News
Byzcath.org News provides news focusing on the Christian East from varous sources and offers links to other sites dedicated to providing the news about the Church.
Churches and organizations that provide news about the Eastern Churches are invited to submit their news stories to us for publication here (use the contact page for submission)..
Materials from the Vatican Information Service, Zenit, CWNews.com and other sources are published here with permission of their owners but may not be republished further without the permission of their original publishers. Please visit these sites to obtain additional general news about the Church. In addition to these sources EWTN News also provides a good general news summary.
Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
- Details
Today for us as Christians to be the witnesses of Christ’s truth and find a way to the eternal life means to love our Motherland, our people and be ready to give up a life for our friends in the name of God. It was said by the Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church His Beatitude Sviatoslav during his sermon to the laity at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ on the State Flag Day in Ukraine.
“Those who do not love their Motherland will always be strangers and exiles in this land. Who do not want to build their own state and assert its independence, he is doomed to be a slave in a different countries”, - signified the Head.
Contemplating over a human’s behaviour, a preacher mentioned, Lord created us in such a way, that we want to surpass ourselves. Human is a creature, saying he, who is never satisfied with own restrictions: always wants something more, something better and more complete. “Probably those who bring up youth, especially teens, know a juvenile period to be marked with two interesting phenomena… A young person in time of getting mature is experiencing a crisis of values. Everything what was certain and clear yesterday, gets another meaning today. Parents call it a “difficult age”. On the other hand – to become mature, a young person must go through his own loneliness. He must face something new, find his love, must fall in love with somebody, go out of himself, in order to meet a living God. Only then he can find his life, the sense of what is worth devoting himself to in this terrestrial life. Even more – find what gives an opportunity to live an eternal life that will not pass away”, - said His Beatitude Sviatoslav.
“For this Christ, - proceeded the Head of the UGCC, - calls us over and over again to follow Him. Really, it is only in Him we can give and find our life, living for a neighbour, again giving up life in love for God and for a neigbour. That is the sense of Christ’s Gospel, the cell of a Christian belief, the way to a real maturity, becoming a man with a big letter”.
“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the Gospel will find it”. Up to the Head of Church, this God’s word, sounding to us as an example of meeting a young man with Christ, revels especially in holidays we are celebrating. Tomorrow we will celebrate an anniversary of our Motherland Independence. Today Ukrainian society is celebrating a State Flag Day which is the symbol, sign and a cell of our sovereign life.
“It is possible to say that Ukrainian society is experiencing today the same crisis of maturity. There is a crisis of overestimating the values, crisis of searching a sense… Why it is so important for us to preserve our independent state today? Is it worth giving up our lives for our freedom and independence? For the faithful Christians these questions sound even deeper. What does it mean for us today, in this rebellious time to follow Christ and be His disciples? A good answer for this question has a prophet of Ukrainian people, our Taras. He considers love to the Motherland and to the own mother to be the same thing. I think, exactly this kind of outlook that flows out of Christ’s Gospel is a basement and foundation of a state development that we want to rest on along a way of our going further. Because our freedom, our future, our personal well-being are impossible without an assertion and existence of an independent Ukrainian State”, - said the Head.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav called for celebrating these holidays without being sad as that rich young man did, who didn’t want to give away that little one for receiving something more and eternal. “Let us be mature and those who are building today, who develop their country with the state conscience, being Christians-patriots. Let us not be afraid to grant our lives into God’s hands, for everything what do we have now we will preserve and enrich, giving it up for our brothers and sisters”, - wished the Head of the UGCC.
The UGCC department of Information
- Details
CWN - A Melkite Greek Catholic priest who is stationed in the West Bank city of Ramallah said that Palestinian Christian youth share an increasing societal desire for Arab unity.
“The Arab world is changing” and “resents even here the division of the Arab world, encouraged or desired by the West,” the priest, identified as Father Juliu, told the publication of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. “We Melkites believe in the unity of the Arab world because we are part of Arab Christianity,”
“There are those who try to make Christians a minority to be protected, rather than an integral part of society,” he continued. “We do not want protection, we do not want to be treated as a minority, but to safeguard our identity, which is Arab.”
Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
- Details
CWN - The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has destroyed the fifth-century Monastery of St. Elian near Al-Qaryatayn, Syria, and desecrated the relics of the saint.
Father Jacques Mouraud, the Syriac Catholic monastery’s prior, was kidnapped in May and is feared dead.
Stating that the Islamic State’s forces “no conscience or morality,” Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo told Vatican Radio that “as usual for us Christians, it is a message of violence and intolerance, a message to spread fear everywhere.”
Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
- Details
CWN - As tensions between Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian government increased in eastern Ukraine, Pope Francis issued an appeal for peace.
“With deep concern, I am following the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has accelerated anew in these last weeks,” he said following his August 23 Sunday Angelus address. “I renew my appeal that the commitments undertaken to achieve peace might be respected, and that with the help of organizations and persons of good will, there might be a response to the humanitarian emergency in the country.”
“May the Lord grant peace to Ukraine, which is preparing to celebrate tomorrow the national holiday,” he added, referring to the Independence Day of Ukraine. “May the Virgin Mary intercede for us!”
Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
- Details
risu.org.ua - In an interview for the newspaper Verhovinsky novyny Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko), ruling bishop ofKharkiv-Poltava Eparchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Renewed), expressed his views on the search of a model of interchurch relations in Ukraine, “Religion in Ukraine” reports.
Asked by journalists if the delay of unificationof the UAOC with the UOC KP may contribute to religious chaos in Ukraine, Archbishop Igor said: “We must bring up this issue in a different perspective. First let us think: may be what you call chaos in religious life in Ukraine is a gift of God? When we talk about the Church, we must remember that it is actually led by Christ – or it is not achurch. If we act against the will of Christ, we cannot expect any unifying projects being a success.”
He repeated the idea he had previously expressed that the UGCC was the main guardian of the Kyivan church tradition. “Do not forget that the only church that really has preserved the continuity of the Kyivan tradition –is the Greek Catholic Church. All the Orthodox churches that exist here, unfortunately, brokewith the tradition after 1686, when our church was subordinated to Moscow and rapidly assimilated with it. In the secluded environment of Galicia, the Greek Catholic Church was able to carefully nurture the Kyivanlocal traditionwithout being dissolved in Polish Catholicism. From the end of the XIX century, largely thanks to Metropolitan AndriySheptytskyy, whose anniversary we are now celebrating, itstarted regaining those features of Ukrainian identity, which we all now need in Ukraine.”
According to Archbishop Igor, this is an extremely important factor in the formation of the Ukrainian national church. “The local Church cannot be reduced to administrative unity. If the establishment of the church structure is an end in itself, it is useless. If the sound parts of each Church are trying to unite to create a healthy body of the nation, which requires it now, then the Church unity will be guaranteed. This is now the position of the entire Kharkiv-Poltava Eparchy of UAOC: the local Church is impossible without the church unity. This is the position thatwas determined in April this yearby our diocesan council. Now we have a gradual but purposeful and productive dialogue with the leadership of the UGCC. We haveset working groups that cooperate with each other. The Diocesan Council, which took place in early July, confirmed the efficiency of this way.”
Archbishop also spoke on the “Galician separatism.” According to him, the “Galician separatism manifested itself in certain periods and had a destructive impact on Ukraine. To some extent, the phenomenon of Galician separatism can be seen in Russophilism. Now Russophilism looks funny for us and seemsa phenomenon of the past, but it reflects a very dangerous tendency in itself, localization of value priorities, ignoring the space outside Galicia. This approach is typical today of some politicians who consider "the beyond-Zbruch Ukraine”to be a burden on the feet of “pro-European" Galicia.”
Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko) liked the phrase of the UGCC former head Lubomyr (Husar), who spoke of a ‘heresy of Galicianism’ in the Church. “It is in an effort to emphasize the superiority of Western tradition, to oppose it to the East and say that the East is less spiritual as compared with Galicia. Only a very superficial person can ignore the fact that often the true values are hidden behind a seemingly inconspicuoussurface. The East had to hideits inner lifefor many centuries of the Russian occupation. The shocks like the famine of 1932-33, the genocide, which began after the occupation, have taught us to keep our inner world under a strong lock and to avoid demonstrating it to strangers. We need to understand all that and help the eastern Ukrainians to come into the open showing sincere attitude to them,” said the ruling bishop of theKharkiv-Poltava Eparchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Renewed).
- Details
CWN - The flight of Syrian refugees into neighboring Lebanon could upset the delicate balance between Christianity and Islam in Lebanon, a Lebanese bishop told Aid to the Church in Need.
“We have two million Syrians in the country as refugees,” said Bishop Simon Atallah, the retired Maronite bishop of Baalbek-Deir El-Ahmar. “Many will return to their homeland when the war is over. But many refugees will remain and apply for Lebanese citizenship in ten years.”
He continued, “What will become of us Christians then? … They defile crosses, statues of the Virgin Mary.”
“We want to act in solidarity,” he added. “But we have obvious problems before our eyes. A question mark hangs over our future.”
Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.