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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - A year after a Salesian missionary priest from India was kidnapped in Yemen, his religious superiors do not know where he is or who is holding him.
Father Thomas Uzhunnalil was taken captive last March 4 when Islamic militants attacked a rest home in Aden, operated by the Missionaries of Charity. Sixteen people, including four nuns, were killed in the raid; Father Uzuhunnalil was seized.
A video in which Father Uzhunnalil pleads for help was released late in December. The priest, who said that his health was deteriorating, criticized the government of India for failing to secure his release.
The government of India has sought to negotiate the release of the missionary priest, with no success to date. Cardinal Baselios Mar Cleemis of Trivandrum, the president of India’s episcopal conference, admitted that “we don’t know who kidnapped the priest and where they have taken him.”
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CWN - President Donald Trump’s revised executive order on refugees no longer offers preferential treatment for Christians and beleaguered religious minorities fleeing persecution.
Father Benedict Kiely, who raised funds for persecuted Christians, told the National Catholic Register, “It may seem politically incorrect to prioritize a specific group or groups, however, given the lessons of history, I wonder what prioritization might have done in 1938 for the Jews of Europe?”
“There’s a dire need for President Trump to issue a separate executive order—one specifically aimed to help the genocide survivors of ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” added Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute.
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CWN - The head of the Syriac Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, said that 80% of the members of his flock now live outside their homeland.
“The problem is convincing our flock to be patient and return home,” said Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan. “It is very hard to convince our young generations to return … It’s not easy to convince our people to live up to their Christian vocation in those very horrendous situations they experience.”
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risu.org.ua - Recently, Bishop Stepan Meniok, Donetsk Exarch of the UGCC, with the blessing of His Beatitude Sviatoslav, head of the UGCC, visited Avdiyivka with a team of CF Caritas, where previously the households suffered severe damages from shelling in the old part of the city.
Accompanied by CIMIC servicemen, they carried out the initial assessment of the needs to restore damaged households, food provision and health care.
The Bishop visited Mariyinka where he talked to the pupils of the local Children and Youth Creativity Center.
Here are some thoughts and impressions that Bishop Stepan shared after this visit.
“I had an impression, when roaming amidst these empty destroyed buildings, that it is a biological war. When people are poisoned and die, and only accommodation and things remain. Walking along an empty street, I met the poor and homeless animals. A cat came up to me, who was looking for his owners. I was returning with a lousy mood and burden on my heart.
In Maryiynka I visited the local creativity center for young people and children. The even arranged a small performance for me there.
Speaking about the victims, I have heard many complaints. People came to me to complain about the military who accommodated in their homes and the authorities ... And there is the front-line line, our military are forced to live in the houses of locals.
CF "Caritas" continues its active operation within the city, the city authorities are supporting them.
People live under the constant psychological stress. Imagine they go to bed every night with the idea that the shell may hit their home.
One woman, seeing that I belong to holy orders, said to me: “I would like to die quietly and that is all.” And I told her that, “Well, okay. What the young people should do?”
Anyone, if told to live under shelling, would have felt a change in his body; he would hate such a life. Just imagine, people constantly live under such pressure. Therefore, it is likely that over time they will have a shift in their mind.
Everywhere the military government operates because of mistrust to civilians. "
It was reported by the press service of the Donetsk Exarchate of the UGCC.
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CWN - The Egptian government’s minister for religious education has proclaimed that attacks on Christian are “attacks on all of us.”
Mohamed Mokthtar Gomaa told a forum in Cairo that the Islamic extremists who have killed Christians in a series of targeted attacks in the Sinai region have also killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers. He said that the extremists are a threat to Islam as well as to Christianity.
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CWN - Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi has said that Muslims and Christians should be identified not as a “majority” and “minority” in Arabic countries, but as equal citizens.
Al Sisi made his remarks as he spoke with two Catholic prelates—Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai and Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako—who were in Cairo for a conference on religious freedom sponsored by Al Azhar University.
The Egyptian president, who has been strongly critical of Islamic extremism, spoke of a need to “renew religious discourse” in the Middle East, in order to combat extremism.
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