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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

CWN - The Islamic State has announced the killing of 21 Eyptian Christians who were abducted from Libya early in January.

A report issued on the internet by the Islamic State said that the Coptic Christians were killed in “revenge for the Muslim women persecuted by Coptic crusaders in Egypt.” The reference was evidently to an incident in which two Egyptian women married to Copts were allegedly pressured to repudiate Islam.

The Egyptian government has not confirmed the deaths of the 21 kidnapping victims, but fears that the internet report is accurate.

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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

CWN - Three Palestinian Christian mayors, including the mayor of Bethlehem, met with the Vatican’s Secretary of State on February 11 and spoke about the harmful effects of the planned extension of the Israeli West Bank barrier through the Cremisan Valley, according to a report published by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The wall’s extension, said Bethlehem’s mayor, would affect two monasteries, a Catholic school, and 58 Christian families.

The extension “is only intended to separate Christian families from their land and then confiscate and enlarge the area available for new illegal Israeli settlements,” said Vera Baboun.

“There will be no future for Christians: the population density will rise to unsustainable levels, and many will eventually choose the path of the exodus, which has already reduced the Christian presence in the Holy Land,” she added.

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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

CWN - The head of the Syriac Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, celebrated the sacred liturgy in a Baghdad parish on February 8 and encouraged the beleaguered Christian community to stay in the Middle East.

Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan of Antioch thanked his “little flock” for remaining faithful to the Gospel and compared those who remained in the Middle East to leaven. He encouraged those who are deciding whether to emigrate to ask themselves whether they are seeking an earthly kingdom or a heavenly one, and to ponder Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount: “do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.”

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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

risu.org.ua - His Eminence Yacek Pyl, Auxiliary Bishop of Odessa and Simferopol diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine commented on the current situation in his diocese, and, in particular, touched the issue of the annexation of Crimea. This was stated in an interview with EWTN News, published on Catholic media center website.

“My diocese was partitioned, but canonically nothing has changed. Our Ordinary Bishop Bronislaw Bernadsky has a residence in Odessa. As auxiliary bishop, I live in Crimea from the beginning, and on December 22, 2014, the Holy See appointed me Pastoral Delegate to the District of Crimea and Sevastopol, which, according to the agreement with the Russian government, was established exclusively for administrative purposes, and the Catholic Church continue to function in this region. The Vatican does not officially recognize the annexation of Crimea,”  said Bishop Jacek Pyl.

 "We pray and try to reregister the Church, according to the legislation of the Russian Federation. Some believers left Crimea and some new believers came. Annexation of Crimea divided some families and brought confusion. Church tries to overcome these divisions and unite people around Christ,” he said.

Bishop plans to invite a contemplative Catholic Order “that they blessed this land."

  “They are able to ask with the prayer many blessings for the people who live here. And first destroy the walls of prejudice and various atheistic customs rooted in the years of communism in human hearts. This monastery in Crimea would be a sign of God's presence and support for the Catholic population, which is a minority here,” he says.

When asked what the diocese needs in these times, the bishop said: “We need prayers and spiritual support to continued evangelization in this region so that people can find peace in themselves under new circumstances and convert.”

According to the hierarch now Kirche in Not and Renovabis from Germany provide assistance to his Church

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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

risu.org.ua - Ukrainian Catholics are talking quite a bit about His Holiness Pope Francis these days. We are grateful that a unique relic from the Vatican, the image of Christ on the veil, has been brought to Lviv. Many pilgrims are traveling to pray fervently before the icon, which the Pope has generously allowed to be brought to a country suffering a painful war.

At the same time, we are very disturbed by the words with which Pope Francis addressed Ukrainians during his general audience of February 4, equating our current conflict with Russia with “fratricidal fighting among Christians.”

A bold pastor and a man of clear words, Pope Francis, nevertheless, depends on his curia to understand the Russian-Ukrainian war. That’s the problem. For many Vatican diplomats, relations with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church are the priority when there is a question about Eastern-rite Catholics in this part of the world.

I have two motivations for criticizing the Vatican’s position on the “Ukrainian question.” First of all, as Pope Francis has said, we should look on the Church’s sins and imperfections as on those of our own mother. So, the mistakes of my Mother, the Church, pain me and I must speak. So I will speak with respect for the Pope, who himself bravely speaks the truth to which he witnesses.

Secondly, in my own life I have paid for defending the truth, at the cost of ten years’ imprisonment in a Soviet concentration camp. So I know that faithfulness to the truth is a higher value than one’s own security or peaceful prosperity. I continue to live according to this principle.

Diplomacy is a legitimate part of church life. However, for diplomacy, centers of power have first place. It is not interested in spirituality and personal witnessing to the faith.

But it is difficult to imagine something more contradictory to Christ’s ministry than absolutizing centers of power. Can you picture Jesus flattering the power-holders of his time and not reacting to a simple person’s efforts to cleanse his religious devotion of corruption?

For many Vatican diplomats, the Ukrainian Church is divided, naïve, unskilled in diplomacy – it does not exist as a center of power. For them, it is only a trouble-maker that creates problems in relations with the only real center of power in our area, the Moscow Patriarchate. And the Moscow Patriarchate’s clear, scandalous sins do not trouble the diplomats: they will give it priority as long as it remains influential in interchurch relations.

Vatican functionaries were almost entirely silent at the manifestation of authentic spirituality on the Maidan, the protests in Kyiv and throughout the country in late 2013 and early 2014. Simple people turned to spiritual values. There was a desire to overcome corruption. Kyiv’s Independence Square, the Maidan, was a place of daily prayers, night vigils, and conversions to the faith. The Maidan was a site of ecumenism and interreligious cooperation on human dignity, that is, there was a public consensus of all Christians, Jews and Muslims of Ukraine. There is now incredible volunteer work being done to help numerous refugees, wounded and traumatized. All this has earned not a single explicit word of support from the curia.

These events happened in the Moscow Patriarchate’s sphere of interests, so the Vatican diplomats made a taboo of any real support of Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity.” It seems the diplomats had an excessive influence on the Holy See’s decisions. At moments like this, you feel that the Vatican diplomat corps as a center of power has crushed beneath its heel the role of the Vatican as a spiritual center.

But this is not all. The Vatican, silent about Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, has refused to take a position. It is perhaps understandable that the Vatican did not call Russia an aggressor at the beginning of the conflict, when Europe was unable to sort out the true causes and guilty parties. However, today massive evidence is available about Russia’s direct participation.

Still, the Holy See made one gesture of public support: sending a papal legate to Ukraine, Cardinal Schoenborn. His day of meetings in Ukraine’s capital had important symbolic meaning.

However, even when the Pope had access to appropriate information at his public audience of February 4, in accord with his advisors he called the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine “fratricidal,” as if repeating Moscow’s totally false versions of “a civil war in Ukraine.” Even now, grieving over terrible human losses, the Pope says no word about Russia as an aggressor and the true first cause of these losses!

And when he tells Ukrainians that in this allegedly internal conflict there is “fighting among Christians,” the Roman Pontiff addresses not a single word to the spiritual head of Russia’s Christians, who together with Putin is equally responsible for this bloody conflict! The Holy See has not even spoken out in defense of Ukrainian officer Nadia Savchenko, who is being held in a Russia prison in violation of all international agreements and today is in danger of a very real death.

So the Pope, a brave pastor and moral authority, is forced to be a careful diplomat who is afraid to name the cause of the pain which his flock is suffering. However, I think it’s even more dangerous that diplomacy and reluctance to spoil relations with Moscow has invaded the domain of the Catholic faith. Calls for reconciliation hang in the air if the main prerequisite of all reconciliation, truth, is not secure. If the Church does not establish and defend the truth, it cannot carry out its peacekeeping mission or establish appropriate relations with other sister-churches.

The situation is critical. It was unacceptable that the Vatican did not protest when, at the Synod of Catholic Bishops in October 2014, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a guest of the Synod, in the presence of the Pope insulted the Catholic Church and uttered yet another slander against the Ukrainian Catholic Church, one of the churches of the Catholic family. At that point it became entirely clear that the formula “dialogue at any cost” is ruinous.

The Catholic Church must radically re-think its position on ecumenism, cleansing it of false stereotypes and harmful intertia. An appropriate Gospel verse is Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” In this sentence, we should substitute the word “life” with “ecumenical dialogue.” Ecumenical dialogue cannot be preserved at the cost of denying the truth; on the contrary, this is the best way to ruin it.

Only by “losing” today’s imitation of ecumenical dialogue for the sake of Jesus and his truth can the Church find out how the Christian churches are truly prepared for brotherhood in truth and love.

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Last Updated: 17 February 2015

CWN - Describing US airstrikes are insufficient, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil urged British lawmakers to send ground troops to fight the Islamic State.

“We don't have much time left as Christians in this region,” said Archbishop Bashar Warda, according to BBC. “As a Catholic I find it hard to say, but I want military action, there is no other way now.”

“Military action is needed, a powerful one where they could really get those people out of these villages so that our people and others can return,” he added, according to the Catholic Herald. “Please use all of your efforts to make this happen.”