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Last Updated: 26 February 2015

CWN - Describing much of Europe as “Babylon,” the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for the Cooperation of Church and Society said that “Russia is the only center of non-[en]slaved civilization,” according to the Interfax news agency.

“Our patriotism is not chauvinism,” said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin; rather, it consists in “understanding the importance of the unique Christian mission which, I believe, our people live for.”

Chaplin traced the decline of Europe from “Genoa and Venice money-lenders” to the Enlightenment, “then bourgeois structure of the society and state. Then revolution. Finally, we've got what we see in the West … At the best, it's Rome of the late period of decline.”

Western European nations, he added, “will lose their physical existence: they will just die out.”

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Last Updated: 26 February 2015

CWN - Emphasizing that Ukraine is not experiencing “a local conflict, but an external assault,” the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said at a press conference that he has told Pope Francis that his use of the term “fratricidal war … has hurt the sensibilities of the Ukrainians.”

At the same time, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that Ukraine’s bishops “felt understood, welcomed, and encouraged” by the Pope during their recent ad limina visit and that they invited the Pope to visit Ukraine.

“I have asked the Holy Father and various bodies of the Roman Curia to launch an appeal for humanitarian aid on an international level,” he added. “We have managed to provide shelter to 40,000 people in our Ukrainian Caritas centers, but this is not enough: there are 140,000 children among the displaced and then there are the wounded. So in order to really save human lives we need solidarity on an international level.”

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Last Updated: 26 February 2015

CWN - The Islamic State has begun killing some of the 150 or more Christians taken hostage after the capture of several villages in northeast Syria, Aid to the Church in Need reports.

Meanwhile an estimated 5,000 Christians in the region have fled their villages in the days following the Islamic State’s offensive, according to a report from Agence France-Presse. Most have fled to Al-Hasakah, the regional capital, or to Qamishli, a city of 180,000 on the Turkish border. There are reportedly no Christians remaining in the villages taken by the Islamic State, except those who are being held hostage.

“Around 15 young Assyrians were martyred,” reported Archimandrite Emanuel Youkhana, who added that the number of Christians in captivity now may be as high as 350. He said that at least one woman had been beheaded and two men shot.

It was unclear, from early reports, whether the Christians killed were hostages taken from the first villages captured by the Islamic State, or residents of other villages that were battling against the Muslim militants.

The region’s leading Syriac Catholic prelate, Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, said that the Turkey has allowed Islamic State militants to cross the border into Syria but is not permitting fleeing Christians to enter Turkey.

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Last Updated: 25 February 2015

CWN - One year after Euromaidan protests led to the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church paid tribute to those slain during the protests.

“Someone will think of victims of Maidan … but we Christians realize something much deeper here,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. “We talk about an Easter sacrifice of the Heavenly Hundred.”

“This holy blood of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes sanctified the freedom of Ukraine,” he added. “It is our real treasure. It is a moment of the emancipation. It is a moment of transition from slavery to liberty.”

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Last Updated: 25 February 2015

CWN - An estimated 20,000 Egyptians have fled Libya for Egypt in the ten days since jihadists from the Islamic State beheaded 21 Coptic Christians, according to the Associated Press.

In addition, an unknown number of Egyptians are fleeing across Libya’s western border with Tunisia.

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Last Updated: 24 February 2015

From Gregorios, servant of God

By the mercy of God Patriarch of Antioch and All the East

Of Alexandria and of Jerusalem

To my brother bishops, members of the Holy Synod,

To the rest of our sons and daughters in Jesus Christ,

The clergy and people,

“Beloved of God, called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 1: 7)

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18: 13)

This expression is a cry from the soul, body and spirit: feelings that we express hundreds of times in our liturgical prayers, especially during the period of Lent, that great, holy gift of Lent. In this cry, there is a great deal of spontaneity and depth of feeling, but perhaps also some superficiality, hypocrisy, lukewarmness of heart and outward show. According to the customary requirements of our rite, this very succinct cry is linked with physical movement, so that the whole body participates in it: the hands, knees, bowing from the waist or prostrating so that the person praying touches the ground with his hands, forehead, mouth or lips or perhaps striking his breast as a sign of repentance, and lifting his eyes to heaven in supplication to ask forgiveness, dialogue, repentance, sighing, great longing and even suffering. All that is summed up in this spiritual expression, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner and have pity on me.” This expression isan introduction to penitencein the period of Great Lent, as we sing at the beginning of the Lenten period, the Triodion, in the troparion of Matins, “The doors of repentance do Thou open unto me, O Giver of life, for my spirit waketh at dawn toward Thy holy temple, bearing a temple of the body all defiled.” With these expressions we find an inner spiritual progression, and also a corporal movement towards the temple and the Holy of Holies, the Church, a movement of body and spirit together.