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Last Updated: 24 December 2017

CWN - The Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church has created a new diocese to minister to Christians who have fled discrimination and violence in Egypt and now live in northern France.

Another diocese, created in 2015, ministers to the Coptic Orthodox faithful who live in Switzerland and southern France.

Emigration from Egypt to France, where an estimated 100,000 members of the Coptic Orthodox Church now live, began in the 1960s during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser and intensified in the years following the Arab Spring (2011).

The Coptic Orthodox Church ceased to be in full communion with the Apostolic See following the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451).

 
Further information:

• Un nouveau diocèse copte-orthodoxe a été créé pour Paris et le nord de France (EgliseRusse.eu)
• En France, un nouveau diocèse pour l’Église copte-orthodoxe (La Croix)

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Last Updated: 24 December 2017

CWN - The Moscow Patriarchate’s chief ecumenical officer praised a non-sectarian class in religions in Russia’s schools and called for the course’s extension beyond fourth grade.

“If our children do not know religious teachings, they can involuntarily become an easy prey for terrorists,” Metropolitan Hilarion, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations, said in an interview with Ekaterina Gracheva of the television station Russia-24.

“We must always remember that terrorism cannot be motivated by religion,” he continued, though “there are people who cover their criminal acts with religious rhetoric.”

After stating that Orthodox children should learn about Islam, and Muslim children should learn about Orthodoxy, the prelate criticized the “anti-religious ideology which is always gaining more ground in the West,” where “the revolution of man against God is in substance propagated and encouraged” in “a variety of modes and images.”

First, said Metropolitan Hilarion, comes the rejection of God, or the idea that one can choose or not choose to believe in God; then comes the idea that one can choose one’s gender, rather than accepting one’s God-given sex as male or female.

 
Further information:

• Senza conoscenza vince l’estremismo (L’Osservatore Romano, p. 8)

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Last Updated: 14 December 2017

risu.org.ua - I would be careful in evaluating the events that took place in our country, and there were a lot of them. Obviously, the pessimists may say that everything was bad, and optimists – that everything was good. The persons related to power will say that the authorities worked brilliantly, and the opposition - that the current government was working absolutely bad. However, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think that maybe it's too early for us to summarize the results. We may only soon be aware of the meaning and significance of our history and all that happened to us this year.

This was stated by the Patriarch of the UGCC Svyatoslav on the air of the "Open Church" interactive program, as he was speaking about the results of the passing year, and the most important events – the achievements and losses that took place in Ukraine and the Church, reports the Department of Information of the UGCC.

The Head of the Church is convinced that sometimes, in order for a good cause or reform to bring a good fruit, the time is required.

In his opinion, one of the global reforms that Ukrainians need urgently is the fight against corruption. However, the Head of the Church, despite everything, remains a passionate optimizer. For the patriotism of the people of the “gray zone” who survived the occupation, the liberation, and their desire to live in the new Ukrainian state is inspirational.

In the life of the Church, there were also many no less interesting and important events that left a great trace for the faithful.

“Of all the events in the life of the Church, I would mention, first of all, the following three. First of all, this year we witnessed the rise of a very interesting figure. It was the year of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Patriarch Iosyp Slipyy. In general, celebrating the anniversary, we tried to acquaint Ukraine with this person. It was a good opportunity to get to know the invincible prisoner, the witness of Christ, and on the other hand – a great Ukrainian, a great fighter for the dignity of his people. The figure of Iosyp the Blind does not allow us to fold our hands, but to go forward,” the Head of the UGCC noted.

Patriarch Sviatoslav called the 150th anniversary of canonization of the holy martyr Jeosafat Kuntsevych, a martyr for the unity of the Church, the second important event of 2017.

“This year, on June 25, in the Vatican, in the Basilica of St Peter, we received a special privilege from the Pope – to serve on the papal throne, which is located on the grave of St. Peter the Apostle. Such a privilege is rarely given because it is the exclusive right of the Pope to perform the Divine Liturgy on this throne. The Basilica of the Apostle Peter is the largest Christian temple of the world and we have filled it with the faithful to the maximum. This celebration in Rome showed how strong our Church is, how big Ukraine is,” said the prime minister.

And the third event will forever make into in history - May 31, 2017, the day of departure for the eternity of the Primate of our Church, the moral authority of Ukraine – His Beatitude Lubomyr (Husar).

“We really have been suffering a great loss caused by pain by this day. His Beatitude Lubomyr is the kobzar of modern Ukrainian thought, song and spirit, which left us as an inheritance the whole civilization of peace and love, all that we need during the war,” the Head of the UGCC stressed.

As the Head of the UGCC noted, the task of preserving the great heritage of His Beatitude Lubomyr – love and peace – was first caught up by Ukrainian students who created the entire movement “Generation of Lubomyr”.

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Last Updated: 14 December 2017

worldwatchmonitor.org - It was 2001 and Saad Hanna watched in horror as his TV showed the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center smouldering and collapsing. Then a trainee priest studying in Italy, he said to fellow seminarians, “The world is turning upside down. The Americans will not let this be.”

With this flashback, the now-Bishop Hanna sets the scene for what he would endure five years later. In a first-person account, he vividly relates the 27 days of his kidnap and torture at the hands of Sunni armed men in a book, ‘Abducted in Iraq: a priest in Baghdad’.

It was 2006 and the tide of anger that followed the US-led dismantling of the government of President Saddam Hussein, and much of the country’s infrastructure, was fast-flowing and destructive. The young Baghdadi priest was driving home after a Mass and a big celebratory meal on the Feast of the Assumption, when four armed men ordered him from his car and pushed him onto the floor of theirs. He didn’t know them and believed they had the wrong man. Between beatings, his captors accused him of collaborating with the Americans.

In a dynamic that has become all too familiar to people concerned about Iraqi minorities, the priest found himself not only at the mercy of violent extremists, but also let down by members of the international community who could have rescued him. In a brief moment of contact with a world beyond his blindfold, he was handed a mobile phone, through which a member of the coalition forces told him: “We do not have orders to come and liberate people from kidnap.”

At another point, he was given a phone and told to talk to the Chaldean Patriarch, Emmanuel Delly, but a prisoner exchange promised by his captors didn’t materialise.

Unable to see his surroundings, Hanna invites the reader on his inner journey: of hopes raised and dashed; of holding on to his faith; to a Gethsemane-like acceptance of death; and into his near-obsession with “the malleability of time”, which preoccupies him when he is deprived of sight and freedom.

Bishop Hanna varies the pace well between the rapid, intrusive violence and long periods of isolation and reflection, in which his deep spirituality comes to the fore. His recollections are philosophical, elegantly expressed, and coloured not with bitterness but with incomprehension and an un-self-conscious courage. He humanises his captors as much as he can manage. “They too were concerned, these men, and wondered what would be next,” he says.

He resolves “not to judge one faith to be above another, but to see that some people can find a rationale for violence from religion, while others find a rationale for unity”.

In his Foreword, British Catholic peer Lord David Alton invites readers to see Bishop Hanna’s story – of suffering a dual blow of extremist violence and Western inaction – as the story of all Iraqi Christians. To do this illustrates why so many Iraqi Christians believe their country is no longer safe and have sought refuge overseas, placing the future of Iraqi Christianity in question. Bishop Hanna was one of a number of clergy targeted around that time – and not all survived. Arguably, the lasting damage inflicted by Hanna’s captors was not the physical or psychological violence inflicted on the individual, but the convincing of thousands of Iraqi citizens to uproot and scatter themselves abroad.

The book ends with a reproduction of the telegram Pope Benedict XVI sent to Patriarch Delly which appeals for Hanna’s release, and a sentence listing his various roles now, inside and outside Iraq. It does not mention that the Catholic seminary where he worked relocated from Baghdad to Kurdistan because of his kidnap, or answer the questions left hanging while he was in captivity, or say at least that he still does not have answers, such as: Who were his captors? Why was he not released straight after his conversation with the Patriarch? What negotiations led to his eventual release?

For anyone exasperated by the ongoing violence in the Middle East, or wondering how best to respond to it, Bishop Hanna’s well-told account of his kidnap makes for a gripping and challenging read.

Abducted in Iraq: a priest in Baghdad

Saad Sirop Hanna with Edward S Aris

Notre Dame Press, US, 2017. 169pp

Link to Story: https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2017/12/iraq-bishop-recalls-abduction-baghdad-new-book/

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Last Updated: 14 December 2017

Beirut (Agenzia Fides) - The US Administration’s decision to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem "is a slap in the face of Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and all the Arabs". President Donald Trump's move "has demolished the peace efforts between Israel, Palestine and Arab countries, has fueled the fire of a new intifada and transformed Jerusalem, the city of peace, into a city of war". These are the clear words expressed by Maronite Patriarch Béchara Boutros Raï on the consequences of the controversial step taken by the US leadership regarding the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the entire Holy City. The Primate of the Maronite Church expressed his words in his homily during the Eucharistic liturgy celebrated last Sunday at the patriarchal headquarters of Bkerkè.

Tomorrow, Thursday, December 14 - report Lebanese sources to Agenzia Fides - the Patriarch has called a Muslim-Christian summit in Bkerkè to be attended by the leaders and representatives of the Churches and Christian communities together with senior exponents of the various Muslim communities present in Lebanon, in order to express a joint position on the question of Jerusalem and the new tensions unleashed around the Holy City by the provisions of the Trump’s Administration, which according to the Patriarch Rai contradict the criteria of international legality.

Last Sunday, in Lebanon, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Yohanna X Yazigi, also strongly criticized the American decision to establish its embassy in Jerusalem, calling it "a violation of international law" and a serious injustice to the Palestinians, destined to fuel conflicts and sabotage all peace attempts in the region.

In Lebanon, a country that still hosts 400 thousand Palestinian refugees, protest demonstrations in front of the US embassy in Beirut in the district of Awkar have taken place since last Sunday to protest against the decisions of the US administration. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 13/12/2017)

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Last Updated: 14 December 2017

If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. (Ps 137:5)

December 8, 2017

In these days, the declarations on Jerusalem and its future have multiplied and we are all worried about the violence that could be unleashed and the unpredictable consequences.

The Holy Father, also referring to the various UN resolutions, expressed his deep concern, asking that new pretexts not be created for more violence in the Middle East, but to preserve the Status Quo in the Holy City, which should guarantee level-headedness between the religious communities of the three faiths and between the two parts of the city, but which, in reality, has already been affected for some time.

Bearing in mind a situation of evident conflict and considering the rapid changes of the Holy City, we think that every unilateral solution cannot be considered a solution.

Indeed, Jerusalem is a treasure of all humanity. Any exclusive claim – be it political or religious – is contrary to the city’s own logic. Every citizen of Jerusalem and every person who comes to it on a visit or pilgrimage should be placed in a position to perceive and appropriate in some way the message of dialogue, coexistence and respect that the Holy City recalls and that often we hurt by our behavior. Jerusalem is a city that must welcome, where spaces must be opened and not closed. For too long its inhabitants are hostage to these continuous tensions that distort the character of it.

There is nothing that can prevent Jerusalem, in its uniqueness and unity, from becoming the national symbol of the two peoples that claim it as their capital. Israelis and Palestinians should reach an agreement that corresponds in some way to their legitimate aspirations and that respects the principles of justice. Unilateral decisions that change the current configuration of the city will not bring benefit, but only new tensions and they will remove the possibility of peace-making.

But if Jerusalem is sacred for Jews, Christians and Muslims, it is also sacred for many peoples from all over the world, who look to it as their spiritual capital, who come to it as pilgrims, to pray and meet their brothers in the faith.

The sacred character of Jerusalem is not limited only to individual sites or monuments, as if these could be separated from one another or isolated from their respective communities, but involve Jerusalem in its entirety, its Holy Places and its communities, with their hospitals, schools, cultural and social activities.

The two sides should take care to preserve the current universal character of the city and to spare no efforts to remain in the place where Jews, Christians and Muslims continue to meet along the streets of the Old City, each with their own mindset and traditions, linked so uniquely to each other.

The discussion on Jerusalem, therefore, cannot be reduced simply to a territorial dispute and political sovereignty, precisely because Jerusalem is unique, it is the patrimony of the whole world, and has a universal vocation that speaks to billions of people in the world, believers and non-believers.

A realistic solution to the problem of Jerusalem should include all these elements.

Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem

Click here to read full story at lpj.org.