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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow has stepped up its complaints against Ukrainian Catholic Church, demanding that the next worldwide meeting of Orthodox leaders should discuss the status of Eastern churches that are in communion with Rome.
At the same time, however, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has issued a statement of friendship for the Ukrainian Catholic Church, welcoming its support for the recent Orthodox council in Crete.
The Moscow patriarchate, which has complained for years about the “uniate” Catholic Church in Ukraine, has redoubled those complaints, charging that Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk has inflamed hostility toward the Ukrianian Orthodox Church that is allied with Moscow. The Catholic prelate, the Moscow patriarchate charged, has used rhetoric “unprecedented in its aggressiveness toward the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Moscow patriarchate.”
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CWN - A Syrian bishop has downplayed reports that a new "moderate" rebel group has emerged in the country.
Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo said that the announcement by the "al Nusra Front" that it has proken off ties with Al Qaida is a "purely tactical move." The group is still made up of Islamic extremists, he said, and a "moderate Syrian opposition" is "an entity that does not exist."
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“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17: 21)
26 July 2016
On the threshold of this Marian month of August and as we are about to begin holding Paraklesis services, we summon the faithful of all our eparchies to prayer and fasting, in order to counter by prayer and fasting this wave of terrorism that is affecting one country after another around the world.
During this month of July, Germany was hit three times on successive days by this blind terrorism and today it was France, where Father Jacques Hamel was decapitated, just after celebrating Holy Mass. Then there were the dramas experienced by our dear Syria, especially over recent days in Aleppo and Qamishli, and by our dear Lebanon, with the tragedy that struck Qaa, not forgetting the assassination attempt upon our brother, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch, Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II.
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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 the Iraqi members of his flock who fled the advance of ISIS two years ago “have no hope of returning home, either to Mosul or to the nearby Plain of Nineveh.”
“The Western powers, like the United States and the European Union, have their own geopolitical agenda,” Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan said in an interview with Crux.
Referring to efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the patriarch added that “what was done to Syria was clearly unjust, a kind of Machiavellian politics exercised against Syria and the Syrian people.”
Patriarch Yonan also criticized European bishops who have rebuffed his attempts to send Syriac priests to minister to refugees, as well as those who have forbidden him to celebrate the liturgy in Catholic churches.
“When I was in Sweden a couple of weeks ago, I had to use Syriac Orthodox churches for the Divine Masses I celebrated, although I am a Catholic patriarch,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of theology and canon law they study in the seminary, refusing for a patriarch to celebrate the Mass in the parish church. I was in Berlin two weeks ago and the thing is, I celebrated in a Syriac Orthodox church.”
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CWN - Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawardros II has cancelled his regular weekly public audiences because of a spate of violent attacks on Christians in Egypt.
The Egyptian prelate said that he would not be holding his Wednesday audiences again for an indefinite period. He said that he would instead use the time to pray for the victims of volence. This is the second time that he has suspended his weekly audiences because of sectarian violence; he cancelled audiences for ten weeks in 2013.
The Coptic leader took this step after a Coptic Christian was killed in an assault by Muslim extremists in Minya on July 17, and several homes of Copts were attacked by a mob in Beni Suef.
Pope Tawadros customarily holds his weekly audiences in Cairo.
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CWN - The head of the Syriac Catholic Church offered strong criticism of “American, French, English, [and] European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad have led to a nightmare for the region’s Christians.
Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan told the National Catholic Register that Syria was a place “where they were fighting against illiteracy, where you had medical care for all, a peaceful country, where you could go wherever you wanted to go, 24 hours a day without any problem — they [the Western powers] find it has a dictatorship they have to knock down.”
“One of the most moderate, laicized countries in the region, Syria, has been ravished by one of the most sectarian wars,” he said, as he decried the Western alliance with the “Wahabbism of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other [Persian] Gulf states.”
The patriarch also said that “political correctness” prevents discussion in the West about the dangers of radical Islam.
“Go to the depth of the problem: It is not a question of poverty,” he said. “It is a matter of Islam, radical Islam, and most of the Sunni Muslims are radical. Why? Because they take their Quran literally.” escortbayan.xxx/istanbul
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