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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq, JUNE 1, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The convent of the Chaldean Sisters of the Sacred Heart was robbed and occupied by terrorists, reported www.AsiaNews.it.
The two women religious living in the Angel Raphael convent told AsiaNews that a group of terrorists broke into the convent while they were away Thursday. Upon the women's return they found everything had been stolen and the convent taken over for military operations.
The convent is in the largely Christian Dora quarter of Baghdad, where an anti-Christian campaign of persecution continues.
AsiaNews cited anonymous sources who said that Shiite militants are behind the attack.
Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad joined the Council of Christian Churches of Iraq in denouncing the episode as an attack against "all Iraq and all Iraqis without exceptions, capable of undermining national unity and fomenting division and discord."
The attack on the convent came just before the start of the Chaldean Church's Synod, which opened its first session today at the monastery of al-Qosh, near Mosul. Security for the Christian community will be at the center of the meeting.
Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the apostolic nuncio to Iraq, is expected to arrive in Irbil on Saturday to attend the event.
Code: ZE07060115
Date: 2007-06-01
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MOSUL, Iraq, JUNE 3, 2007 (Zenit.org).- A Chaldean priest and three deacons were shot and killed after Sunday Mass in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul.
AsiaNews.it identified the priest as Father Ragheed Ganni, 34, the pastor of Holy Spirit, located in the Nur district of the northern Iraqi city.
Sources told AsiaNews that the bodies lay abandoned on the street today because no one dared to go and recover them, given the tension of the situation.
The news agency reported that attempts on Father Ragheed's life have been made before, and that the Church of the Holy Spirit had been attacked and bombed in previous years, and again a few months ago.
Code: ZE07060314
Date: 2007-06-03
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VATICAN CITY, JUN 1, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed Fr. Kenneth Nowakowski of the clergy of the eparchy of Saskatoon of the Ukrainians, Canada, eparchial chancellor, as bishop of New Westminster of the Ukrainians (Catholics 7,835, priests 13, permanent deacons 2, religious 4), Canada. The bishop-elect was born in North Battleford, Canada in 1958 and ordained a priest in 1989. He succeeds Bishop Severian Stefan Yakymyshyn O.S.B.M., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same eparchy, the Holy Father accepted, in accordance with canon 210, para. 1, of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.
RE:NER:NEC/.../...VIS 070601 (230)
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01.06.2007, [15:52] // Charitable activities //
Lviv – The pro-life group of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in western Ukrainian Lviv and students of Holy Spirit Seminary, supported by UCU’s Institute of Marriage and Family Life and encouraged by the Lviv City Board on Matters of Family, Youth, and Sports, are organizing an ecumenical event in defense of the life of unborn children, to be held at 3:00 p.m., 3 June 2007, in downtown Lviv.
According to Natalia Tsiupka, a second year student in UCU’s Faculty of Philosophy and Theology and a member of UCU’s pro-life group, faithful of various Protestant churches and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate have been invited to participate. The program will include an ecumenical prayer service for the unborn, a brief dramatic presentation and a concert of religious music given by Basilian and Redemptorist monks.
“Above all,” said Tsiupka, “we hope to unite in prayer for unborn children, to do this at the community level; certainly in our movement private prayers are said every day. We also want to turn society’s attention to this problem, to encourage it in this way to think about the value of each human life.”
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Religious Compromise
BY RICHARD MINITER
Friday, June 1, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
From opinionjournal.com via CWNews.com
VAN, Turkey--Our story starts with a small sandstone 10th-century Armenian church, on an uninhabited rock less than 500 yards wide, in a remote Turkish lake that changes colors like moods and sometimes bubbles like soda. If you had seen the ruins of it, as I did in 2000, you might cry. Its roof was gone. Its bas-reliefs, chiseled by master carvers a millennium ago, of Adam and Eve, of saints and kings, were wearing away in the wind. It was an empty husk that had not heard a Mass in more than 90 years.
In March, after years of painstaking restoration, Turkey reopened the church as a museum. Among the ambassadors and visitors at the opening ceremonies, I roamed the grounds. The building is now magnificent. Its roof is restored and its reliefs cleaned.
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Baghdad (AsiaNews) – 06/01/2007 10:41 - Terrorists, believed to be Shiites, yesterday occupied the Convent belonging to the Chaldean Sisters of the Scared Heart in Baghdad. Sources in the capital in contact with the nuns denounced the event to AsiaNews. The Angel Raphael convent lies in the Mikanik area of the oppressed Dora quarter where for months now a ferocious anti Christian campaign of persecution has been unfolding. The only two sisters who still lived in there tell that a group of terrorists broke into the building during their absence; on their return they found the convent had been sacked of all its goods and turned into a base for military operations.
Click here to read story at AsiaNews.it (new window will open).