OTTAWA – When Sr. Laura Girotto first set foot in Adwa, Ethiopia, in late 1993, it was hard to envision the miracle about to  unfold.

WASHINGTON – Four Catholic Relief Service staff members on their way to a training session in Nairobi, Kenya, were among the passengers aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed moments after takeoff in the east African nation.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopia's bishops welcomed the election of the nation's first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde, and said they were pleased that women "are getting their rightful place in the development of the country."

NEW YORK – Four Daughters of St. Anne sisters – including the provincial superior – were killed in a crash about 80 miles south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Catholic Near East Welfare Association reported.

While Canada resettled more than 35,000 refugees from Syria over the last 12 months and brought refugee processing times down to eight months for privately sponsored refugees from Lebanon, refugees in Ethiopia languish more than six years in the system and Church groups are discouraged from sponsoring Africans.

OTTAWA – The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) Canada has renewed its emergency appeal for funds to help children remain in school in drought-stricken Ethiopia.

Most of the more than 10 million Ethiopians now dependent on direct food handouts will survive the country’s worst drought in 60 years, but how they survive will depend on the generosity of Catholics abroad.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Churches in eastern and southern Africa are appealing for humanitarian aid in the region, as 36 million people grapple with the worst drought in decades.

As the worst Ethiopian drought in 60 years threatens as many as 20 million people living in more than half of Africa’s second largest country, Catholic aid agencies in the desperate nation are asking for help as the crisis continues into 2016.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - Ethiopia is not like the rest of Africa. Just ask an Ethiopian.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - The Catholic Church is more African than most Canadians realize. We pay no attention to the early African popes — Gelasius I (492 to 496), Miltiades (311 to 314) and Victor I (189 to 199). We gloss over the African origins of some of the most significant writers and thinkers of early Christianity, including the evangelist Mark, author of the oldest Gospel in the canon, and theologians Tertullian, Origen and St. Augustine of Hippo.

JIJIGA, ETHIOPIA - At the end of June the Famine Early Warning Systems Network of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization issued a warning about dry conditions in Ethiopia, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa. On July 5 the UN called it “the worst drought in 60 years” in the Horn of Africa, with Ethiopia and Somalia worst hit.

JIJIGA, ETHIOPIA - Nasri Yaseen Gourate is a young Somali man, husband and father, a hard worker with a voice among the men of his clan. But the most remarkable thing about Nasreen is that he is a Somali man with no cattle, no camels, no goats, no sheep. He sold them all.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - The Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa had its baptism of fire in Ethiopia trying to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of starving Ethiopians. Almost as soon as the JRS was founded in Ethiopia, the 1984 famine galvanized world attention, inspired the Band Aid mega-concerts and put the Jesuits to work. The Jesuit who led the JRS in Ethiopia, who tangled with communist government ministers, found 10-tonne trucks to deliver food, put medical care in place, is Canadian.

DOLLO ADO, ETHIOPIA - Fifty-one year old Somali refugee Abdi Mahdi is one of about 25 students taking an English class offered by the Jesuit Refugee Service in the Kobe refugee camp, about three kilometres from the border between Ethiopia and Somalia.