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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Civil authorities have permitted the reopening of a Cypriot Orthodox church in Palekythro, Cyprus, 41 years after its closure following the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus.
Bishop Porfyrios of Neapolis thanked the local mufti for interceding on behalf of Palekythro’s Christians.
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CWN - L’Osservatore Romano has published excerpts of a 2005 lecture on marriage by Belgium’s leading Orthodox prelate.
In the portion of the lecture published by the Vatican newspaper, Metropolitan Athenagoras Peckstadt stated marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman that is primarily ordered to love rather than to procreation.
The prelate also said that the Christ’s words on the indissolubility of marriage (“what God has joined together, let no man put asunder”) are akin to the commandment “you shall not kill.”
“But man is free and therefore can dissolve his marriage and kill another man,” he said, and each is a “grave sin.”
L’Osservatore Romano did not reprint the portions of Metropolitan Athenagoras’ lecture in which he spoke about the practice of second and third marriages permitted by Orthodox bishops “in exceptional and serious cases.”
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CWN - The spokesman for the Catholic Church in Egypt welcomed new anti-terrorism legislation signed into law by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
A US State Department spokesman expressed concern that the legislation “could have a significant detrimental impact on human rights and fundamental freedoms, including due process safeguards, freedom of association, and freedom of expression.”
Egypt is “at war with terrorism, and these new laws are very good and necessary,” Father Rafic Greiche told AsiaNews.
Praising President el-Sisi, who assumed power in 2013, Father Greiche said that “today we feel safer. Not quite safe I would say, because sometimes the Muslim Brotherhood or other terrorist groups put a bomb, and people are tired of these threats. Still, overall we feel safer.”
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CWN - Father Tony Boutros, a Melkite Greek Catholic priest who was kidnapped in Syria in July, was freed on August 15, Archbishop Mario Zenari told Vatican Radio.
Archbishop Zenari, the apostolic nuncio in Syria, said that six clergymen, including two Orthodox bishops, “are still in the hands of the kidnappers. Adult porn pc game download for mac, windows.”
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CWN - Stating that some parishes are newborn or mature while others are frozen, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church emphasized the importance of a parish-life initiative.
As the Eastern Catholic church’s patriarchal council prepares to meet in August, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk described the meeting as a “moment of examination of conscience, to respond to ourselves: to what extent we are a living community as a Church.”
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CWN - Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan was enthroned as the 20th Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia on August 9 in Bzommar, Lebanon.
He succeeds Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, who died on June 25.
Krikor Bedros (in English, Gregory Petros) XX Gabroyan was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1934 and studied in Lebanon and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. In 1959, he was ordained a priest of the Patriarchal Congregation of Bzommar, an Armenian Catholic religious institute.
Ordained to the episcopate in 1977, he ministered to Armenian Catholics in France until his retirement in 2013.
The new patriarch's July 25 election followed a 10-day gathering of the Armenian Catholic Synod of Bishops. After his election, he requested and was granted ecclesial communion with Pope Francis.
The Armenian Catholic Church is one of the Eastern Catholic churches in full communion with the Holy See. Its first patriarch, a former bishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church, was granted ecclesial communion by Pope Benedict XIV in 1742.
The Armenian Apostolic Church is among the Oriental Orthodox churches that ceased to be in full communion with the Holy See following the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451). It has an estimated six million members, while the Armenian Catholic Church now has 566,000 members, according to recent Vatican statistics.
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