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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Members of the Russian Catholic Church—one of the smaller Byzantine-rite churches in communion with Rome—fear that they may be forgotten by Vatican officials anxious to improve relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, reports Francis X. Rocca of the Wall Street Journal: Leaders of the Russian Byzantine Catholic Church, with fewer than 30,000 members world-wide, are meeting in Italy this week in their first such synod in a century.
The Russian Catholics have asked Pope Francis for reassurances, and appealed to the Vatican for help in strengthening their community—which has only about 30,000 members. To date they have not received a reply, and an official of the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches declined to comment for the Wall Street Journal story.
The Orthodox Church dominates religious life in Russia, and the Catholic minority is composed mainly of Latin-rite Catholics. But the Orthodox Church has been extremely sensitive about the existence of Eastern churches in union with Rome, and Vatican support for the Russian Catholic Church would undoubtedly provoke a negative reaction from the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Russian Orthodox Church has frequently complained about the activities of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which is by far the largest of the Eastern Catholic churches. The Moscow patriarchate argues that the Ukrainian Catholic Church is interfering in the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox.
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CWN - 90% of graves in a Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Kosovo have been desecrated, according to Serbian media reports.
The incident took place in Mitrovica, a city whose Serbian and Albanian Muslim communities have been deeply divided since the Kosovo War (1998-99).
Serbs are permitted to make only one yearly visit to the old Orthodox cemetery in what is now the Albanian section of Mitrovica. During their recent visit, they discovered the mass destruction of headstones.
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CWN - Pope Francis has sent a special message to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, for the funeral of Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the former Major Archbishop of the Byzantine Church.
In his message the Pope acknowledged the important role that Cardinal Husar had played in the revival of the Ukrainian Catholic Church after decades of Communist repression. He said that the deceased prelate had rallied the Church, “gathered from the ‘catacombs’ where she was forced to flee persecution, and to whom he restored not only the ecclesiastical structures, but above all the joy of her history, founded on faith through and beyond any suffering.”
Pope Francis said that he was prompted to write because of “the extraordinary influx of people who in these days have come to pay homage to the mortal remains of the cardinal.” His message was relayed in a letter to the current Major Arcbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
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Fairfax, Virginia – The Papal Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, will attend the opening events of the 21st Orientale Lumen Conference scheduled for June 19-22, 2017 in Washington, DC. Other international ecumenical leaders who will be plenary speakers during the 4-day conference include Archbishop Job of Telmessos, Orthodox Co-Chair of the International Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue; Msgr. Paul McPartlan of The Catholic University of America and also a member of the international dialogue; Father Thomas FitzGerald, from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary and member of the North American Catholic-Orthodox Consultation; and Father Hyacinthe Destivelle, OP, from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican. Video recorded lectures by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and professor emeritus of Oxford University, will also be presented during the conference.
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May 31, 2017, at 18:30 after a serious illness His Beatitude Lubomyr (Husar), Archbishop Emeritus of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Church died at the age of 85.
January 26, 2001 - February 10, 2011 he served as a Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Born in Lviv, Ukraine, on February 26, 1933, Lubomyr Husar fled from Ukraine with his parents in 1944, ahead of the advancing Soviet army. He spent the early post-World War II years among Ukrainian refugees in a displaced persons camp near Salzburg, Austria. In 1949, he emigrated with his family to the United States of America.
From 1950 to 1954, he studied at St. Basil’s College (Ukrainian) Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. He continued his studies at Catholic University of America in Washington DC, and at Fordham University in New York. He was ordained a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest of the Eparchy of Stamford on March 30, 1958.
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CWN - Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor in Eastern Orthodoxy, arrived in Stuttgart on May 29 and was welcomed by Lutheran and Catholic prelates.
At a reception at the Old Castle, Bishop Gerhard Feige, head of the Catholic bishops’ ecumenical commission, said that the Ecumenical Patriarch’s presence in Germany manifested his desire to take part in the 500th anniversary commemoration of the Protestant Reformation.
Bishop Feige then spoke about Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical initiatives before praising remarks by the Ecumenical Patriarch about dialogue. “We have passed through a remarkable learning history from initial uncertainty and skepticism to a real coexistence,” said the bishop of Magdeburg.
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