Salesian Pontifical University

Overcoming its self-referential preoccupations, theology today is urged to exit into the public square characterized by multiple types of diversity. One of the crucial public domains in which religions have played a significant role is education. In the contemporary multireligious Indian context, the question that arises is whether we can consider Salesian pedagogy as public religious pedagogy, that is, if educators affiliated to neighbour religions can share the Salesian/religious pedagogy in Salesian educational institutions. It is our contention that the prism of public theology can shed some light on such a possibility. With this intent, we first elucidate the configuration of public theology amidst religious pluralism focusing successively on public practical theology of education, public religious education, and public religious pedagogy. This is then followed by a synthesis of Salesian pedagogy and the research design of a qualitative study on its lived experience among Hindu and Muslim educators, namely, professors in Salesian colleges, teachers in Salesian schools, and social collaborators in Salesian study centres of Tamil Nadu, India. Lastly, based on the emerging findings we highlight the relevance and advancement of Salesian pedagogy as public religious pedagogy.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has increased the prevalence and burden of psychological morbidity in school students. This study attempted to assess the factors associated with psychological morbidity in school students during the peritraumatic phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data from 16,738 school students in India using a cross-sectional online-based survey tool. We carried out a binomial logistic regression to estimate the odds of the relationship that psychological morbidity had with independent variables. Results indicated that 4 in 10 school students had psychological morbidity. Those students in grades 11–12 (OR = 1.3, 95% CI = 1.2–1.4), 17–18 years of age (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.3–1.6), from a lower socio-economic status (family income of ₹20,001–30,000 per month) (OR = 1.0, 95% CI = 0.8–1.0) and a student (OR = 2.5, 95% CI = 1.9–3.4) or a family member of a student (OR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.4–1.8) with COVID-19 infection were associated with higher odds of psychological morbidity. The relationship psychological morbidity had with gender, mental well-being and resilient coping was revelatory. Targeted psychosocial interventions are required for high-risk school students to reduce age, grade and socio-economic disparities in COVID-19-related psychological morbidity. These findings have implications for mental health professionals, counsellors, psychologists, social workers and academicians associated with school students.

This study tests the application of the HEXACO among Catholic priests and the power of this six factor model of personality to predict scores on the Francis Burnout Inventory among priests. Data provided by 264 priests serving in Italy lead to two conclusions. In this population three of the six scales of the HEXACO failed to display adequate levels of internal consistency reliability (emotionality, agreeableness, openness to experience). High scores of extraversion and conscientiousness predicted higher scores of satisfaction in ministry. Low scores of extraversion, conscientiousness, and honesty and humility predicted higher scores of emotional exhaustion in ministry. The role of the honesty and humility factor in predicting negative affect but not positive affect supports the balanced affect model of professional burnout that views positive and negative affect as partly independent systems.

This chapter concerns itself with three commitments. The first of these commitments is to assess the freewill-determinism problem in Igbo philosophy from three points of view: (a) community and individual relationship; (b) nature of forces in the Igbo cosmology; and, (c) the concept of destiny. The second of these commitments is to assess the apparent solution of soft determinism and engage this solution to abstract its pragmatic imports in dealing with the notions of moral responsibility and the problem of evil. I shall then evaluate Igbo notions of the solution to the problem of evil, according to two common views of God in African Metaphysics. Posterior to the foregoing analysis, I shall introduce my own solution to the antinomy of relations—what I describe as Quasi-Liberal Compatibilism. This basically takes Igbo anthroposophy as its foundation and from the constituents of the person as excogitated in Igbo thought, I single out the dimension of the mkpuruobi as crucial to explaining moral responsibility, determinism, and freewill. With these constituents, and the analysis I urge in this chapter, the freewill-determinism debate may be resolved. I shall defend this view against possible objections, and then construct a genuinely Igbo-African perspective to causation, destiny, and evil.

This paper addresses the issue of the relationship between technology and art in human existence from a Deweyan perspective. The central idea is that Dewey’s aesthetics is a useful instrument for critically reflecting on that issue. Starting from the tenets of Dewey’s aesthetics, the discourse focuses on “imaginative recovery” and “inhabiting,” two key notions for interpreting and managing technology from an aesthetic perspective. The article seeks an answer to the question of whether new technology (particularly ai ) is a useful tool or not in art and, ultimately, for the fulfilment of human life.

This article has been constructed from life stories of victims/survivors of power abuse and/or sexual abuse perpetrated by priests of the Catholic Church. It shows that the context in which the abuses occur is composed of a corpus of beliefs, a relational environment based on domination, and sociocultural elements that, together, operate as risk factors or factors that invisibilize, naturalize, or allow abuses. It also makes explicit that such a context, coupled with the abusive interaction of the perpetrator and the relational harms that emerge, is part of a systemic relational labyrinth.

Bananas and plantains are vital for food security and smallholder livelihoods in Africa, but diseases pose a significant threat. Traditional disease surveillance methods, like field visits, lack accuracy, especially for specific diseases like Xanthomonas wilt of banana (BXW). To address this, the present study develops a Deep-Learning system to detect BXW-affected stems in mixed-complex landscapes within the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and multispectral (MS) images from unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs were utilized using pansharpening algorithms for improved data fusion. Using transfer learning, two deep-learning model architectures were used and compared in our study to determine which offers better detection capabilities. A single-stage model, Yolo-V8, and the second, a two-stage model, Faster R-CNN, were both employed. The developed system achieves remarkable precision, recall, and F1 scores ranging between 75 and 99% for detecting healthy and BXW-infected stems. Notably, the RGB and PAN UAV images perform exceptionally well, while MS images suffer due to the lower spatial resolution. Nevertheless, specific vegetation indexes showed promising performance detecting healthy banana stems across larger areas. This research underscores the potential of UAV images and Deep Learning models for crop health assessment, specifically for BXW in complex African systems. This cutting-edge deep-learning approach can revolutionize agricultural practices, bolster African food security, and help farmers with early disease management. The study’s novelty lies in its Deep-Learning algorithm development, approach with recent architectures (Yolo-V8, 2023), and assessment using real-world data, further advancing crop-health assessment through UAV imagery and deep-learning techniques.

In this Special Issue, we focus on the complex mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders (as delineated in the DSM-5), which are a group of neurological disorders that begin in childhood but significantly impact adult life [...]

The Aim of this document is to analyze the management of aluminum cans in Ecuador. The current situation of waste management generated by various industries that use aluminum packaging is presented (cans). It is known that aluminum cans are 100% recyclable, as they retain their characteristics and can be reused more times than glass and plastic. Additionally, aluminum is infinitely recyclable. Therefore, if these waste materials were properly managed, it could generate economic returns for individuals who use or recycle them, as well as for companies that reintegrate this type of waste back into their production chain.

The production of rubber waste has a detrimental impact on the environment, and it poses significant health risks to individuals. Working with rubber waste can lead to major health issues, as fires release harmful gases that accumulate in the body over time, potentially causing cancer. In Ecuador, an estimated 240 000 tires are discarded each year, taking approximately 1000 years to decompose. Consequently, the objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive plan that promotes pollution reduction on a national scale. This will be achieved through descriptive research and the collection of pertinent information, aiming to identify environmentally friendly solutions while raising awareness among producers. The ultimate goal is to encourage proper tire management after their primary use. Retreading represents a viable solution to address environmental pollution, as a tire can be retreaded two to three times. This practice enables tires to re-enter the production cycle, thereby preventing their disposal in landfills and bodies of water.

Flowers are considered one of the industries that generate a significant economic contribution in Ecuador; however, the production and manufacturing processes produce considerable contamination of the effluents that are used, due to the fact that various non-biodegradable organic chemical products are involved. These effluents must be treated before being disposed of in the sewer or in a receiving body to minimize the environmental impact. The toxicity of the effluents does not allow the application of biological treatments in this type of water. Therefore, the application of advanced oxidation processes is recommended. This document proposes to find a treatment train that allows to reduce a high percentage of the chemical oxygen demand of the floriculture effluent. For the experiment, a sample of the effluent from the postharvest process of a floriculture with an average initial DOQ of 60850 mg/L was taken to carry out laboratory-scale tests of a treatment train: coagulation, ozone oxidation, Fenton oxidation, and UV oxidation. Treated water was obtained with an average COD concentration of 413 mg/L, thus ensuring compliance with current environmental regulations in Ecuador.

There is an institutional tendency to narrow down the sexual abuse of patients by physicians, categorizing it broadly and simplistically as misconduct. In reality, the anthropological and ethical consistency of the misconduct is of a general nature and refers to improper relationships on the part of the health professional. Sexual abuse, on the other hand, is more consistent and objectively produces greater psychic and physical consequences on the abused patient. In misconduct, the patient may not even feel involved, while in abuse, the subject feels invaded in his deepest intimacy, violated [1].

The EU institutions promote the development and growth of the social economy, based on the awareness of the role this sector can play as a key factor for social cohesion and the consolidation of social rights, but also to boost the economic growth of the Union. At the same time, the regulatory barriers to a coordinated framework are clear, given (inter alia) the multiplicity of sectoral policies that have a sweeping effect across the social economy. This paper takes a close look at two of these sector-wide areas: taxation and competition. The necessary balancing act between providing financial support to non-market organisations of the social economy and prohibiting market-distorting national subsidies prompts the search for forms of tax harmonisation, with reference both to general tax regimes and to more ad hoc measures relevant in the individual Member States or with cross-border effects.

Introduction Several studies investigated the relationship between personality traits and sexting behaviors using the Five Factors Model and the HEXACO six-factor personality model. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the relation between trait emotional intelligence and sexting. Therefore, the present study examined the associations between the four factors of trait emotional intelligence (i.e., well-being, self-control, emotionality, and sociability) and different forms of sexting (experimental sexting, non-consensual sexting, sexting under pressure, and risky sexting) in a sample of Italian adolescents. Methods A convenience group of 760 high school students aged 14 to 19 years (Mage = 16.76, SDage = 1.56; 52.6% females) completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire between January and June 2021, and data were analyzed through logistic regression analyses. Results The main results showed that (1) lower emotionality was related to higher involvement in non-consensual sexting, sexting under pressure, and risky sexting; (2) higher sociability was related to higher involvement in experimental, non-consensual, and risky sexting; (3) lower self-control was related to higher involvement in experimental sexting; and (4) well-being was unrelated to sexting. Conclusions This study expands knowledge about the relationships between personality and sexting, examining the role of specific dimensions of trait emotional intelligence and various forms of sexting. Policy Implications The study suggests that fostering the ability to express and understand emotions should be the focus of preventive interventions targeting adolescents to contrast aggravated and risky sexting.

Emotion regulation (ER) is the process by which individuals can modulate the intensity of their emotional experience and it plays a crucial role in daily life. So far, behavioral analyses seem to suggest that ER ability remains stable throughout the lifespan. However, imaging studies evaluating the neural correlates of ER performance during the aging process have shown mixed results. In this study, we used the “Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort sample” to investigate: (1) ER behavioral performance and (2) the differential association between brain measures (based on both structural and functional connectivity data) and ER performance, in a group of younger/middle‐aged participants ( N = 159; age range: 18 y < x < 58 y ) relative to a group of older healthy subjects ( N = 136; age range: 58 y < = x < 89 y ). Whereas we found no group‐related differences either in ER behavioral data or the association between ER performance and structural data, we did observe that ER performance was differentially correlated in our two study groups to functional connectivity measures in the fronto‐insular‐temporal network, which has been shown to be involved in emotional processing. Group‐related differences were specifically localized in a cluster of voxels within the anterior cingulate areas which revealed a reverse pattern between our study groups: in younger/middle‐aged participants better ER performance was associated with increase connectivity, whereas among older participants better ER performance was related to reduced connectivity. Based on our results, we suggest that a de‐differentiation mechanism, known to affect the frontal lobes brain activity and connectivity in older subjects, might explain our findings.

During the past six decades, there has been an ever-growing awareness of the global ecological crisis threatening human survival. Concern for the future of human life has led to the necessity of upholding environmental rights and sustainable development. As in the case of other human rights, obligations of the state that derive from these need to be complemented by civic engagements, and sustained by shared values in the societal sphere. The question that we raise is if religions can play a significant role in favouring environmental rights, civil engagements and environmental care, given that in varied ways religious traditions appeal to the interdependence of divine-human-cosmic realities. The empirical research that we undertook in the multi-religious context of Tamil Nadu, India, seeks to verify if the religious identity of the senior secondary school students and college students has some influence on their attitude towards environmental obligations, engagements and care. The results show that senior school students are highly sensitive to state’s obligations and civil engagements, but their religious affiliation does not seem to influence it. Instead, college students manifest strong agreement to environmental care, with Hindus displaying higher sensitivity. Besides, variables such as transformative function of religion, religious pluralism, human dignity, and empathy have favourable association with environmental care for Christians, Muslims and Hindus. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of the predictors for eco-education.

Editorial

The paper seeks to draw the contours of an “Eco-Theo-Logy” in the context of the unprecedented crisis of our Common Home and with special reference to Laudato Si’ , Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on creation care. An “eco” theology would begin with the sense of awe and gratitude for Earth, our unique common planetary home blessed with the gift of life, and listen attentively to the growing “cry of the Earth and of the poor” ( Laudato Si’ , 49). Secondly, it seeks to articulate anew the theological understanding of an ‘in-carnate’ God, a God who enters human and cosmic vicissitudes and manifests in the pangs of creation. It also strives to a religious vision of the natural world as the “Gospel of creation”. Thirdly, it’s time to re-imagine the logos component of an eco-theo-logy, embracing an integral and relational approach, raising a prophetic theological voice in the face of profound inequalities and injustices that exist in our one common household, and adopting a decisively practice/action orientation.