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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWM - Hossain Ali, a retired Bangladeshi man who converted from Islam to Christianity in the 1990s, was brutally murdered in Kurigram on March 22.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed the recent murders of a Shia Muslim doctor and a Hindu cleric, the Dhaka-based Daily News reported.
“He was a man of goodness and simplicity,” Ali’s Presbyterian pastor told UCA News. “We are still wondering why he should be targeted for such a heinous murder.”
“We live in a secular state, but religious minorities continue to be targeted, and the government is failing protect them,” added Theophil Nokrek, secretary of the Bangladesh Catholic bishops’ justice and peace commission.
The South Asian nation of 169 million is nearly 90% Muslim, nearly 10% Hindu, and 0.2% Catholic.
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CWN - Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow decried the "exile of God from man's life and that of society" in a homily for the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the AsiaNews service reports.
The Russian prelate said that Western societies have promoted a "global heresy of man's bowing down to a new idolatry, which separates God from human life." This trend is now making its influence felt in Russia, he warned.
The Orthodox Patriarch denounced "concerted efforts to pass laws entitling the individual to any choice, including that of sin."
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CWN - In terrorist attacks such as the bombing in Brussels, "unfortunately innocent people reap what European powers have sown in Syria and Iraq in the last few years," Archbishop Jacques Hindo of Hassaké-Nisibis told the Fides news service.
Archbishop Hindo explained that the West has provided support for the government of Saudi Arabia and its allies, allowing "the possibility of financing in the whole of Europe, and also in Belgium, the birth of a network of mosques where Wahhabi'ism was preached: the ideology that poisons Islam and serves as the ideological basis for all jihadist groups."
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Way of the Resurrection:
Road to Jerusalem! Road to Damascus!
Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!
To all of you, dear brothers and sisters,
your Graces the Bishops,
Superiors General, Mothers General,
priests, deacons, monks, nuns
and all the sons and daughters of our Melkite Greek Catholic parishes
in Arab countries, the countries of the expansion and throughout the world,
best wishes for the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is the Way and Companion of all our ways.
When I started creating this letter, I found myself on the way, like Luke and Cleopas, on the road with Jesus, who encounters me with love and kindness, mercy, humility, care, consideration and compassion. He comes to me and goes with me, he who is everywhere present and fills all things, Jesus, the gracious and merciful companion who loves mankind, the friend and brother, divine and human. He became man, and wants to go on the way to every human being, to bring everyone to happiness, joy and resurrection to eternal life.
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CWN - Archbishpo Fouad Twal, the Latin-rite Patriarch of Jerusalem, has taken issue with the US announcement that a genocidal campaign against Christians is taking place in the Middle East.
"The statement comes too late, when everything has already happened," said the archbishop. "Everyone has either escaped or are dead." Other Christian leaders in the region-- such as Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai and Syrian Archbishop Jacque Hindoo-- have made similar statements.
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risu.org.ua - The Vatican is studying the possibility of Pope Francis visiting Armenia in late June, the Vatican spokesman said.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, confirming Pope Francis’ desire to make the trip, denied that it already was set for June 22-26 as a news website reported.
“It is true that a trip to Armenia in late June is being studied,” he said March 18, but the papal trip planners had not yet visited the country and neither the dates nor the program have been finalized.
St. John Paul II visited Armenia in 2001.
- Syrian prelate: US helped create ‘jihadist monster’
- Patriarch Bartholomew underlines importance of worldwide Synod
- Israel: Christians concerned by government restrictions on Easter Vigil
- The Council of Kharkiv-Poltava Eparchy of UAOC (renewed) to determine ways of reuniting the Orthodox and Greek Catholics