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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - The head of the Syrian Catholic Church called upon US politicians to speak out on behalf of persecuted Christians as he expressed his hopes for the Trump administration.
“The Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria have suffered catastrophic genocide, persecution, abuse and killings,” Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan told Breitbart News. “I witnessed with my own eyes the destruction taking place in our communities.”
“It is no longer acceptable nor permissible to close one’s eyes to the atrocities that are being allowed in the 21st century,” he continued. “We hope that American politicians can echo this message throughout the country and speak about this injustice.”
The patriarch added:
The Christians in Iraq and Syria are hopeful President-elect Trump and his incoming administration will help secure peace throughout the region for all people and for the sake of humanity.
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CWN - A Syrian Catholic archbishop has said that American president-elect Donald Trump could help bring peace to the country if he can form an agreement with Russia.
Archbishop Jean Abdo Arbach, who heads the Melkite Catholic Archdiocese of Homs, said that if foreign involvement in the fighting in Syria can be stopped, “the future of [President Bashar] Al-Assad will be decided by his people.”
The archbishop told an interviewer that the situation facing Christians in Syria is disastrous. He reported that “there were 1.5 million Christians in Syrian before the war and now there are only 600,000: less than half.” In the city of Aleppo, he said, the Christian population has dropped from 200,000 to under 30,000.
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CWN - The chief ecumenical officer of the Russian Orthodox Church sees the presidential election of Donald Trump as a hopeful sign, which could produce an alliance between the US and Russia that would stabilize the Middle East.
Metropolitan Hilarian, who heads the external-relations department of the Patriarchate of Moscow, observed in an Interfax interview that Trump has been critical of American policy in the Middle East. The Russian prelate strongly agreed with that criticism:
American policy in the Middle East, starting from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and to the recent events in Syria, was, in my view, shortsighted and wrong. Overthrowing the regimes that existed in the Middle Eastern countries one after another, allegedly in the name of democracy, America did not lead the region to democracy or prosperity. On the contrary, it provoked chaos, mass exodus of civilians, genocide of ethnic and religious minorities. Terrorists from the so-called Islamic State would not be so successful in Syria and Iraq if they did not get international support.
Metropolitan Hilarion said that he would not “fall into euphoria” until the Trump administration acted on its campaign promises. But he said that there is a new possibility of cooperation between Washington and Moscow.
The Russian cleric denied that his country had interfered in the US elections. He said, however, that Russians followed the American campaign “with great interest,” and were convinced that in electing Trump the American people had indicated a strong desire for change.
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CWN - The Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil—the Kurdish city in Iraq to which tens of thousands of Christians fled in 2014 as ISIS advanced—believes that they will begin to return to their liberated villages next summer.
“If concrete signs [of safety and security] are given, people will definitely return,” Archbishop Bashar Warda told Aid to the Church in Need. “Hopefully, by next summer we will be seeing people on the ground [on the Nineveh Plain], working, cleaning and trying to get institutions going again.”
He added:
Finally, ISIS is being defeated; the Cross is victorious and finally this terrible evil is no longer there. People are attending Masses and saying prayers … Unfortunately there’s been a lot of destruction: there are burned out churches, while some of the shrines were completely destroyed and a lot of houses were damaged or destroyed, with furniture looted. We need time for reconstruction—to make these villages livable again.
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CWN - Pope Francis met on November 17 with Mar Gewargis III, the head of the Assyrian Church of the East, and joined him in a prayer for peace, especially in Syria and Iraq.
The faithful in Syria and Iraq “walk the way of the Cross” every day, the Pope said. He cited these embattled Christians as models for others, living out their faith in adversity.
Mar Gewargis was visiting the Vatican for the first time since his selection last year to head the Assyrian Church of the East. The Assyrian Church of the East, which is not affiliated with either Orthodox or Catholic churches, is centered in the region most affected by the current bloodshed in the Middle East.
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By Eliana Saks / Published: November 16, 2016 - The Scranton Times-Tribune
She’s the holiest of mothers.
A rare replica of the Mary the Helper of Mothers icon is spending the month at St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Scranton and the faithful are invited to see it.
An icon in the Orthodox faith is a religious image or painting intended to give its viewer a spiritual experience.
This image of the Blessed Mother, clothed and surrounded in gold and holding the infant Jesus, is meant to help women facing challenges conceiving, difficult pregnancies or hard childbirths, said St. Mary’s pastor, the Rev. Leonard A. Martin, S.J.
Visitors are invited to come pray at a service at 7:30 p.m. each Tuesday in November at the church at 310 Mifflin Ave.
View the full story at: thetimes-tribune.com