the country is becoming less religious as a whole, and it’s happening across the board.”

Nonetheless, the human person is innately religious. More than just being a material creature on the same level as irrational animals, the human person has reason and is always in search of meaning. “Nature abhors a vacuum.” And, so into the void created by abandoning religion as a source of meaning, other forms of discovering meaning have rushed in. 

In an attempt to respond to the spiritual dimension of human life, some people are turning to New Age beliefs. New Age adherents, now nearly one-fourth of the population, have replaced the personal God of revelation with a spiritual energy that animates the cosmos. They are making use of crystals, tarot cards, astrology, psychics, and even yoga as a spiritual exercise to tap into this impersonal energy in order to manage their lives and find self-fulfillment. 

For New Age adherents, there is no absolute truth. All beliefs are of equal value. And, since they deny the existence of sin, they do not accept the need for a Redeemer. At best, New Age adherents trade the transcendental for the immanent, the spiritual for the physical. At worse, they reject God and unwittingly fall into the hands of the Adversary. 

And, then there are others who reject God and consciously choose to turn to one form or another of the occult. It is astounding to realize that there are almost 1.5 million people who are involved in Wicca, a pagan form of witchcraft. Ever since the Garden of Eden and our first parents’ sin of attempting to be like God, people have been looking for ways to have the same knowledge and power as God himself. Today there are more witches than Presbyterians, more people involved in the occult than there are Muslims in the United States. 

The more individuals extol themselves as self-sufficient and exalt reason over faith, they turn from God and enthrone Satan. Attempting to control their lives through the use of the occult, they hand themselves over to Satan who uses them to destroy the peace and harmony God plans for us. Satan is the great deceiver. He makes people believe that they have absolute control of their lives. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “[Satan’s] logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no judgment, then evil is good and good is evil.”

It would be foolish to close our eyes to the unmistakable increase of the devil’s activity in our society. Lack of civility. Hate speech. The tearing down of people’s good name. The blood shed on our streets. The breakdown of family life. The widespread extolling of vices contrary to the gospel. The delight in exposing the sins of others. Abuse in all its forms. Abortion. The persecution of the Church. All these are born of anger, hatred, envy, pride, greed and lust. They cause division and are the fingerprints of the Evil One.

On the day after his election to the papacy, Pope Francis shocked the cardinals who had placed him on the Chair of Peter. He said, “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil. When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.” The Pope courageously acknowledged the reality of Satan that day and many other times thereafter. And the Pope provided the only way to banish the devil from our midst: professing faith in Jesus. Professing our faith means quite simply staying close to Jesus within the Church, attending Mass at least each Sunday and Holy Day, receiving the sacraments and practicing charity. In other words, the only permanent antidote to evil in the world is the presence of God who leaves in us no room for evil.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

A few years ago, Paul Croituru and his young son went out treasure hunting near their native village in Romania. To their surprise, they discovered ancient Greek currency dating back 2,350 years to the time of King Philip II. The 300 silver coins turned out to be counterfeit. The father and son now hold the distinction of having discovered the oldest counterfeit money known thus far.

Counterfeit money has been around as long as money has been around. In fact, some have named the production of counterfeit money “the world's second oldest profession.” During war time, nations often resort to counterfeit money to inflict harm on their enemies. During the Revolutionary War, Great Britain attempted to devalue the continental dollar by flooding the market with shovers (fake dollars). During World War II, the Nazis made prisoners in their camps forge British pounds and American dollars to destabilize their enemies’ economies and destroy them.

Satan constantly attempts to entice individuals into counterfeit religion where the forged currency is believing in God while denying sin. The devil would have everyone forget that sin is a reality. In this way, he can render ineffective in us the work of Christ who came to take away our sins. Failure. Weakness. Mistakes. Psychological pressures. Social customs. All these labels the devil uses to disguise sin. But, sin itself remains a fact.

Science always prides itself on beginning every research project with a fact. True religion, likewise, begins with the fact of sin in the world, original sin and personal sin. “The ancient masters of religion…began with the fact of sin. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders…have begun…to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy). And so can the personal sins of hatred, envy, lust, pride, gluttony and greed likewise be proven.

Even a casual glance at Sacred Scriptures shows that sin taints even God’s greatest heroes and heroines. Adam and Eve lead the procession of sinners. Drunken Noah, untruthful Abraham, adulterous David and Bathsheba, disloyal Peter, and murderous Paul follow. Sin really is not that original. It is the monotonous repetition of the tragedy of Eden: choosing self over God. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8).

In the Sacrament of Penance, the Church offers us the gift of a personal encounter with our merciful Lord who forgives our sins. However, many people, and sometimes even faithful Catholics, say that they do not need to go to a priest for confession to have their sins forgiven. Why confess to a priest who is a sinner himself? God will forgive sins without the ministry of priests. Certainly, God can forgive sins when we turn to him and repent. But, he has chosen to offer us his forgiveness through the ministry of the Church. And, for a reason.

Sin is not just between the individual and God. Every sin that we commit offends God and affects others. Every sin harms Christ’s Body, the Church. The act of confession before a priest recognizes the true nature of sin as an offense against God and others. And so, it is through the Church’s priests that God chooses not simply to forgive our sins but to reconcile us to the Church. (cf. Pope Francis, General Audience, November 20, 2013).

So important is confession that some of the holiest priests of the Church have spent hours in the confessional as missionaries of God’s mercy. St. Philip Neri, a busy parish priest in Rome, spent every morning hearing confessions before continuing his work with youth in the afternoon. So famous was St. Jean Vianney in hearing confessions that a new train station had to be built in his town of Ars so that people from all of France could go there to confess to this holy priest. Most recently, St. Padre Pio heard confessions for not less than 18 hours a day. There were always long lines awaiting him.  

During his public ministry, Jesus forgave sins (cf. Mk 2:5; Lk 7:48; Jn 8:1-11). And, then after the Resurrection, he entrusted this ministry of forgiveness to his priests. On Easter Sunday night, “Jesus said to them ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained’” (Jn 20:21-23). In confession, the priest, weak and sinful himself, acts in the name of Jesus and with his authority.  

In going to confession, we approach the priest, one by one, not as group, not as family. We humbly place before him all our own sins. To receive absolution and be forgiven, it is necessary not simply to confess all mortal sins, but also to have a firm purpose of amendment of sinning no more. As difficult as this might be at times, how great the grace! For, when the priest absolves us, we have, as Jesus promised, the certainty that our sins are forgiven. 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

On January 18, 2019, a video of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann went viral. He was at the Lincoln Memorial standing face to face with a Native American man during the March to Life in Washington, D.C. On the basis of that picture, a frenzy of condemnations from reporters, commentators and politicians were heaped upon this student, accusing him of prejudice and hatred. Misinformation and lies spread like wild fire. Finally, when the facts were uncovered, the high school student was exonerated of any wrong-doing, even though much wrong had been done to him and his family. It was a rush to judgment. 

On January 29, 2019, American actor and singer Jussie Smollett reported that two masked men attacked him at 2 AM near his apartment in Chicago. He claimed that the attack was racist and homophobic. After Smollett’s initial report, friends and fans, celebrities and politicians expressed outrage at this hate crime. Twitter and Instagram fueled the frenzy of self-righteous indignation. However, in just three weeks, it was discovered that the whole event had been orchestrated by Smollett. Yet, before the facts were fully known, there was the rush to judgment and much chatter.

Gifted with reason, we are wired to make judgments. Discerning the good from the bad, the beautiful from the ugly, the right from the wrong, and virtue from vice: this is an essential part of our being human. However, every judgment must be founded on truth, not rumor; on fact, not fiction; on substance, not appearance. And every judgment must always be tempered with compassion. Albeit from opposite directions, the Sandmann and Smollett incidents show how quick we are to believe or disbelieve, to accuse or defend and how easily we pick a side and draw a line in the sand. And, all the while, truth grows ever more fragile.

Today’s rush to judgment gathers speed along the newly constructed digital highway. We get information instantaneously and, because we want solutions just as fast, we are quick to judge. As a result of this incessant communication about other people’s lives, we live on the edge between truth and falsehood. What years ago was whispered between a few people now goes viral and can never be retrieved. As a result, in this environment, deliberately passing on stories that destroy other people’s good names is nothing less than cyber bullying.

There is no area of modern society that is exempt from someone passing on false information, half-truths or blatant, deliberate lies. In a society of fast-paced information sharing, gossip has become so commonplace that people justify it as a way to right wrongs, correct others and unseat those whom they deem unfit for their chosen work. However, unlike the surgeon’s scalpel that removes the cancer, gossip is the arrow that destroys the other. 

As a statement sometimes attributed to Mark Twain says, “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots.” In a similar vein, Jonathan Swift once wrote, “if a lie be believ’d only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that, when men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late…the tale has had its effect” (Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, Number 15, November, 1710).  For this reason, people of good faith should be slow to judge others. And never should they gossip. People who constantly judge or criticize others truly lack compassion.

Sadly, making negative judgments on others on the basis of appearances and then spreading those judgments to others is found among those who consider themselves Church-going people. It is especially found among those who set themselves as crusaders for a just cause and, then by their lack of charity, become unjust themselves. The fondness to judge and criticize others may well be a way of not facing one’s own sins. "It is often easier or more convenient to see and condemn the faults and sins of others than it is to see our own” (Pope Francis, Angelus, March 3, 2019).

In speech after speech, Pope Francis has been courageously warning us of the evil of gossip. “Gossip is a weapon and it threatens the human community every day; it sows envy, jealousy and power struggles… We might welcome someone and speak well of him the first day but little by little that worm eats away at our minds until our gossip banishes him from good opinion. That person in a community who gossips against his or her neighbor is, in a sense, killing him.” (Pope Francis, Homily, Domus Sanctae Marthae, September 2, 2013).  

Few things can match the harmful effects of gossip, whether it be slander or detraction. Defamation inflicts grave harm on the individual and destroys the community. It is against charity and, since God is love, it is against God himself. Charles Spurgeon, one of the most popular Baptist preachers of the 19th century, summed up the evil of talking about other people by saying, “the tale-bearer carries the devil in his tongue, and the tale-hearer carries the devil in his ear.” Gossip makes the devil laugh!

A searing report and federal oversight over Title IX enforcement in Chicago raises the question: Is it an outlier, or just the first to get caught?

After a fire devastates a Bangladesh slum, the OM team distributes food, cooking items, plastic tarps and hope to hurting families.

As families devastated by the recent fire in a Bangladesh slum rebuild their lives, the team helps, and individuals tell their stories.

The fifth daughter of a poor family, one girl thought she would never get an education. But thanks to OM’s new school, she has hope.

The team in Bangladesh comprises mainly national believers in Jesus, one of whom brings vocational training and God’s light into a refugee camp.

OM supplies rural schools in Bangladesh with books, new toilets and other essential facilities that positively impact students.

Two adults were significantly impacted by learning to read and write in recent adult literacy classes run by OM in Bangladesh.

One girl’s dream comes true, as she is now able to go to a village primary school, started by OM.

One woman’s risk of exploitation decreased when she learnt to read and write through OM's adult literacy programme in Bangladesh.

The faith of two young Bangladeshi men in 1976 served as a catalyst to OM’s focused outreach and the training of hundreds of new workers.

OM writer Ellyn shares firsthand accounts from those who fled for their lives to Bangladesh and now reside with thousands in camps in Cox’s Bazar.

Mothers and children in Bangladesh’s refugee camps tell horrifying stories from recent months, many needing a place where they can be reminded of hope.

Americans overwhelmingly believe civics should be taught in school, and almost 70 percent of them think it should be a requirement to graduate, a new survey finds.

Just over a month on from UEFA Futsal EURO 2016, Europe's finest are back in action in the FIFA Futsal World Cup play-offs with Serbia facing Portugal again.

Slovenia's 1-0 first-leg defeat of Spain ended a string of streaks held by the European champions, including 27 straight wins and unbeaten runs of more than a decade.

Portugal, Russia, Italy, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Spain are representing Europe in the FIFA Futsal World Cup: we look at the challengers in Colombia.

Jose, an Argentinian worker serving in Southeast Asia, tells of how he entered overseas service and what he has seen God do through his not-so-typical ministry.

During special Easter outreaches to women in red light areas, outreach workers go in the knowledge that Jesus is with them and His resurrection power gives hope, strength and life.

Rosario, Argentina :: Church members from a vulnerable community learn about human trafficking and experience care and respect.

Despite being aware of the need for discretion when talking about Jesus, Argentinian Cecilia felt no fear while she was in Central Asia.

Buenos Aires, Argentina :: Maintenance crew share Christ's love with local welders helping repair Logos Hope.

Noy shares her journey of experiencing God's love for herself and forgiving the community that persecuted her family.

For Roberto Ramirez, serving God in missions has been one step of faith after another.

These places give new meaning to the term "golden years". And no fewer than four of the five top retirement villages listed in the 2019 Estate Ratings report by New World Wealth are in the Western Cape.

Super-rich visitors to Cape Town over the holiday season have once again been willing to dig deep into their pockets for luxury rental accommodation.

Consumers must be careful simply to assume their fortune lies in investment property, cautions Steven van Rooyen, Principal at Leapfrog Milnerton.

Cape Town's East City Precinct - between the CBD and District Six - are undergoing a revival and the new The Harri residential development is an example of this trend.

Construction work on FWJK's R800 million residential development known as 16 on Bree has topped out with the 36th floor having been cast.

There is a saying in the property world: find the deal and the money will come, says property investment expert and property wealth coach Andrew Walker.

While its "business unusual" in the SA residential property market, it is also the best buyer's market in a decade, says the chair of the Seeff Property Group.