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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Pope Francis met with a delegation from the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate on January 16.
According to a Serbian television news report, the patriarchate’s delegation expressed opposition to the possible canonization of Blessed Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960), a Croatian prelate whom St. John Paul II beatified as a martyr in 1998.
The delegation also said that Patriarch Irinej would not object to a papal visit to Serbia in his capacity as head of state but that “other forms of his visit require the green light of the Moscow Patriarchate,” according to the report.
Serbia, a nation of 7.2 million people, is 85% Orthodox, 6% Catholic, and 3% Muslim.
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CWN - As food aid reached Madaya, a Syrian city under siege by government forces, the head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church said that the starving residents are being used as “human shields” by armed gangs, rebel groups, and fighters affiliated with the Islamic State.
“As a Church, we don’t have access to the town,” Patriarch Gregory III Laham told AsiaNews. “We know that sending aid is risky, because, like elsewhere, [it] often ends up in the hands of criminal gangs and terrorist groups.”
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CWN - A leading official of the Russian Orthodox Church, who was dismissed from his post in December because of disputes with Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill, has been denied access to Russia’s secular media, the AsiaNews service reports.
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who had headed the Russian Orthodox Synod’s department for Church and Society, said that he has been denied an opportunity to explain his side of the internal dispute. He charged on his Facebook page that news agencies “are trying to avoid any of my statements from being carried on almost all Russian media.” He said that the media blackout must be the result of a “directive given by the Patriarch himself” with the support of Russia’s government leaders.
The Russian cleric, who has criticized the tight partnership between the Orthodox Patriarchate and the Russian government, reported that a press conference he had scheduled with the news agency Interfax had been canceled. The Russian News Service reported on his dismissal, but never called him for a comment, he said. And interviews recorded before his dismissal have never been published or broadcast.
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CWN - The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church—the largest of the Eastern Catholic churches—said in a recent homily that abortion has killed “ten times more” persons over the last two years than has the war in the eastern part of his nation.
“How many new ‘Herods’ there are today, who not only kill children after their birth, but have gone further … there are so many unborn children [killed] today,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk preached on January 8, the second day of the Christmas season in the Julian calendar.
Referring to a “new danger of a new enslavement of Ukrainian people,” he said that “this danger is called gender ideology … Pope Benedict XVI said this ideology is very similar to previous ones that were destroying states, nations.”
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CWN - Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako has encouraged the faithful to observe a traditional fast, known as the "fast of Nineveh," for the cause of peace in the Middle East, the Fides news service reports.
In the "fast of Nineveh," traditionally observed by the Chaldean faithful before Lent, no food or drink is taken between midnight and noon for three consecutive days. The fast is named for the 3-day fast undertaken by Jonah before he preached to the people of Nineveh.
The Chaldean Patriarch reminded the faithful how Jonah's warning, and the repentance of the people of Nineveh, saved the ancient city from destruction. He suggested the traditional fast as a means of seekign God's help to end to end the "deadly conflict" that has stricken Iraq.
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CWN - The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church told an Egyptian newspaper that “human stupidity”-- “people killing each other for money and [for the sake of their] interests”-- is the cause of the conflicts in the Middle East.
Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria added that terrorism, even when motivated by religious ideology, “does not make any distinction between Christians and Muslims” in Egypt, the Fides news agency reported.
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