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Last Updated: 25 June 2015

CWN - Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II has denounced the “Gospel of Barnabas,” a document discovered in 2012, as a fraud, the Fides news service reports.

The Egyptian prelate said that the “Gospel of Barnabas” contains numerous historical and geographical errors, exposing the document as “the work of a forger.”

The document, discovered in Ankara, was promoted by some Turkish officials as the work of St. Barnabas. The work is apparently designed to advance the Islamic understanding of the life of Christ, denying the divinity of Jesus and claiming that Jesus foretold the coming of Mohammad.

The “Gospel of Barnabas”-- in the version discovered in 2012-- contains a number of anachronisms that suggest the document was actually written at least several centuries after the time of Christ.

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Last Updated: 25 June 2015

CWN - Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako has made a dramatic appeal for unity among the embattled Christians of Iraq, suggesting that three ancient churches should combine in a single patriarchate, in full communion with the Holy See.

The Patriarch suggested a merger of the Chaldean Catholic Church with the Assyrian Church of the East and the smaller Ancient Church of the East. These two Eastern churches are not currently in communion with Rome. But in 1994 Mar Dinkha IV, the leader of the Assyrian Church of the East, and St. John Paul II issued a joint statement affirming their common faith, apparently ending the Christological disputes that had caused their separation. Two years later the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic patriarchate formed a commission to explore the prospect for unification.

(The Ancient Church of the East is an offshoot of the Assyrian Church, having split from the latter in 1964.)

Patriarch Louis Raphael suggested that he is willing to relinquish his post as Patriarch in order to make way for a new leader who would be recognized by all three Iraqi Christian bodies. The Assyrian Church of the East is currently without a leader. Following the death of Mar Dinkha IV in March, the Iraqi prelates decided to postpone election of a new leader until September because of the insecurity in their country.

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Last Updated: 25 June 2015

CWN - The head of the Armenian Catholic Church has died of a heart attack, according to a Lebanese media report.

Born in Cairo in 1940 and ordained to the priesthood in 1965, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni was appointed the Armenian Catholic bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1989 and elected patriarch in 1999.

The Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, has 376,000 members. Headquartered in Beirut, it has eparchies (dioceses) in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and the United States.

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Last Updated: 25 June 2015

CWN - As 15,000 people gathered at the Portuguese shrine of Ronda da Lapinha to pray for persecuted Christians, the president of Pakistan’s episcopal conference said that the Church there refuses to be silenced.

“I can say with pride that we are not a silent or hidden minority; we contribute to the good of the country,” said Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, according to a Portuguese media report.

Nonetheless, “we do not know when the next attack against a church [will take place], or when and where the next Christian will be falsely accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death,” he added.

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Last Updated: 24 June 2015

risu.org.ua - Parma, Ohio - From 19 to 22 June 2015, Patriarch Sviatoslav is making a pastoral visit to the Ukrainian Diocese of St. Josaphat in Parma. During the visit, the patriarch led jubilee celebrations to mark the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the Holy Spirit parish in the city of Akron (Ohio).

According to the Information Department of the UGCC, the UGCC Head led the Liturgy in concelebration of Bishop Bohdan (Danylo), Eparch of Parma, Bishop Robert (Moskal), Bishop Emeritus John (Kudryk) of the same eparchy, bishop of the local RuthenianeparchyIvan (Botin),a bishop of the Romanian Greek Catholic diocese in the United States. Numerous priests, monks and nuns and laity of the Church as the US and Canada were praying along with them.

In a pastoral word dedicated to the anniversary, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, in particular, said: “Christians make that world in which they live, more humane,it also makes more humane the modern globalized culture that has a tendency to become more the environment of machines and computers. Unfortunately, in the culture of virtual communication human pain becomes a show. Modern war along with human grief, tears and blood becomes formodern presidents the likeness of computer games, and human life is worth as much as this person consumes and produces. How can a person survive in a world in which he becomes an outside and the environment is designedfor robots, not people?”…

It is faith in God, according to the preacher, which helps “modern man evaluate and maintain authenticity of human relationships. These relationships allow man being himself, enable him to sympathize and be solidary with those suffering, sincere and compassionate to the needy.

After the liturgy, Patriarch Sviatoslav had the opportunity to communicate with the community, telling the faithful about the circumstances of the war in Ukraine.

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Last Updated: 24 June 2015

CWN - In a message to Muslims on the occasion of Ramadan, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, called for national unity and reconciliation in Iraq.

Recalling that “Jesus Christ has announced happiness for peacemakers,” Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako said that “we should get out of the mentality of the winner and the loser. Everyone is a winner in the process of reconciliation to make things go in the right direction for establishing a successful state.”