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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow met with the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association on October 28 and expressed appreciation for American evangelical Protestants’ defense of Christian moral principles.
“Spiritual and religious life in the West has undergone radical changes in the recent years,” Patriarch Kirill, who leads the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches, told William Franklin Graham. “Western civilization and Western countries ceased to identify themselves with Christian tradition and adopted an idea of society in which Christian moral values should not be dominant.”
Patriarch Kirill added:
And then, legislative solutions were taken in many countries, the United States of America including, which allow same-sex marriage, equaling it to natural marriage that the Lord has given us in commandment. People who do not want to abide by these solutions may be subjected to repressions. Today, Christians who uphold the intransient importance of Christian moral values had to become confessors of the faith living under various kind[s] of pressure … This gives us a sign of hope: there are people among Western Christians akin to us in ethical principles, sharing them with the Russian Orthodox Church.
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CWN - Father Jacob Murad, a priest in Al-Qaryatayn, Syria, who was abducted by Islamic State forces in May, has spoken about his three months of captivity.
The priest said that he was never tortured but that he and the other Christian captives were threatened with death if they did not convert to Islam.
“But they did not convert to Islam despite much pressure,” he told an Arab Christian broadcaster. “They were faithful to the recitation of the Rosary."
“This experience of trial strengthened the faith of everyone, including my faith as a priest,” he added. “It is as if I have been born again.”
“We tend to think of them as uncultured Bedouins,” he said in an interview with BBC. “The opposite is true. They're clever, educated, with university degrees, and meticulous in their planning.”
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CWN - Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant leaders in Turkey gathered at the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul to announce the publication of Basic Principles of Christianity, a work written for a Muslim audience.
“It is our duty to inform our Muslim brothers and sisters correctly about Christianity, whose presence in these lands goes back a long way,” said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, according to a Turkish newspaper report.
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CWN - Pope Francis has sent a message to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds a primacy of honor among Orthodox Christians, as he received an honorary doctorate from Sophia University Institute in Loppiano, Italy.
“I am pleased with this award which, besides being a rightful recognition of his commitment to the promotion of the culture of unity, contributes favorably to the common journey of our churches towards full and visible unity, to which we tend with dedication and perseverance,” the Pope said.
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CWN - A Catholic church in Aleppo, Syria, was struck by a mortar shell during Sunday Mass on October 27, causing several minor injuries to members of the congregation.
The shell damaged the roof of St. Francis church, in the Aziziyeh district of Aleppo. But because the explosion was on the roof rather than inside the building, there were no serious casualties. Seven people were hurt by falling debris, the Fides news service reported.
The mortar round was evidently fired by rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.
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St. Paul describes Jesus as “he who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity…[He] came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.” (Ephesians 2: 14, 17) This description corresponds to the desire of all people in the Middle East. Our appeal responds to the injunction of St. Ignatius of Antioch in his Epistle to the Romans, “Remember in your prayers the Church in Syria.” (Romans 9)
Every day brings more news of atrocities and horrific, inhuman crimes, carried out by the variously-named godless groups, while the world remains divided on how to combat this apocalyptic terrorism and criminality, which are sowing terror and causing the global scourge of continual migration, displacement and dispersal in different directions.
Pope Francis referred, in his 2015 Lenten Message, to the problem of a “globalization of indifference.” Today we are facing a kind of third world war: let us now therefore work together towards global solidarity.