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Last Updated: 03 March 2015

CWN - The Islamic State has released 19 of the more than 200 Syrian Christians who were captured during an offensive last week, after the payment of a large ransom.

Estimates of the number of hostages being held by the Islamic State continued to mount, with some reports saying that 300 people might be in captivity. However, Church officials said that there was no basis for reports that the Islamic militants had begun killing the captives.

The 19 freed hostages arrived safely in Hassake, Syria, on March 1. The AsiaNews service reported that a sum of about $1,700 had been paid for each person released. An Islamic court had reportedly imposed that fee as a jizya--a tax paid by Christians and Jews who decline to convert to Islam.

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Last Updated: 03 March 2015

CWN - At the conclusion of his March 1 Angelus address, Pope Francis renewed his call for prayers for Christians and others persecuted in Syria and Iraq.

“We want to assure those involved in these situations that do not forget them, but are close to them and pray insistently,” Pope Francis said, as he called upon all “according to their ability to work to alleviate the suffering of those who are afflicted, often only because of the faith they profess.”

The Pontiff also requested prayers for victims of violence in Venezuela, which is “again living moments of acute tension.” Calling for dialogue, he urged “everyone to reject violence and respect the dignity of every person and the sanctity of human life.”

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Last Updated: 27 February 2015

The tragedy of thirty-five Assyrian villages

• Patriarch Gregorios III telephoned Mor Yacub Behnan Hendo of the Syrian Catholic Church to ascertain about the situation in Hasakah.
• His Beatitude also called Mar Afram Nathaniel of the Assyrian Church on 25/02/2015 to express his condolences, solidarity and prayers for the safety of the people there. Mar Afram told His Beatitude about the situation there, as follows:
  • The attack took place on 23/02/2015 at 3:30 a.m. and about nine hundred (900) families were displaced from thirty-five (35) villages around Al Khabur River.
  • About three hundred (300) persons were captured
  • Formerly, the number of habitants there was five thousand (5,000) families, but many had emigrated, the majority to Europe and Lebanon
  • Fifteen hundred (1,500) families still remained there, some of whom had been allocated houses abandoned by their owners when they themselves had been displaced to Hasakah and Qamishli
• On 26/02/2015 Patriarch Gregorios heard that one hundred and twenty (120) Assyrian persons (including men and women, the elderly and children) had been kidnapped and killed

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Last Updated: 27 February 2015

Rabweh, 20/02/2015

• As an Arab, I cannot help thinking in a joint Islamic and Christian way. With this in mind, these reflections are my spiritual meditations, for our Arab heads of State and national leaders to tackle evil and corruption in the twenty-first century in the face of the tragedies caused by human godlessness.
• Arab unity is the strongest shield of Arabs and Muslims. Division is the greatest enemy of Arabs and Muslims.
• Arab unity is the real answer to jihadist groups and takfiri ideas and terrorism.
• Arab unity is the main guarantee of coexistence and democracy, human rights and the secular State, and harmony between religion and the State in the Islamic world.

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Last Updated: 27 February 2015

CWN - An Orthodox theological seminary in Jerusalem was torched on February 26, in the latest of a series of attacks on Christian and Muslim institutions.

Along with setting fire to a building, the attackers wrote slogans on the walls in Hebrew, mocking Christianity. The arson attack follows the pattern set in other attacks that are believed to be the work of Jewish extremists.

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Last Updated: 26 February 2015

CWN - Syrian Christians feel abandoned by the world, the apostolic nuncio in Damascus has told Vatican Radio.

Archbishop Mario Zenari said that fearful Syrian Christians have seen no improvement in the conditions in their country, and many are preparing to leave—joining the tens of thousands who have already left.

Archbishop Zenari said that Syrians face two separate disasters: “the civil war front which has been going on for almost five years, a conflict which has killed over 200,000 people, has injured more than a million and displaced 11 million; and then there are all the terrible things that are happening in the areas under the control of the so-called Islamic State.” Together, they amount to one of the world’s greatest humanitarian tragedies since World War II, he said.

"The civil conflict must be halted but so must the advance of the so-called caliphate," the papal nuncio said.