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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Msgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, who recently concluded a six-day visit to Aleppo as the Vatican’s special envoy, told Crux that “what impressed me the most is that there are signs of life beginning again.”
“The impression I got of the Christian community is that people are very close to each other, connected, and that they’re strong,” he said. “They’ve reacted and continue to react to this situation with hope.”
“However, the situation remains very difficult: the fact that the city is once again under control of the government does not mean that everything has gone back to normal,” he added.
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ugcc.org.ua - "Today we live in a world of falsehoods and fakes. We ourselves often hide our own personality because we see that have nothing to show off. We are afraid to stand the moment of truth about ourselves. But today Christ is inviting us to wash with this Jordan water and overcome evil."
This was said by the Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church His Beatitude Sviatoslav in his homily to the faithful in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ on the Feast of the Epiphany.
The Feast of Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ – is one of the greatest Christian holidays. As the Primate said, this holiday is connected with the historic event, which has an extremely deep meaning for us. It's meaningful for us, those who are living at this non-simple, special moment in the history of Ukraine.
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CWN - On January 27, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako visited the region of Iraq recently recaptured from the Islamic State, to confer with officials who are beginning the rebuilding process there.
The Chaldean patriarchate and other Iraqi Catholic dioceses have contributed over $400,000 to campaign to rebuild the homes and churches destroyed by the Islamic State in the Nineveh Plains region. The Chaldean Patriarch’s visit centered on Batnaya, which was described as the town most thoroughly devastated by the fighting.
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Wilkes-Barre Times Leader - By Melanie Mizenko -
Five area Byzantine Catholic Churches joined together Sunday for the blessing of the Susquehanna. About two dozen people prayed for vitality and flood-protection at the Nesbitt Boat launch in Kingston.
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CWN - In a January 27 message to a joint commission of Catholic and Oriental Orthodox theologians, Pope Francis offered the hope that the suffering of believers in the Middle East today will bring Christians closer to full unity.
The Oriental Orthodox churches are the ancient Christian communities that broke with Rome in the 5th century, after the Council of Chalcedon. They are based mostly in the Middle East, and Pope Francis remarked that many of their communities “witness daily the spread of violence and acts of brutality perpetrated by fundamentalist extremism.” Without explicitly mentioning the influence of radical Islamic ideology, the Pope said that such extremism can “more easily take root in the context of great poverty, injustice, and social exclusion,” and said that foreign interests aggravate the problem.
The Pope said that his “heart goes out to the bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, and the lay faithful who have been cruelly abducted, taken hostage, or enslaved.” He went on to say that the faithful can take courage from the knowledge that the blood of martyrs has always enriched the Church. He prayed: “in our day may the blood of so many martyrs be a seed of unity between believers.” The witness of martyrs, he said, could spur the faithful toward “that greatly desired day when we will have the grace of celebrating the Lord’s sacrifice at the same altar, as a sign of fully restored ecclesial communion.”
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CWN - The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, said that it should be a crime to incite violence against those who profess other religions.
Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako said that the “toxins of hatred” should be removed from school curricula in a post-ISIS Iraq.
He also welcomed “the civilized and ethical stance of the United Arab Emirates in passing a law to criminalize and to hold accountable all religious discourses that intimidate coexistence as well as fuel and sow sedition among people.”
Iraq, a nation of 38.1 million, is 99% Muslim.
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