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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - A Georgian Orthodox priest has been arrested and charged with a plot to murder the Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II.
Father Georgy Mamaladze, who handles real-estate affairs for the Georgian patriarchate, was taken into custody at Tbilisi airport. He had reportedly purchased cyanide, which prosecutors say he intended to use to poison Patriarch Ilia.
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CWN - The chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations delivered an address in Fribourg, Switzerland, to mark the first anniversary of Pope Francis’s historic meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Havana.
After discussing the significance of the meeting and reviewing ecumenical developments of the past year, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk had strong words for Eastern Catholics, especially leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
“It is impossible to establish peace if the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics do not combine their efforts to overcome the historical enmity,” Metropolitan Hilarion said. “Over and over again, despite the agreements reached at a high level between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches at a heavy cost, the Unia still makes its presence felt, sowing enmity and hatred and putting, systematically and persistently, obstacles in the way of reconciliation between the East and the West.”
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CWN - The chairmen of three committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined by the chairman of the board of Catholic Relief Services, expressed solidarity with the Middle East’s Christians and other religious minorities.
Archbishop William Lori (Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty), Bishop Oscar Cantú (Committee on International Justice and Peace), Bishop Joe Vásquez (Committee on Migration), and Bishop Gregory Mansour (Catholic Relief Services) stated:
A recent USCCB delegation visit to Iraq confirmed once again that what has happened—and continues to happen—to Christians, Yezidis, Shia Muslims, and other minorities in Syria and Iraq, at the hands of the so-called “Islamic State,” is genocide … A particular focus on minorities is essential to forming communities that respect the rights of all, including members of the majority.
The prelates called upon the US to “accept our nation’s fair share of the most vulnerable families of all religions and ethnicities for resettlement as refugees, including special consideration of the victims of genocide and other atrocities.”
The prelates also called for US development assistance to the region, including US assistance in strengthening the police and the judiciary in Iraq.
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CWN - England’s leading Catholic prelate has criticized the government’s decision to restrict the number of refugees from Syria.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced that the government will welcome 350 orphans. That policy was set in response to an act of Parliament calling for preference to Syrian refugees; the author of the legislation had suggested accepting about 3,000.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols said that it would be “truly shocking” if the government adhered to the new lower number. Last year the UK accepted 900 orphans, and “the need is evidently far greater,” he said. He called for a reconsideration of the decision, urging the government to honor the intent of the legislation.
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England’s leading Catholic prelate has criticized the government’s decision to restrict the number of refugees from Syria.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced that the government will welcome 350 orphans. That policy was set in response to an act of Parliament calling for preference to Syrian refugees; the author of the legislation had suggested accepting about 3,000.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols said that it would be “truly shocking” if the government adhered to the new lower number. Last year the UK accepted 900 orphans, and “the need is evidently far greater,” he said. He called for a reconsideration of the decision, urging the government to honor the intent of the legislation.
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By Jean Ko Din, The Catholic Register
Markham, Ontario - After being closed for more than a decade, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration north of Toronto has quietly re-opened its doors.
The cathedral has welcomed parishioners of nearby Jesus the King Melkite Catholic Church to use its yet unfinished space for Sunday services. The Melkite Catholics had been homeless after their Thornhill, Ont., church was engulfed in flames last October.
They were allowed into the cathedral after Helen Roman-Barber, who sits on the board of the Slovak Greek Catholic Church Foundation, which owns the cathedral, received a temporary occupancy permit from the City of Markham to accommodate the Melkite Catholics.
Despite scaffolding and ongoing construction in the cathedral’s interior, the Melkite Catholic parishioners were grateful for the space. But although once again a place of worship for Eastern Catholics, the cathedral’s original vision will never be fully realized.
It was originally conceived by Stephen B. Roman, a mining magnate and father of Helen Roman-Barber, as “a beacon for his fellow Slavs in central and eastern Europe.” Now it seems destined to become a home of ecumenical worship for all Catholic rites, said Roman-Barber.
When Pope John Paul II established the first Slovak Byzantine Catholic Eparchy in North America in October 1980, he marked Toronto as a place of preservation for the spiritual heritage of the Slovak Byzantine Catholic Church. During his 1984 Canadian visit, Pope John Paul II blessed the cornerstone and the altar stone of the cathedral, making it the first church in North America consecrated by a pope.
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ugcc.org.ua - The Moscow Patriarchate is trying to throw the world community the idea like the Moscow is the "Third Rome". In fact, the Moscow Patriarchate is the usual local Church. ROC has never been a universal arbiter even in the Orthodox world.
That is how Head and Father of UGCC His Beatitude Sviatoslav stated his position giving an interview to RISU.
"Even more - continued Primate - Moscow Patriarchate - always denied any role of the Pope as the Universal Pontiff. So claim the role of the Patriarch of Moscow Ecumenical Pontiff, they deny own ecclesiology that they also formed. This theological or canonical point of view. "
Head of the Church said, when it comes to facts that Russia is an aggressor against Ukraine and the Russian Orthodox Church has positioned as a church that consistently defends national interests, then imagine themselves "over the conflict," as evidenced by the Moscow Patriarch is a denial of the obvious.
UGCC Information Department