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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - While “we will not say he is an angel,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not a “demon,” the Chaldean Catholic bishop of Aleppo told journalists in Geneva.
Bishop Antoine Audo said that Assad has the support of about half of the nation’s population and that 80% of the nation’s Christians would vote for him in an election, according to a Spanish media report.
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CWN - During a three-day visit to Egypt, Iraqi President Fuad Masum met with Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II and said that Christians are “original members” of Iraq, as manifested by various ancient monasteries.
Masum also said that the Islamic State, in addition to targeting Christians, has killed many Muslims and destroyed historic mosques, according to a Fides report.
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CWN - Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako has announced that the Chaldean Catholic Church "has no connection, either direct or indirect, with the so-called Babylon Brigade, nor with any armed militia that presents itself as Christian."
The Chaldean patriarchate, in a March 13 statement, said that some armed groups were claiming support from the Church, based on letters they had solicited from the former Chaldean Patriarch, Emmanule III Delly, who resigned in 2012 and died in 2014. The patriarchate said that all civic leaders have been notified that no politician is authorized to represent the Chaldean Church.
Patriarch Louis Raphael has argued against the formation of militia groups, encouraging lay Christians to join the Iraqi army if they are inclined toward military service.
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CWN - A statement from the Ukrainian Orthodox body in union with the Moscow patriarchate has claimed that the brutal suppression of the Byzantine-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church during the Stalin era was a reaction against Catholics' support for the Nazis.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church- Moscow Patriarchate, in a statement for the 70th anniversary of the crackdown, said that "the main reason for the liquidation of the [Ukrainian Catholic Church] by the punitive organs of the Soviet Union was the overt cooperation of this religious denomination with the Nazi occupying forces and their henchmen in Western Ukraine."
The Orthodox body acknowledged the suffering of Catholics under the Stalinist government, but quickly added that the Orthodox faith suffered as well. The statement rehearsed old complaints about the tensions between Orthodox and Catholics in Ukraine dating back to the 16th century.
The Russian Orthodox Church and its Orthodox allies in Ukraine have regularly charged that Ukrainian Catholics have seized Orthodox churches in the years since the collapse of the country's Communist government. Many of the churches in question were originally Catholic churches, confiscated by the Stalin government and handed over to more cooperative Orthodox clerics.
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CWN - In an encyclical letter, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Mar Ignatius Ephrem II has voiced his concern that refugees who are forced to leave their homes in Syria will maintain their religious and cultural identity when they travel to the Western world.
The Christian culture of the Middle East is "undoubtedly different from the one they find in the West," the Syrian prelate wrote. He said that he hoped refugees would be able to preserve their traditions. He wrote: "We also need to work on reconciling many aspects of our culture with that of the Western society without being affected by Western atheism and secularism which may clash with our Christian values."
In his encyclical letter the Syrian Patriarch protested the discrimination that some Christians migrants have suffered. He cited "cases of persecution based on religious differences within the refugee camps of Europe."
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CWN - Despite the historic 'summit meeting' between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, there remain serious differences between the Holy See and the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the chief ecumenical officer of the Moscow patriarchate.
Metropolitan Hilarion said that Moscow and Rome have come together on "many vital problems of modernity," but remain separated by disagreements on other issues. He cited especially the Eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church, saying that tension on that score "again and again ruins attempts to establish dialogue, to bolster mutual understanding and to bring our positions together."
Metropolitan Hilarion again raised the complaint-- often advanced by Russian Orthodox leaders-- that Ukrainian Catholics had "seized" churches from the Ukrainian Orthodox in the early 1990s. The Moscow patriarchate has never acknowledged that many of these churches had belonged to Catholic parishes, but had been confiscated by the government during the Communist regime, and turned over to more docile Orthodox clerics.
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