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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - 550 Chaldean Catholic youth gathered for a festival in Alqosh, a Christian town in northern Iraq that was on the border of ISIS territory during the height of its power.
Addressing the youth on July 27, Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako “expressed his joy for the participation in an event” and saw it as “a restart for indigenous Christian communities and for all Iraq after the years of the jihadist occupation,” the Fides news agency reported.
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CWN - As the relics of St. Nicholas left Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate announced that over 2.5 million Russians venerated the relics during their nine weeks in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Russian Orthodox officials, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, met on July 28 with a Catholic delegation, led by Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
“We did not think there would be so many people,” said Cardinal Koch. “It is an excellent sign that there is a living faith in people’s hearts.”
Patriarch Kirill expressed gratitude to Pope Francis for permitting the relics to leave Bari, Italy, for veneration in Russia.
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CWN - The head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations said that EU and US sanctions against Russia could help the nation in the long run.
“We live in such a country that should not be afraid of such sanctions,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. “We have enormous natural, human and material resources. If we depend on our foreign partners, it is rather a deficiency which we should correct than a circumstance we should complain of.”
He added:
In the 1990s we could witness to another misbalance when people took money out of the country, invested it in foreign economies and foreign resources, when we received goods from abroad in exchange for raw materials. We should overcome this situation, and I hope sanctions will help us.
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CWN - A federal district court judge has extended his stay on the deportation of 1,441 Chaldean Catholics and other Iraqis with standing immigration removal orders and criminal records.
Judge Mark Goldsmith ruled that “all Petitioners will be targeted for torture or death based solely on their association with America.”
He added:
Further, the perpetrators will not be limited to just ISIS, whose fortunes and influence may wax and wane with time. The record demonstrates that other Sunni groups, Shi’a militias backed by Iran, as well as Iraq’s own internal security forces, harbor prejudice towards those affiliated with America, which will manifest itself in the form of torture and extrajudicial killings
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CWN - Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor in Eastern Orthodoxy, recalled the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s historic visit to Istanbul—the first visit by a Roman Pontiff to the See of Constantinople in over a millennium.
Blessed Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras had first met in Jerusalem in January 1964. Three years later, on July 25, 1967, Pope Paul visited the Phanar (Fener), where the patriarchal cathedral is located, setting a precedent followed by subsequent popes.
Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, in turn, visited the Vatican in October 1967.
“Although their initiatives have not had a great impact on the media, they remain revolutionary milestones for the development of Christianity,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew wrote in an essay published on the front page of L’Osservatore Romano. He added that the meetings “remind us of the enduring power of charity and dialogue.”
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CWN - The St. Sergius Mission, a Russian Orthodox church complex in Jerusalem, was rededicated on July 18 in the presence of Russian and Israeli officials.
The complex passed from Israeli to Russian ownership in 2011, and the Russian government contributed $10 million to its renovation.
The mission was constructed between 1886 and 1889 with funds from Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the uncle of Czar Nicholas II.
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